Having a large family can be so rewarding. But it can also result in a lot of laundry. You might feel like the washer and dryer are running all day, every day in order to keep up! However, laundry cannot and should not run your lives. Here are some laundry tips for large families that will help you regain control over your time without sacrificing clean clothes.
Make sure your kids know what constitutes dirty clothing.
Some kids love to toss anything and everything into the wash. They try on a shirt, decide not to wear it, and toss it in the hamper. Or they wear a pair of jeans out to play for an hour and think they need to be washed. Sit down and discuss these habits with your kids. Give them specific guidelines as to when a piece of clothing should go in the hamper, and when it can be either worn a second time or put back in the drawer. This should cut back on the amount of clothing you have to wash.
Have everyone pre-sort their clothing.
In the span of a week, you can spend hours sorting clothing into whites and colors! Save yourself some time by having two hampers in the first place. Have family members sort their own clothing as they place it in the hamper. (You can even have three if you prefer to separate your clothing even further.) This way, when it is time to do wash, you can just grab one of the hampers and start loading items into the washer.
Buy all the same socks.
Pairing up socks after washing can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of doing laundry. You can eliminate this task by buying all the same socks. Every person in your home can have a different brand or color, so all you have to do is sort the socks into piles.
Toss a load in first thing in the morning.
Every morning when you get up, put a load of wash in the washer. This way, even if you do not get around to washing any more clothing that day, you will at least have washed one load. You can put it in the dryer whenever is convenient—at lunch, when you get home from work, or even right before dinner.
If you follow the laundry tips above, you will have a much easier time keeping on top of laundry for a big family. Good luck!
