Piles and piles of laundry.

picture from Lets go cloth

I have so much laundry each and every day.  How could I not?  A family of seven.  Five beds.  Around fourteen outfits each.  Twelve towels.  Table linens.  Kitchen towels and wash cloths.  Cloth diapers.  You starting to feel me?

The only thing that keeps me from running out of my house in terror, at the piles of laundry, is my system. Not my digestive system, silly.  My laundry system. You want to know it? Buy new, throw away the old.  Just kidding.

For starters, each child MUST wear their clothes more than once unless they are visibly dirty or smelly.  The kids just spent some time with their Mimi while I was out of town with Jeff and she washed their clothes each day.  They got a little spoiled to that and were putting *GASP* clean clothes in the washer.

When I asked why, I was informed that Mimi always washes their clothes each night.  I quickly reminded them that Mimi doesn't have six kids.  Then we went back to my way of doing things.  Wear your clothes till you can't!

I also try to cut down on the amount of clothes we have, thereby eliminating the need to wash a lot of clothes.  Each child has two weeks worth of clothes; sometimes less, but never more.  Seven play outfits and seven nice outfits, including church dresses.  They usually only have one pair of pajamas, although sometimes they may end up with two.  They usually have two pairs of socks because they lose all the rest of them.  I don't know how so don't ask me.

We do NOT wash sheets every week.  HOLY COW that would take me all day Saturday. I mean, how dirty to kids sheets get anyway?  They only sleep in them.  They are generally clean when they go to sleep, right?  Well, maybe, not.  But I still don't wash them every week.  Usually once a month.  Ours may get washed more often; throw up, pee, breast milk, and ahem, other stuff.

Towels are the bane of my laundry days.  The never ending need to wash towels. Everyone has only ONE towel except little tiny ones and big old huge ones.  The other kids have their own personalized towels.  And except in the case of one child stealing all the towels to use as curtains, no one uses each other's towels.  However, we don't use paper products, except in the bathroom.  We use towels for sponges, paper towels and napkins.  If I cook something greasy, I use a towel. Need to clean the bathroom?  Wash cloth.  Wipe down counters?  Wash cloth. Clean up spills?  Hand towel.  You get me.  We use towels for all that.

We keep a table cloth on the table to make clean up easier and we use cloth napkins.  So we usually end up washing ALL of the table cloths and napkins each week.

Diapers.  Lots of diapers. I have two in diapers. So that's a lot of diapers.  It's important to wash these every other day whenever possible to keep life of the diapers longer.  And anyway, EEWWW!! Diapers stewing in pee and poop for more than a few days.  We try to always get these on the line to dry in the sun. It gets out any smells and stains. We toss them in the dryer for a few minutes to get the chrunchies out after that.

So as I mentioned.  LOTS OF LAUNDRY.  We hang laundry as time allows.

But I do have a way to get it all washed.  I assign different laundry to different days.  I use my Google Calendar to assist me in remembering, because really, who can remember anything with all these kids?

Sunday:  Day of rest.  However Kori and Kati do their laundry (together).  I've tried other days and they NEVER, EVER, EVER remember to get their laundry switched over and I wait and wait and WAIT AND WAIT and end up not getting any other laundry done that day. So, we go to Sunday, they start it in the morning before church, switch it out before we leave and fold it during rest time.  So far no one has forgotten. AMAZING!

Monday: 
Whites
Diapers

Tuesday: 
Blacks
Table Linens

Wednesday: 
Darks
Towels
Diapers

Thursday: 
Reds

Friday: 
Lights
Diapers

Saturday: 
Blue jeans
Sheets

So that works for us.  What about you?  How do you keep up with laundry? Or maybe you don't. Maybe you feel like you are drowning in a sea of dirty clothes. EW!  Hope there's no throw up in there.  Try my system and see if helps you keep up with your laundry.

Now folding it and putting it away....that's a whole 'nother post.