Friday, May 7, 2010

How to Do Less Laundry

Laundry seems to be a hot topic when it comes to big families, but we don't do a ton of laundry and I don't spend a bunch of money or time on it. Here's why:
  1. We don't separate loads into white, dark, colors. We wash all our clothes in cold water. Nothing bleeds.
  2. Everybody has their own color-coded towel that we use for a week before washing them all together in one load. We wash towels in hot water.
  3. Once a week, we strip all the beds and wash the sheets in hot water. Linens are the only thing we wash in hot water. (The kids don't have flat sheets, just fitted sheets and a blanket. Blankets are washed on an as-needed basis.)
  4. We only wash clothes that are dirty or sweaty.
  5. We have a laundry schedule:
I wash hubby's and my laundry on Mondays. 2 loads - our clothes & our sheets.
Girls wash their clothes on Tuesdays. 1-2 loads. (5 girls)
Boys wash their clothes on Wednesdays. 1 load. (2 boys)
Kids wash their sheets & towels on Thursdays. 1-2 loads.
I wash baby clothes & sheets on Fridays. (1 load)

I absolutely refuse to do laundry on the weekends. Weekends are for fun!

5 comments:

Rachel Marie said...

hmmm...i like your system. somehow you are doing WAY less laundry than i am and you have more children! i'm guessing either your children are VERY clean when eating and playing outside OR i need to re-teach what dirty really looks like! maybe we're washing things that aren't truly dirty. either that or you have a HUGE washer??? and i am longing for the day when we can do the family closet- LOVE IT! i'm just not sure i want to devote a bedroom to that if we're going to possibly try to sell our house anytime in the next couple of years??

Ginger said...

No, I don't have a huge washer and it's a top loader. It's not tiny tho.
We talked about selling our house in the future. Bottom line: it's worth it to me to have a family closet even for a couple years before we sell (if we do); I can always make our house normal-looking again if we put it on the market.

Kidcraze said...

That is close to how we do it, but I do separate out the whites and jeans. So, the boys do three loads a week,but they do their own.
The girls often need their whites to be soaked in Oxyclean, so that takes a bit longer. It's the age.

We do color-coded towels, too.

MamaMahnken said...

I'm learning how to be a large family here from you and Mari. I'm thinking of implementing a very similar system, including the color coded towels. Thanks for sharing!

Tereza Crump said...

WOW!! great information here! thanks for sharing. :)