Dear Mumsnet please could we have a 'Larger Families' section?

pmsl at futility room, I have one of those too.

Ooh hello Juule good to see a fellow HE'er, although technically I'm not supposed to be here, so

'you int seen me, roight'

I jokingly mentioned to Dh that we might have 5 and he looked catatonic with shock hahaha.

Bless 'im he's only just come round to 4, we'll see about 5 later.

We have a three bed house, 2 doubles and a single, but may extend out to give us either 2 further singles or another double but with a mezzanine floor, so hopefully everyone will have enough space.

We simply cannot afford to move to a bigger house in the current market

I have notice an abundance of odd socks after no.3 appeared, funny you should mention that

I have a futility room.

Kitty... great idea about the clear folders. I'm going to start that straight away.

We don't have a laundry room - just the kitchen.

Clean clothes get sorted into laundry baskets for each room.

I want a laundry room full stop!!!!

I want a laundry room that I can fit 6 lines in

What's a sky bed?

The sock thing is a nightmare here too!

For laundry our system is that I have four laundry hampers in the hall outside the bathroom. There is one for whites; one for darks, one for lights and one for pink and red. It is part of the bedtime routine from about 2 years old to sort your own laundry. If it is wearable again it is to be hung over the bottom of the bed (bunk beds and sky beds in our house to save on space) otherwise it is placed in the right hamper.

In the laundry room I have 6 hanging lines and I hang everyone's things on their own line. We do have a tumble dryer but I tend not to use it to dry clothes but rather to soften and remove the wrinkles once they are dry. (This takes only 10 minutes or so.) At that point it is loaded into their own laundry basket and they put it away themselves. (Even two year old DD does her own.) The best part about the system is that they all know where to find everything and they are more than welcome to contribute at any stage by hanging, drying or folding their own laundry at any time too!

We do have an odd sock basket here as well because I am too much of a control freak to allow them to wear mismatched ones...

Hi Kitty

Good idea about the folders. I still use the notice board and when everything falls off it's time to have a cleardown

Socks - hmmm. We've tried a variety of methods over the years. At the moment we've settled on a box for the big dark socks, a drawer for the younger girls pale, white, patterned socks and a permanent bag for the odd socks. If two socks are a close enough match then they're a pair . Under trousers odd socks don't matter. Odd sock bag gets sorted through whenever it's full. Usually able to reclaim a few pairs that way.

kitty......have you seen in my house at the black hole that all school letters get sucked into????.

am liking that idea

Hello Juuule
agal... the traveliner is dead easy to drive and even reverse park!!
It's not so bad on diesel. ATM it costs about £70 to fill the tank up. I drive about 9 miles per day, more at weekends and a tank will last us 2 weeks.
But the space inside is just great. Dp has organised the seats so that they face each other, it makes life so much easier.

Oh yes also wanted to share this as it's so useful.

In the kitchen each child has one of those see through plastic a4 paper holders you can buy in places like viking direct. They are wall mounted and then everything to do with school, clubs, all paper work relating to that child, party invites, etc, etc go straight into their folder and that way things don't get lost and it frees up the notice board. I highly recommend getting somefor example

@ LTH's 'tip'

would work for DD1 and DD2 as they purposely mix their socks.....but still within the same 'type' tho IYGWIM.

soooo......if they have disney pooh bear and tigger socks, they wear one pooh bear and one tigger one day, and tother way the next.

not sure how they would cope tho with completely odd, as I have been a dragon in the past for matchy matchy right from undies up.....even as babes.

me thinks I have broken them a teensy bit.....

genius, aren't I??

Thats gotta be tip of the day....

Shall I tell you all a trick to banish the sock monkeys from your houses??

Tis very very simple.

Anyone can do it.

Yes, even you Juule

Ok, you all ready?

I don't want to to miss this.....

Ready??

Ok. here it is....

wear odd socks.

Lifes too short to worry about matching socks.
I just chuck them in their piles of washing and if they match I pair them if not, well too bad Boy-o...wear 'em odd.

and do you know what?

Its only very very occaisonally that I see any of them with odd socks. They find a matching pair themselves, even ds3.

I just wear odd ones.

Told you it was easy, there are never any lonely singleton socks because they all just get chucked in together

We have five bedrooms - but the aupair has one.

altho for me, it makes DH's arguement for space (or lack there-of) being the reason for no more.

not that will be anymore now, as DH has had the snip!

oooh..... ever so slightly smaller than ours then!

we are 3 dble beds and 1 sgle....and that is hard enough with all the wardrobe needs etc.

hats off to you for fitting them in.

Not big enough
4bed (2dble, 2sngle rooms)

how big is your house juuuule....??

One's at university so only home for the hols.

thud

Wow, juule. Are they all still at home?

Here are mine:
ds 20
ds 18
dd 16
ds 15
dd 13
dd 11
dd 10
dd 8
dd 4

So many different topics here - we really do need our own section!

Eggs - one each. I bought Cadbury's eggs that were just foil wrapped, with no outside box.

Clothes - we hand down what we can. DS1 and DD1 get all new clothes, and the others get clothes as presents or special treats. This is not a planned strategy, but just how things have worked out. We keep our number of outfits down to an absolute minimum, as it can get very overwhelming otherwise.

Chores - everyone has to muck in. If they are physically and mentally capable, they are fair game.

kitty....I love the idea of a box to fill with clean stuff to put away. for us at the moment I put it in piles downstairs for them each to carry up.....only problem then comes from them being either too lazy to put away straight away, or we are rushing out so it gets left. then a couple of days later I find the nice ironed pile kicked about, or even put back into the wash with their piles of dirty stuff they have just gathered up.

if they have a box, it would stay boxed nicely until they do put it away, or I can easily hide it if they start getting lazy again.

love it.......and will get some bought asap