Please share your laundry routines before I throw all the clothes out and devote myself to naturism

[WitchyBrew]

2 adults and 5 kids in our house. DH does the washing and drying part of our laundry and I do the folding and putting away (ie, total fucking ballache part of the process). For various medical reasons, our kids are unable to help.

DH does at least 1 wash a day (if he doesn't then the pile gets totally out of hand). Before I went back to full time work, the clean clothes would accrue in a relatively small pile and I would fold and put away twice a week. However, since going back to work full time, I actually cannot get on top of it. It just piles up and up and up, and the only time I get a chance to tackle it is at the weekend, by which time there are 2 huge overflowing tubs of it strewn around my bedroom (which stresses me out no fucking end), and it takes the bones of 2 hours to fold and put away. And starts piling again immediately.

Unfortunately, we don't have a spare room that we could dedicate as a laundry room, and can't afford to get someone else to do the folding etc. And even if we did, it wouldn't really help unless they would actually come in and out the stuff away.

Please please please share your winning laundry routines/systems before I totally crack up and burn all the clothes!!

Who has room for so many laundry baskets? I have just one for all dirty clothes and there are five of us. The suggestions to have one for dirty and one for clean for each person is mind boggling. Not only do you then have ten laundry baskets but what is the point of folding laundry and putting it in a “clean” basket when it takes same time to just fold it as you sort it and then put it in the correct dresser or wardrobe? The one clean basket per person to then dress from adds an unnecessary step and you must be living in manors houses to have room for two laundry baskets per person scattered about the house.

I hate laundry but our dc need a fresh uniform everyday. During the holidays it is easier. I wash and dry a load each day (tumble dry)
Sort into piles and get everyone to put away their pile.

Could you do a weekly wash per person with a once:twice weekly wash for all whites?

How big is your washing machine? We got a machine with a larger drum and it's made my life so much easier! Family of 4 here

Darks go in the machine, wash put on when full. Lights after, usually full by this time as 2 young girls who love pink. Maybe equals 1 wash a day, sometimes 2 if it's a weekend or kids off school. Reds (school jumpers) and whites at a weekend. Bedding as and when changed, same with towels. Have a hamper for dirty and a basket for clean. Clean gets put away at the end of the day.

Family of four plus a dog, we have a laundry room so every day I empty the baskets from the bedrooms into a sorter (trolley with 4 compartments) then whichever is fullest goes in for a load, usually 2-3 loads a day. I try to dry most things on the Sheila maid in the laundry but some things like towels I tumble dry. The trick is to fold it as it comes out of the dryer/off the airer. 15 mins of folding each day into piles for each person.

It seems tumble drier is the most popular option for drying.

Does no one find they shrink clothes? I seem to shrink school uniforms, pjs, t shirts that kind of thing. Clothes from all price range too, supermarket to expensive….

wonders where going wrong

How are you overwhelmed by folding one wash a day? Even my 9kg machine doesn't hold that much.

There are 4 adults here (DC grown up).
A load goes in every morning (twice on Saturdays and Sundays).
When I get home from work, the dry washing comes off the clothes horse and is immediately sorted and put into 4 piles. One pile for DH, DS, DD and mine is put away directly.

Wet washing gets hung or bunged in tumbler (towels, sheets, etc).

It's less than 6/7 minutes a day. someone else irons

Five children must be very hard work.

Each child has their own laundry bag on the back of the door. Either they do their own wash or you do it, in its own or with a sibling — but not all mingled in together or you’ll be dividing pants into piles for hours.

Best of all, get them to do their own washing by the age of 11 at the latest. Earlier if possible. (Fellow mum of 5 here.)

Can you manage 5 sets of uniform per child? So then each child has one wash of light/white ( assuming they have white shirts) and the rest goes in their own dark wash. Each wash is then for only one child, so no sorting to be done, just empty into a basket and put away. Don't bother pairing socks, anyone bothered about matching socks can pair their own.
DS3 now has one big drawer for all his underwear, which works well because he doesn't even have to separate pants and socks.
It's taken me years to get to the point of having each person's load in a separate wash, I wish I'd done it sooner, it's a much better system for bigger families. As adults it became the obvious thing to do.
DS1, who is a working adult but still lives at home, has a big box for his dirty laundry, and another big box for his clean laundry, and mostly gets dressed from his clean laundry box, which has pants, socks and tshirts and hoodies, unfolded and unironed. Occasionally he will hang up shirts, and very rarely, will iron one. But mostly he gets dressed from the box, and it works reasonably well. He's a bit crumpled. but clean! His choice, I'm not about to put away another adult's clothes! The point is, the bar can be quite low, so long as everyone is clean and not smelling, you don't have to fold anything.

If you just pull and dump from the drier is it not a crumpled mess?

We fold from the drier.

Clean baskets sit on the dining table. After dinner we sort then it's goes to applicable bedroom.

We are down to 3 DC instead of 4 but they all do sports 😭 there is usually more than one wash per day!

I dont understand your timings. Have i misunderstood or is your dh taking 24 hours on each load?

What we do is load of washing in after work, which is a 3 minute job, transfer to dryer when finished which is a 2
minute job, fold as coming out of the dryer which gets most of the creases out of most things, then sort into piles on the stairs for each child to take to their room. Folding and sorting takes about 30 minutes. When folded warm little needs ironing, what does gets ironed once a week.

You definitely have the longer job but i dont understand what your dh’s timings are and i suggest you look at the times things are done rather than how long each job takes.

People have to put their clothes in the wash right side out (ie not inside out). If they put it in the wash inside out then it stays inside out, and is returned to them inside out. This will torch your folding time, I promise.

@EmpressCixi

Who has room for so many laundry baskets? I have just one for all dirty clothes and there are five of us. The suggestions to have one for dirty and one for clean for each person is mind boggling. Not only do you then have ten laundry baskets but what is the point of folding laundry and putting it in a “clean” basket when it takes same time to just fold it as you sort it and then put it in the correct dresser or wardrobe? The one clean basket per person to then dress from adds an unnecessary step and you must be living in manors houses to have room for two laundry baskets per person scattered about the house.

I've only got one dirty laundry basket and my clean baskets for each person are small. The clean laundry baskets are kept inside each other on top of the washing machine and then when I put the clean clothes in them I stack them again and deliver them to the threshold of the bedrooms and my dc have to put their own stuff away and put the basket back on top of the washing machine.

If you air dry things, then dry them on whatever you use to put them away.
If it lives on a hanger, dry it on a hanger (hung on a shelf edge or door frame or whatever, ideally in the room where it lives space permitting).

This is ridiculous to suggest “doing the drying in the evening”, you cannot leave wet clothes in a pile for hours in the U.K. unless you want them to mildew. And how does it help OP to have to try and fit in drying plus sorting, folding and putting away when she is already struggling with just the last 3

What? Obviously if you change the timings, you change the time that you wash as well. So you just set the washing machine to come on during the day then whoever gets home first bungs it in the dryer. The OP is asking for other people’s systems, and this is what I do. I am as yet unmildewed.

The whole point is to avoid breaking up what should be a one-stage process- unloading the dryer and putting away - into 2 stages.

I completely understand the issue with more darks than lights. I’ve just rediscovered a lovely white jumper I haven’t seen for three months because of this issue.

So, I can understand washing mixed (people, not colour) loads.

However, you are asking about the sorting, folding, putting away side of things. As others have pointed out, it is easiest to do this as soon as it comes out of the dryer. It means fewer creases, no piles gathering for days, no musty smells when finally put away.

Can you (or your DH) sort and fold at the same time as taking things from the dryer? The sorting would take about sixty seconds so the is yes. Folding or hanging might be a bit longer.

Sort the clothes as soon as they come out of the dryer, either by quickly throwing them into a basket or pile per person. If you have an extra two minutes, fold them.

You might want to try to time yourself doing this one day. I am sure it will take less time than you think and it is possible that you are putting off this task because you think it will take longer than it actually does.

Day 1
Morning before work - load washer and set timer for it to be done in time to finish at 6pm (5 mins)
After work - take washing out, hang on airer next to dehumidifier (10 mins)

Day 2 and thereafter
Morning before work - as above (5 mins)
After work -

1. take dry washing from Day 1 off the airer. Fold and put away/put in ironing pile. (10 mins).
2. Iron essentials only (10-15 mins)
3. Put wet washing on airer as Day 1 (10 mins)

Total 40 mins, ie 20 mins each

We do the laundry, all clean washing (stuff not needing ironing) goes into a big storage box, ironing goes into another basket, then on a Sunday once I’ve done the ironing I put it all away.. matching socks is the worst part and I really can’t deal with that daily..

@SavoyCabbage
My washer is under my kitchen counter where the microwave sits. So no room for a stack of excess laundry baskets. And if I put one per person at threshold of bedroom...that would be two baskets outside DH and my bedroom, two baskets outside my girls’ room, and one outside my boys room. I’m in a 3 bed terrace. There are no baskets small enough to do this without blocking entire doorway. Plus I can just visualise tripping over one and falling down the stairs as our landing is maybe 2mx2m total in size.

Use colour catchers and you never have to worry about darks and lights again. Revolutionary.

You can buy laundry bags that you wash the clothes inside (dd had one for boarding school) one per person so each bad contains one persons stuff for putting away

I block the doorway on purpose so they notice them and empty them, that's why I put them there.

@WitchyBrew

As for switching jobs/getting him to do it- he would have the same issue as me so it would just be pawning the problem off. There surely must be a more efficient way of doing it than our current setup!

I would LOVE if there were somewhere downstairs to store the clothes, but there isn't

As for folding clothes in 5 mins from the drier, this may be true if we had time and opportunity to do this for each and every wash as soon as it were dried. But by the time I get a chance to do it, it's at least 7 full loads of washing for 7 different people that need to be sorted, folded and put away.

But if you made time to do it every night, it would only take 5-10 minutes.

Me, DH + 3 DC 2-7h
Was every day . Sort and fold as comes out of drier and take upstairs and put away. 10 mins max.
DS1 7 - puts his away
I do mine, DD and Ds2.
DH puts his away and irons his work shirts.
Not much else gets ironed.
Anything that can't go in the drier goes on the clothes horse or on coat-hangers infront of a radiator in a spare bedroom.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow
The whole point is to avoid breaking up what should be a one-stage process- unloading the dryer and putting away - into 2 stages.

I agree with this. But they have a tumble drier? Why not just leave it in the dryer and put it on the 10min refresh/unwrinkle cycle instead of doing complicated synchronising of DH starting the washing to end exactly one hour before you predict you may have time to sort and fold after the one hour drying cycle, so it never sits in the drier? Clothes can’t go mildest sitting dry in a drier, but one mistake between DH and OP on synchronising wash start so it ends exactly one hour before she can sort and fold could end up mildewy. And mildew is a bitch to get out of a washer once it’s started, never mind the clothes being ruined.