organising laundry - help me beat the pile of washing!

[geekgirl]

I need a good system for getting my laundry sorted, rather than having it sit there 'Matterhorn' style in the utility room.

There are 5 of us, 3 are v. messy, so I do at least 1 large load a day, often 2 or 3. I tend to just take stuff out of the dryer and leave it sitting on the worktop for weeks on end, until it's a huge dauting pile which I then sort all in one go.

It's not a good system - I'm forever digging through the mountain for pyjamas etc.

Any good ideas for making it a bit easier and more organised?

Maybe a basket for each person, so as you take stuff out of the dryer, it then goes straight into each person's basket, and then (if your DCs are old enough) they could take the stuff upstairs at the end of the day and put it away?

Get yourself some nice laundry baskets, put them on the work top side by side. I have one for darks, one for lights and then one to put DHs work clothes in.

I too do mountains of laundry and splashing out on some nice big proper baskets made the job slightly more pleasant (sad that my life has come to this )

The way I work it is every bathroom and every bedroom in the house has a laundry basket, which I collect about 3 times a week (there are only 3 of us). I make a big pile, then do a white wash or a coloured wash.

Soon as the first lot's washed, bung it in the dryer.

Take all the dry stuff to the ironing room where I sort it into putting away stuff (towels, sheets etc) and ironing stuff. Often by putting the first lot away, the ironing pile doesn't look all that daunting any more.

I then put all the undies into appropriate drawers and if I have time, do the ironing. More often than not, I don't, so by Wed, which is my day off work, I do the whole week's ironing in one go but the rest of the stuff is already away so it never gets too bad.

I've also started ironing dh & ds's shirts straight out of the wash, still wet which is much easier than when they've been screwed up in a ball for days, and put them straight onto hangers on a rail in the ironing room. It doesn't take long at all for them to air out, as the iron's taken most of the water out.

Mumblechum - you have an ironing room .

Also another good idea with the baskets is, when the baskets are full you HAVE to empty them, i only put things like pj's, socks, underwear etc in baskets, i then sort clothes out as they dry from ironing to put away, irioning goes stright into irioning basket, underwear, pj's etc go straight into basket, other things get put straight away.

I only ever empty the pj, socks basket when it is full

More often than not, I have ongoing piles on the floor...one dark...one light etc....and it looks pretty messy so tends to get washed quite quickly (I do have linen bin as well). It means that every time I go upstairs i think "Oh, I'll put that on now" etc. I then tumble overnight on cheap electric (timer and its ready just as I get up, so no creasing) and fold next morning when DD has her nap.

Fold into piles of our bedroom, DDs bedroom and ironing.....luckily my ironing gets sent out once a fortnight so that makes sure I have bedding etc ready on time

geekgirl - first bit of advice - if the laundry/ironing/putting away has got out of control, get someone in for a morning to iron everything. If you don't know anyone, put a notice up in your newsagent or look in your local small ads. Whenever you go on holiday and are going to have a mountain of laundry on your return, arrange to have someone iron two or three days after your return.

So, having dealt with the peaks, your laundry will now be down to just a weekly arrangement that you ought to be able to control .

Plan it out so that you have a schedule eg

• men's work shirts/underwear to be washed on Sundays (medium hot wash) - ready for ironing and putting away on Monday
• children's pale clothes/women's underwear and pale clothes on Mondays
• parents sheets on Tuesdays
• children's sheets on Wednesdays
• all towels on Thursdays
• socks and dark wash on Fridays

Reduce ironing to an absolute minimum by tumbling all t-shirts and jeans just enough to get the creases out and then hanging to dry on hangers. I only buy t-shirt type pyjamas etc for the children to reduce ironing.

thank you for all the great suggestions - I did try the labelled laundry baskets but that lasted about a week - I think I went wrong because they were big baskets and left me with hardly any worktop space to actually sort the laundry, but plenty of room for just piling stuff up.

I've got an Ikea wire drawer unit hanging about in the garage, will assemble it and see if that works better.

Anna, I wholeheartedly agree with getting help in - can't find anyone here unfortunately and have pretty much given up.

I have a laundry basket in each bedroom. On a wash day, I use ikea bags to collect it all up. In the kitchen I then use my 2 collapsible poundshop laundry baskets (each with 2 compartments) to sort the washing. So I will have a pile of whites, lights, brights (coloured) and darks. Obviously then they get washed.

Another timesaver is how I hang them out. On the line outside or the airers inside I put each person's clothes together. So when they are dry, I fold up all, say, my clothes first, then dh, ds1, ds2 and ds3. I fold them into the ikea bags again - they make ideal laundry bags because of their size and that they can be stashed away easily, usually in the bottom of a laundry bin.

Next stage is carefully assess whether or not I will have time for ironing this week. If not, I put the clothes away, I don't leave them out waiting for a chance to iron, or leave them until next week. If I can iron, then I do. And because they are already sorted by person, it makes it easier and quicker to put away.

I'm no domestic goddess, but this system means I never have mountains of washing - its either in the bins in the bedrooms, bins in the kitchen waiting to be washed, being dried, or waiting to be ironed - only if there is time, if not its put away.

geekgirl - just offer over the odds £££. If it's only for an occasional job you won't break the bank and you'll find some old biddy who'll do it for cash in hand.

Regular help is much harder to find IMO.