Tips for organising the laundry pile. Anyone got any please?

[MorocconOil]

The house is constantly messy, mainly with heaps of clothes at various stages of the washing, drying and putting away process. We must waste hours searching for socks in the morning.

I am at my wits end with it all. Has anyone got a good system in place they could share, to get me a bit more organised?

We are a family of five.

TIA

I misread the titel as asking for tips on IGNORING the washing pile!

How disappointing!

mamizan. whilst I admire much of the plan, and indeed the very idea of having a plan (I'm a great fan of plans) and whilst I hate to say this (but I will ) your plan surely involves (shock horror) mixing your colours! I've never understood washing towels all together then bedding together. washing dcs' clothes together and then yours is a whole other step. you need to wash by colour, not function or ownership.

re baskets - I've never been a fan of multiple baskets - means muggins ends up collecting washing from various points around the house. one basket in your bedroom and train dcs to put stuff in it.

I don't think the colours thing matters so much. In our house we only have two types of wash - whites and non-whites. All the non-whites can be washed together with no harm done.

I don't believe in multiple baskets either, seems to make much more work.

And mimizan, don't pay your children to pair socks or whatever! That's a slippery slope.. You either do it for them or they have to do it because they belong to the family and have to take on some of the jobs. Never pay children to do household tasks. We've always kept pocket money and tasks as separate issues because we don't believe in paying children to do things they should be doing anyway!

we wash everything on 40 degrees except for once a month we do the nappies on a 60 wash.

as for mixing colours I do lights and darks.

but mamizan's plan didn;t even seem to be separating whites and non-whites . we have whites, darks, lights and (because we have so many of them) reds/pinks. I do worry about myself when I allow what's in the washing basket to dictate what I wear. "ooo if I wear my pink top today they'll be enough dirty pinks to put a wash on tonight" "nahh, better not wear white, I did a white load yesterday, it'll be days before it finds its way into the wash".

The things is I don;t put a wash on everyday. I let it accumulate so much that I then have the luxury of being able to be quite picky as to what goes with what.

I actually quite like washing. I'm a bit strange aren't i?

on aweekend my kitchenfloor is covered in washing and i have a darks pile, red/pink pile. whites, lights. and then those white tshirts with red on - i am never sure how to wash them? so i wash them seperately incase they run.

all socks and gruds goin with darks - it dunt mattter what the colour is - in they go

unless i have lovely new bra which i try and keep lovely forabout two weeks then think fuck it and chuck it in with owt

that sounds more like my system. I usually put my whites with red trim into my lights - I know red is notorious for running but I reckon if it doesn't run onto itself it'll be ok. tough one though. white knickers with red trim go in lights or reds as I don;t care if they end up pink.

Hatwoman- The only whites we have are bedding, and some of DH's shirts. I NEVER buy white clothes, and try my hardest not to buy anything with any white in it. Quite hard with DD's clothes but possible. In the past anything white became pink or grey, so I learnt fast.

We've only paid DC to pair socks when completely desperate to get the job done.

AngharadGoldenhand - I'm like you, I use all the settings on my washing machine (temperature settings and cottons / delicates / wool settings) and often only wash a couple of bits together.

I use alot of the settings on our machine, 40, 60, handwash etc., I do manage to wash all the towels at once as this year i invested in all the same colour towels, black! Going to move over to brown i think now. I do the same as ecoworrier, in that i always pile up the underwear into each persons ironing pile so that it then gets taken to rooms in one go....stops alot of the odd sock problem! I do still get the odd sock problem occassionaly, usually when i have been busy and just managed to get the ironing done in the evenings for a couple of nights but left the socks....i then make an effort to do all the socks the next night (tonight)
It works for us as i no longer have a full bulging washing basket and i don't usually have an ironing pile as it is either in the tumble dryer or on line and then ironed each night

I use those colour catcher sheets in mixed washes. Bloody brilliant invention.

We use baskets similar to these for the clean loads - means we can use several but they all fold away when empty direct.tesco.com/q/R.100-8148.aspx.

ggg-Where do you get the colour catcher sheets from?

Crumpet- I like baskets you can throw down stairs when you need to.

Now hatwoman I like you but you must not question my towels day! I will not wash towels willy nilly with other coloureds.

Actually it makes sense even on your rules as all our towels are shades of blue/green/bluey green so OK to wash together. Well there are a few old vests that I use as rags but I don?t mind if they come out grey (they are greay anyway lol).

Also I do towels at 60 and all other stuff at 40. (sorry 30 doesn?t get them clean so I have to wash again, rather defeating the eco object).

The reason I do kids? stuff separately is cause I use non-bio (DD?s excema) but honestly it?s OK, I have mostly blue-grey (boys? stuff and school bottoms), mostly red-pink (DD?s and school tops ? red) and whites (loads inc sheets). It makes sense, honestly.

Lol at you wearing the colour you need to fill a load.

Mamizan is there really no ironing in your house? What about DH?s work shirts? Or yours for that matter? When my iron broke and I was ironless for a week I was most disturbed to put DS1 in unironed polo shirt. (But then I will happily agree to liking ironing?)

Mimizan no whites? What about school polo shirts and vests???

Clary-DH does his own work shirt every morning. I occasionally iron for me as needed. I did iron my clothes when I was working. We have a condenser dryer so things don't come out too creased. I iron the DC's clothes if they are going somewhere special like a party.

School uniform is optional at the moment, although they are trying to bring it in. There is a white polo shirt, but as the sweatshirt is red, I've bought red poloshirts. I think they are just pleased to see pupils in the sweatshirt and don't care about the colour of poloshirts. I always buy grey/navy vests. DD has a few white(grey) vests.

Do I sound like a slattern?