Laundryitis

Do you know what Laundryitis is? It's a common condition where your laundry multiplies out of control, no matter what you do to curtail it. You empty a hamper, turn your back and voila! Another pile magically takes its place.

I have tried many things to tame Laundry Mountain. None of them worked. Until I finally found a system that works for us!

I'm not saying that all the laundry is done at this point in time. I have a load in the washer that may need to be run through again as it's been there since Saturday. Today I was a wreck waiting for the sonogram and got nothing done at all. I have a load in the dryer to fold and, I'm going to do another load or two tomorrow. But the end of the upstairs laundry is in sight. (I say "upstairs laundry" because the things downstairs that need to be washed in order to sort them and get rid of them are a different story.)

It's so simple, that I can't believe it took me so long to figure it out. The biggest problem? Kids having too many clothes. Thanks to generous family and friends and yard sales, they had more than enough. The more they had, the longer I went without washing. I would find previously clean clothes on the floor because Lion took pants out of his drawer, hated them, flung them on the floor to find another pair, and there you go. The circle of pants never ends.

Every six months or so I go through their drawers with them. Lion's was done about two weeks ago. Lion's cousin is going to be thrilled with the pairs of really nice pants that Lion just couldn't wear. Thank you, sensory issues!

He has a handful of long-sleeved shirts, since he outgrew most of them in the last couple of months. I told him to pick his ten favorite T-shirts, which he did. Doing this with all the kids reduces the amount of laundry. Princess just got a set of clothes for the next size up, so we are going through her things to put some away for her cousin. Thankfully I started realizing the "too many clothes" dilemma before acquiring them for Professor last year, so he doesn't have a ton. It also helps solve the problem of putting clean clothes away into smaller, too full drawers.

That problem fixed, my only other problem was this:

I use the tall, thin hampers for laundry baskets as well as their intended function, hampers. They're much easier to carry up and down the stairs.

Why is this a problem? Well, I would take the full basket downstairs, wash and dry it, and bring it upstairs. (Hopefully I remembered within a few days.) If I didn't fold it right away, it would sit there and stagnate. Meanwhile, there was no place for dirty clothes in the boy's room so where would they put the dirty clothes? You guessed it--on the floor. I don't know if you know this, but clothes on the floor breed worse than rabbits. It's a scientifically proven fact. (Ok, I made that up. But you know what I mean!)

So we had missing hampers that would end up full of clean or dirty laundry, either downstairs or upstairs. When your laundry room is downstairs, it's easy to forget about what's lurking there. James is one of those rare guys who willingly uses a hamper. We kept it in the closet, but when I'd take it away he'd have to toss his clothes on the closet floor. I didn't look in that side too often, so before I'd know it he'd run out of clean laundry. The phrase "out of sight, out of mind" surely was true in my case.

The solution that took me over nine years to figure out is very embarrassing. You are probably shaking your head at my dimwittedness. The thing is, is that I'm hopefully teaching people what happens when you have the tendency to make things more complicated than they really are--by my example.

The solution is as thus:

Have a hamper for each room, out in the open. Sure, it's not as lovely as if it were hidden in the closet, but which is prettier? Laundry hamper or clothes all over the floor?

Keep a hamper in the bathroom for dirty towels and sheets.

Keep an extra one to trek up and down the stairs with.

Do not wait until the baskets are full. When you see them starting to fill up, take your empty basket around to the rooms and fill 'er up.

Go to the laundry room.

Here it helps if you have an "overflow" basket. I have a 3 tier thing, one of those sorting things. I probably don't need all three now that I have this system. The only reason you'd really need one is if you want to keep all laundry out of the hampers that are in plain sight at all times, then keep them sorted until you had full washloads. And if you're really that picky, I'll bet you don't have a laundry problem in the first place. Still, it's handy to have a place to put those whites that have snuck downstairs with you, or that bright red shirt. Unless you really want to put them on the floor.

Wash and dry the clothes.

Involve your children! Professor, at age eight, has learned how to transfer laundry from the washer to the dryer and start it, and bring clothes up and down the stairs. He has even run the washing machine by himself a couple of times. This from a boy who until a couple of months ago, was hardly required to do any chores at all. There is hope.

When the load is brought up, fold it as promptly as you can. Again, involve your children if they're there. If I don't do it within the first few hours, it's more likely to sit there for a long time. Sometimes I leave it until I take a break in the afternoon, and watch some "Clean House" or something as I fold.

If the kids are playing and I'm enjoying the relative quiet, I fold the laundry, then call them to come get their piles. When there are complaints I have threatened to throw the clothes away. This has worked every time with the older ones. Princess requires a little extra help sometimes, since she can't reach some drawers. But for those she can reach, telling her she's having her favorite doll taken away works wonders. Not that I'm recommending you traumatize your kids, but I have a certain tone that they know means "I mean it and you know that I will do it".

If you put the clothes away because you are home alone, this is a good time to do so. Do it now, before the kids come home and jump all over the couch and wreck them all. It's so disheartening to find previously folded laundry strewn everywhere.

Simple? Yes. Works? Yes. Laundryitis in our household has been cured.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed. I wonder what I'll dream about tonight. Washers with teeth, perhaps? Maybe fields of flowers with sheets blowing in the sunshine that I didn't have to hang? Ahh, lovely. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz