Laundry Chaos….

My Laundry…….

One of my least favorite chores is laundry. I do two loads of laundry a day and I have a specific day (Wednesday) that I bang out the majority of it. With a family of seven, there is always something to be washed. I am a stickler for the way I sort my laundry….but that’s for another discussion. (You can imagine how INSANE it was when the stomach flu went through our house……truly INSANE!!!)

Thankfully when I bought my new home, the laundry room was on the second floor. I LOVE this feature. I love that I’m not hauling laundry upstairs or downstairs to help put it away. However, my laundry room is small.

I’m going to make it one of my weekend projects to give it some charm, probably this summer. It needs paint, some new shelves, baskets, and a few additions.

I love this idea I saw on Pinterest:

How awesome are these cabinets with the open baskets in the middle??!!! I could easily hide away my baskets of missing socks, laundry detergents, stain sticks, etc. Am I the only person that has a basket to “catch” all the legos and candy, my kids sneak in their pockets????!!!!

What about these….??!!! Don’t they look sooooooo classy.

 How about these bins for putting the kids clothes away??!!! I mean…check out this lady’s laundry room….it is awesome.

I wish my laundry room was this big and could have these beautiful areas. However, it’s not and I’m not moving anytime soon.=)

I am a firm believer in having practical spaces in my home. As much as I love these, they are not practical for my lifestyle. I mean, I can’t imagine my five year old carrying one of these bins into her room to empty her clothes.

And yes, I did say my 5 yr. old.

Do I like clean and neatly folded clothes?? yes!

Do I expect my kids to have their clothes folded neatly in their drawers??? No…….but I do expect their clothes to be in their drawers. I expect THEM to put their clothes away.

With that in mind, I found these great bins at Walmart…..and I LOVE THEM!!!!

How cool are these? They have these great little handles on them for the kids to carry them through the room and when the handles are folded down…..it makes them stackable. They take up a small amount of space and on laundry evening…the whole stack is gone. Each bin sitting patiently by the dresser of each child, awaiting to be emptied the next morning.

There are several reasons that this system works for me:

1. I sort all my kids laundry into separate bins. I was using small circular baskets from the dollar store but they were pretty beat up and hard to keep neat in the laundry room.
2. I like a clean laundry room but didn’t want to have any kind of permanent system built into that small room. This system doesn’t require any “built in” shelves or a shelving system. If I find that the system no longer works for my laundry, I will not have made an monetary investment or “renovated” my laundry room to make it happen.
3.  I don’t keep piles of dirty clothes on the floor of my laundry room. I actually have a whole sorting system for my laundry that I keep in my hallway. I need very little room to store dirty laundry in my laundry room, however, I need more room to fold clothes and put them away.
4. The bins cost me about $6 each. So, for under $50, I have figured out a new system that lets me fold clothes right at the dryer and sort them into their proper bin.

So…….gotta wrap this up and go fold my last load of laundry for the night.  What about your laundry situation? Do you have a system that you love and want to share? I would LOVE to hear about it!

God bless,

Tammi