Clothes Management

It's Monday, which means laundry day around here!

Disclaimer: I am not the best housekeeper.  I wish I was.  It's never terrible, but it's never all great.  If one room is clean, another probably is not.  But, when it comes to clothes management (as I like to call it), I feel like I finally have a good system down.

Every Monday, I do laundry; front to top, beginning to end!  This means the complete laundry cycle, from washing machine all the way through being put away in their proper draws/closets.  I know...gasp!  Isn't putting it away the hardest part?  By the time I go to sleep at night, every dirty article of clothing in this home has been washed, dried, folded, and put away.

Why one day?  
- There is no more forgetting I had thrown a load in, therefore forgot it was in and sat in the washing machine for too long, requiring another wash.
- There is always laundry to do.  Always!  But, by doing it on one day, it feels like for a teeny bit of time, everything is clean and there is no laundry to do!
- I don't always have the task of laundry in the back of my mind.  I know I will get to it on Monday and will worry about it then, not until.
- I don't quit, because I have to keep it going, and will keep it going since it is only one day.  I continuously keep it rolling all day long.

Each child has about, more or less, two weeks worth of clothes (plus church clothes hanging up).  I don't want to deal with a lot more, and don't need to.  They (and I) wear our favorites anyway.  It's easy to manage, there aren't clothes laying all around, as we simply don't have that much, and it keeps things on a good cycle.

Every outfit goes together.  At the beginning of each season, I get out all the clothes and put outfits together.  If there are three stray pair of pants, I either get shirts to go with them, or get rid of them.  Every article of their clothing goes with something.  No strays.

Each Sunday night, I fill their "boxes" for the week.  This is a divider in their closet with six places.  I fill each compartment with socks, underwear, shirts, and pants.  Every night, they pick out their "box" for the next day, and bring it downstairs.  This helps so much!  By picking the outfit out the night before, the mornings are so much more peaceful.  It also helps to have the entire outfit in the box, as they aren't running back to their room for socks while we are trying to get out the door.  I also love that I can yell up the stairs, "Pick out a box!" and the entire outfit is done, decided, and ready to roll.  The boxes also help Dallas tremendously.  When I am gone, the outfits are already put together, eliminating stress for him and humiliation for the children.  :)  (totally kidding)

The "box" thing first came about when the kids were wanting to pick out their own clothes.  They would get out ten different things, pile them on the floor, and still look ridiculous.  I'm not for micro-managing them, but it became a battle on occasion, resulting in a huge mess.  So, by doing the "boxes," they still get to pick (I just picked first...sneaky!).

By doing laundry once a week and filling their boxes once a week, there is very rarely a time where we are scrambling around looking for something.  It works.  There aren't clothes laying around on the floor (if there are, they get collected in a big garbage sack).  I don't need a perfectly kept home, I don't.  However, I want to raise responsible little ones, not slobs.  Now, I do understand this could all change (cue: teenage years).  But hey, we are trying.

Every Saturday, I do towels and a norwex load.  Every other Saturday, I do bedding.

Like I said: this isn't the end all, be all, to laundry.  But for us it works tremendously.  Nobody asks me to do laundry, nobody has stray clothes laying around, and I don't think about laundry any day but Monday.  Yippee for a system that works for us!

Happy laundry! 

Oh, and remember, having clothes to wash is a blessing.  Bodies to feel them are a gift from God.  It's a chore that gets old, for sure.  But when they get old and our laundry gets few, I'll miss these days (so I'm told).