Clever laundry tips for large families

Having a large families is a blessing but doing the laundry may be the biggest nightmare if you don’t have the right tactic. Laundry days usually are not associated with being the most entertaining days of the week but with some helpful advice and tips you can make them less of a burden. Read on and check these tips out!

Get rid of your giant laundry basket and use few smaller ones instead – when you have a large family having one big basket for the laundry just doesn’t work. Try having a laundry basket in every room and when the laundry is done simply put the load of each family member in their “clean” laundry basket – by assigning such a basket for every family member they can put away their own laundry. This will teach your children to take care of their own load and folding and putting away their clothes won’t be as reluctantly accepted as you may suppose. If your younger ones need motivation to do this task use a rewarding system. For example, if they enjoy playing video games, let them play extra 30 minutes when they have accomplished the assigned chore. The same goes for assigning them to help you in other tasks in the domestic cleaning – having large families is a blessing as there are so many pair of hands to help!

How to deal with the socks issue? The more members of the family the more socks would be in the laundry waiting to be sorted and folded. In order to make things much more easier you can have a mesh lingerie bag to separate each person`s socks. You will save the hassle when you have to sort all the socks when the laundry is done and everyone will be able to fold their own socks easily. Another great idea is to buy each child a different brand or one type of socks only. It will make sorting less difficult and time consuming.

Why don’t you start doing one person’s laundry in a different day? Instead of doing mixed laundries everyday assign a day for each member of your family. By doing this everyone would know which day they will have to put away their laundry and will know that they should leave the dirty clothes the night before. You can still do general laundries in the weekends, for instance. You will notice how less tiring it would be once everyone accepts this as a routine on daily basis. Even for your little ones it will be sort of an excitement because they will see this as an “adult’s responsibility” and will feel more like grown-ups – they will know they have a duty on a particular day to take care of their clothes.

We already mentioned the socks issue but it is worth it to add this laundry hack. Having a large family means having a lot of single socks wandering around without their mate. A lot of socks would show up after few days because they were hiding under the bed or in the crevices of the dryer. However, until they “come” back, all the single socks should have a dedicated place to inhabit. A good idea is to have a bin for this purpose – toss every sock that has no mate. Eventually all socks would find their partners. Because life is unfair, some socks` mates won’t show up. End of tenancy cleaners recommend reusing them as dusters – as they are soft and with convenient size they can be used around the house for different cleaning purposes.

Doing a lot of laundries means spending a lot of money on laundry detergents. If you want to save some pounds and be more eco-friendly try this homemade natural liquid laundry detergent – invest your money in something more entertaining. The recipe I recommend is simple – you will need only 3 ingredients plus a large container to store your detergent. You will need 1 cup Castile soap (liquid), 1 cup baking soda and about 30 drops of your favourite essential oil. Pour everything in the container and mix the ingredients. After that add lukewarm water to dissolve the baking soda and you are ready – you have all natural freshly-scented detergent you can use for a long time!

If you don’t like the idea of assigning everyone with an individual task but you want to involve the whole family in the process, fold the clothes together! Bring your laundry to the living room and watch a movie or talk about your day while folding the clothes. When you work as a team, things are done faster and more efficient – what’s better than spending extra time together?

Using a dry-erase marker to write notes on the washer – sometimes you just don’t want this white sweater washed together with the colour shirts so you should remind your family somehow. Leave some notes using the marker – it’s much easier than looking for a paper and pen. If you don’t want your jeans in the dryer – write it down! It`s a way to let everyone know when it’s time to switch loads or check a particular pair of pants for lingering stains. You will see how convenient is to use this method plus you can always leave cute love notes, too. How adorable is that?