Laundry: to dread or not to dread?

The burning question.

Why did I let this happen…..again?

I spared you in this photo. There was so much more laundry. But, I was a little too embarrassed at the moment to reveal it all.

You see, I have a system. Apparently, it’s either not working or not being used.

Can you guess why so much laundry in the Vance household?

Maybe you guessed it or maybe you didn’t but the answer is (drum roll please) I stopped following the system.

I know it’s not broken. Maybe there needs to be a few tweaks here and there. But IT WORKS when it’s followed.

Want to know my system?

Here goes…

It’s simple really. We have a family laundry schedule. Yep! Each family member has an assigned day of the week to do THEIR OWN LAUNDRY. This means Mama only does laundry on her day and on linen day (I do have to admit that the hubs suckers me into washing his laundry and I’m okay with it).

The kiddos are responsible for washing, drying, folding and putting away their own laundry. If they need to swap a day, they can. But it is their responsibility for working that part out.

Now, I know you are thinking, “there’s no way this would work for us.” And, maybe you’re right. My systems don’t work for everyone. They are just suggestions to get you started with a system and make it your own so that you eliminate the piles for YOU too.

I do have some rules:

1. No laundry on the weekend. Who wants to spend their weekends doing laundry? The kids can but not me.

2. Put the clothes away in your bedroom. I don’t care what drawer you put them in but they can’t be on the floor, on the dresser or on your bed. (My son slept with a pile of clean laundry on his bed for a WEEK and that would have been longer had I not asked him about it.)

3. Communicate. “Hey mama. I started a load of laundry but have practice. Could you put them in the dryer for me?”

Can you tell we are working on responsibility in the Vance house?

We all do it, have done or will do it. Leave a load of laundry in the washer for two days. Realize it. Run it back through the wash. Forget AGAIN. Run it back through the wash AGAIN. Put in dryer. Get out of dryer and throw on couch to fold later. Never gets folded. Stays on couch for 2 days. Finally take the pile to the bedroom where it stays another day waiting to be folded. Oh yeah, you know what I’m talking about. We’ve all done it.

Create yourself a system!

Create a system that works for you and recognize when it’s broken or when you aren’t using it.

Back Story: Here’s why I had piles of laundry and created a system.

1. I was doing it all on my own. I wasn’t asking for help.

2. A kiddo would ask me why a certain pair of pants wasn’t clean (a pair that they had worn the day before). Those questions started making me get a little angry and turning into a grizzly bear.

3. Because I was the only one doing laundry (and all the other mom tasks) I was doing laundry on the weekend. I didn’t want to spend my weekends doing that and had had enough of it.

4. I’m a systems person. I like creating them, implementing them and tweaking them to make them work better.

At first, I created the schedule where each family member had a day of the week and that’s all the laundry that was done that day. Could have been 1 load or 3 loads. They were washed, dried, folded and put away same day. It is easy and manageable. Then the next day was someone new. So on and so on. Then a light bulb went off one day when I got that same question of where those pants were and I decided the kids were going to start learning a new responsibility and doing their own laundry.

We still follow the same schedule but it’s the kiddo doing the washing/drying/folding/putting away on their day instead of Mama.

Confession: some weeks are better than others (for all of us). I fail at pushing the system sometimes. We all fail at completing our laundry task for our day. But we recognize it. We make changes. We move forward.

For those of you wondering, the extra large pile has diminished and we are starting fresh this week with our schedule.

Question for you: do you dread or not dread laundry? Do you have a laundry story you’d like to share. Share it with me.