Monday, January 19, 2015

Useful Laundry Hacks

Folding laundry today: how in the WORLD does one family generate so many dirty clothes??  They must be multiplying like rabbits in the hamper when nobody's looking. Did make me think about a few tricks I figured out long ago to make the process easier for myself, anyway.  I'll share: maybe they'll help somebody else too!

1) Boy underwear: white for Thing One, colored/patterned for Thing Two.  No more trying to guess which pair belongs to which boy, remember which superhero is on whose undies or read faded tiny numbers on tags.

2) Boy socks: ankle-length for Thing One, calf-length for Thing Two.  (Bonus hint: previous strategy was to buy a bunch of all one kind of sock and just divide them evenly between the boys every time I did wash.)

3) Which clothes belong to which boy now?  Sizes don't always help--they vary by manufacturer.  And once something gets handed down?  Hard to remember whose it is now, especially in the case of e.g. soccer shorts or athletic t-shirts, which can eventually get passed down to little sister too.  The solution?  Dots of permanent marker in the tag.  One dot for the eldest; when little brother gets it, add a second dot; if little sister eventually wears it too, add a third dot.  Easy peasy.  

4) If an item of clothing does not go in the dryer, its owner is responsible for putting it in a delicates bag before it goes in the hamper.  That's the signal to me to line-dry it, since I refuse to read the tag of every item that goes in the wash: my life is too short for that.  If the owner forgets?  The item gets dried: too bad.

Readers: any more to add?  All sanity-saving tips appreciated!








3 comments:

  1. I am impressed with how agreeable your children are and that you get no flak about white/patterned undies.

    Not long until they can do their own!

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  2. They are blessedly agreeable. They don't appear to care about anything other than actually having clean undies and socks in their drawers and listening to me gripe about laundry as little as possible. ;) If the two boys weren't similar in size it wouldn't have been an issue, but they are.

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  3. Oh, I don't know - my godsons are five years apart and very different sizes, yet I still couldn't tell the difference between theirs and their very large father's clothes quite often. I think you're very smart to have systems in place to avoid frustrations.

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