Saturday, April 4, 2009

Organizing the closets and doing the laundry

My side of the walk in closet. We haven't had our shoe organizers built yet so my 100+ pairs of shoes (I know, I know...no hate mail, please) are in very large tubs, sorted according to season.
Corey's side of the closet, which is astonishingly, at the present time clean and organized. On shelves above the clothing we have tubs of bedding, sorted according to size and set for when all the out in-laws visit.

In one of the spare rooms is a walk-in closet. In here, each kid has their own "Memory Box" which contains mementos, baby clothes, yearbooks, etc...


Also in the walk-in closet are all the spare bigger boys shirts, sweatshirts, sweaters and suits, hung up according to shirt type and size.



The rest of the spare clothes and shoes are sorted by size and boy/girl. All tubs are labeled for easy identification.


Michael and Timothy's closet.



Joshua and Joseph's closet.


Matthew and Levi's closet. Their spare clothes/shoes for the upcoming season are in labeled tubs in their closet.


Hannah's shoes and flower hair clips.



Elizabeth's shoes, belts and purses are sorted into laundry baskets.


The back wall of Elizabeth's and Hannah's walk in closet.


Lillian's bow organizers.


Lillian's closet. Clothes and shoes in the upcoming sizes are kept in here in labeled tubs.



The laundry sorter in the laundry room. Each week a different child is assigned the laundry chore. That person gets the dirty laundry from the downstairs bathroom, brings it upstairs to the laundry room and sorts it. In each bedroom the kids have a small laundry basket for their dirty clothes. The occupants of each room take turns bringing the dirty laundry into the laundry room, sorting it and hanging up extra hangers. I used to have a full-sized hamper in each room but the kids would wait till it was full before unloading it. I would go from having no laundry to a small mountain of laundry overnight. Not fun.




My laundry room.

We have a third set of machines in the garage that I use for really dirty stuff (like camping or mud football clothes) but I only use those machines about once a week.

Each person has their own basket where I put their folded, clean clothes. When that basket becomes full, I will add "Put clothes away" to their daily chore list.

I get asked often about how I keep up with the laundry. I had one of my aunts here at the house and we were showing her around. She asked "Where are all the piles?" I laughed, thinking that she meant piles of bodies, but turns out she was wondering why I didn't have piles and piles of laundry.

I have a system that works. At least it works for us. I have extra large machines and I run them all the time. I have spent so much time with them that they are now considered members of the family. Combined they do over 25 loads a week.

That's my life...

4 comments:

rachel said...

I don't know how you do it!! (even though you just explained it... lol)

Jut and Char said...

I hope you never have to move. I would hate to pack the hangers, let alone all the clothes. :)
Char

April29 said...

Wow, I have a hard enough time with 2 kids and a husband...lol

Margaret said...

Wow my sis in law is Rachel above. She was telling me about your blog. That is quite the sorting system for laundry. If the kids sort the launder themselves, do they check all the pockets for glue, chapstick, candy, etc. That is my fear in them sorting it.

Also, how do you fold ALL of that? My kids fold their own stuff and towels (beach, bath, kitchen). I only fold my husband and my clothes. Anyway, cool ideas. Thanks for sharing.

I haven't done any memory boxes. That is a good idea too.