Laundry Hacks

I've made 2 small but meaningful changes to the laundry "room" in the past few weeks that I wanted to share.

Yes ... this is about the extent of my domestic house-wife joy at the moment. In addition to the typical daily holiday shopping, cooking, cleaning, and decorating, pesky little things like clean clothes are still a priority around here.

Now, it turns out, I am honestly the only one in the house who knows what "sort the laundry" means. Even if I purposely leave an article of each colored clothes in the 3-part hamper as an indicator, I'm still the only one who sees this.

I thought about printing pictures of clothes and laminating them and affixing them somehow to the hamper. I thought about making a sign to hand over the 3-part hamper. I even cut out pictures from the Sunday sales flyers to make a collage for each compartment. 

But then, as I was holding a handful of multicolored sharpies, brilliance struck. And this is what came of it.

We now have clearly marked darks, lights, and whites. By scribbling/coloring the white tubing with the colors associated with each compartment, I was able to indicate to everyone from the 42 year old to the 4 year old which articles of clothing go into which compartment. The only time they still get confused is with towels and colored undies. I bleach all towels and undies, regardless of color.

The next wave of brilliance came with a $2.00 price tag. With a pack of wooden clothespins from the dollar store and a tube of super glue from the dollar store, I was able to make this.

Yes, we really do have this many unmatched socks. 8 feet in the family and this many missing socks. I glued some of the clothes pins farther apart than others so I could hang the longer socks from those without hiding any under/behind them. And by using super glue, it beautifully blessed my need for immediate gratification. 

Do these simple changes mean the laundry will forever be clean, folded and put away. Nope. Not even close. But it does mean that I will have less fits when I go to DO the laundry because by planning ahead, putting operating procedures in place, laying out the expectations clearly and simply, there should be a smooth operation from here on out.

Right? I mean running a house should be easier than running a for-profit company, right? You set rules, you lead by example, and everyone does what there supposed to do.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Yeah ... RIGHT!