So! [brisk clap] On to more laundry questions.
4. Should we put laundry bins in the laundry room and adopt some elaborate (and clearly labeled, NATCH) system for pre-sorting? Or should we concede right now that the children will never follow the system - and we'll get lazy ourselves after about two weeks - and just put laundry bins in everyone's bedroom and sort when it's time to wash?
5. Do you wash gray stuff with lights or darks? This is killing me, Internet. I NEVER KNOW WHERE IT SHOULD GO.
6. How often do you do laundry? As needed? Once a day? Every Thursday? We're still adapting to having convenient laundry facilities and have kept to our old every-couple-of-weeks laundry schedule. It is interrupted only by 1) my mother's visits, when she does at least a load of laundry a day, because she loves to do laundry, which [shrug] what can you do? Or 2) the occasional catastrophic shit requiring immediate laundry intervention. It's awfully nice to have immediate and sole access to a washing machine for those little events, by the way.
7. Relatedly, when can we insist the children do their own laundry?
8. Can we make them do ours?
9. What should I do with all my quarters? I still have a HOARD ALL QUARTERS habit that I can't quite break (see Adjusting to Convenient Laundry Facilities, Failure to above). The change compartment in my car – the emergency go-to stash for quarters lo these many years – is so full it falls open when I hit a bump.
10. Anybody want to come to my house for a rousing game of Quarters or Speed Quarters or Chandeliers? No need to bring coins.
10 comments:
Growing up in a house with convenient laundry facilities, we had one laundry hamper for the whole family in the bathroom, and when it got full or someone needed something that was dirty, you carried everything down in a basket and sorted at the laundry machine.
Now that I live in an apartment with laundry facilities in the basement, we each have a hamper or laundry basket in our closets, and once a week I sort into light, medium, dark and then haul it all down to the basement for a productive 1 3/4 hours of laundry washing and drying.
I think your kids are more likely to toss their clothes into a basket in their own room than to take them to a central sorting facility. So I'd start with that approach.
Ain't laundry fun?
- Work Sarah
4. The latter.
5. Gray goes with darks. That way, if you add bleach w/ your whites, you won't mar the grays.
6. Weekends. ALLLLLLL weekend. Bah.
7. Seriously, when?
8. Get back to me on this one too.
9. Having flashbacks to college games of quarters with red plastic cups and keg beer.
It took me about six months to stop hoarding quarters, but since you did it for longer and had more laundry than I did at the time, I'd give yourself a year.
Your mom's crazy laundry/cleaning habits overwhelm me.
Give the kids their own basket. They can do laundry when they are old enough to reach buttons. Greys go with the "lights" -- that's probably what you're third bin is all about.
Grays go with the mediums, duh.
We have a gigantic HE washer called 'canyon capacity' so we can get by with 4 loads of wash for the adults every-other weekend (need to take it down 2 flights, so it doesn't happen until we run out of things). Breakdown is whites, darks, jeans, and mediums (with the mediums including grays, mid-blues, lavenders, khakis, etc, and lighter prints).
We started our son sorting his own laundry at age 6, but he still won't make sure his socks are turned right-side out. He does the two-bin system with lights and darks when we can spare a second basket in his room, but usually he just has one basket in there to collect everything.
And I'd always be up for a game of quarters.
4.Basket in each closet, you can try the sort your laundry into the bins when you bring it to be washed – but it won’t work for long, they’ll just dump everything in the middle bin.
5.Lights, darks and mediums – just like somebody before me. That’s why three bins.
6.I hate spending a long time working on laundry – so I have a system. Morning throw a load in the washer before I leave, when I get home I toss it into the dryer, and right before I go to bed I fold – and put away what I can (most of the people in my house are usually sleeping – way before me). If I’m falling behind I can squeeze two or three loads in – Before bed toss a load into the washer, morning wash load to dryer, new wash load in. Home - dry load to basket, washer load to dryer, and new load into washer. Fold/put away two loads before bed and the last load can go into the dryer, possible another load into the washer. ***and seriously I just spent how much time, thinking about and typing this up?!!?!
7.When they can reach the buttons, and they won’t try to put each other in – another very good reason to go with front load.
8.Maybe if you pay them.
9.See #8
10.Sure, btw why is quarters always played with red plastic cups??? Flashback.
4. if you try the first option you know it won't work, so just go with the latter.
5. darks. unless it's very light grey. Although I do a load of mediums and they tend to fall into this load.
6. as soon as there's a full load.
7. by 12. or 13.
8. yes!
9. take them to the bank and swap them for notes
10. You have no coins to play - you just took them to the bank and swapped them for notes.
This game is fairly confusing since I am reading your posts chronologically backwads. But...
4. Should we put laundry bins in the laundry room and adopt some elaborate (and clearly labeled, NATCH) system for pre-sorting? Or should we concede right now that the children will never follow the system - and we'll get lazy ourselves after about two weeks - and just put laundry bins in everyone's bedroom and sort when it's time to wash?
5. Depends on how light or dark it is. Charcoal goes with darks. Old sweatpants that I've washed 80 times go with lights.
6. When I get to it.
7. As soon as I trust them with the soap they are doing laundry for the whole family.
8. See #7
9. Quarters... self explanatory.
10. Yes. See #9
I have all sorts of laundry knowledge for you ... perhaps to be delivered in person? Are y'all around at any point on Saturday? I have to come over in your direction, but my schedule is flexible.
unless your goal is to make your mother believe that you have adopted her sort-y ways, don't bother to set something up in the laundry room. As you've already acknowledged, you are just going to let it slide after a few weeks. Do whatever will be easiest for people to use and for the laundry-doers to deal with.
Grey goes with whatever load needs to be filled up.
just don't have white clothes. Then you only have to worry about lights and darks - and you don't really have to worry about those.
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