Mountains of Laundry

Does your laundry pile ever get like this? 

Five kids makes for huge piles of laundry. Lately I've been switching loads but not folding it until I have a huge mountain to deal with. It took me an hour to fold seven loads.

There's got to be a better way. We moved in July and I've been trying to get some routines down at our new house. At our first house I let mountains of laundry pile up in our dreary dark basement. I would haul it all upstairs and spend the afternoon folding and putting it away. And on really bad weeks I didn't do any at all and my sweet hubby did it out of frustration. After a few years of that I started switching atleast one load a day and folding the laundry as it was done. Much better system. Then we moved to Big Lake where I had a mudroom with the laundry and shoes and coats and powder room all coming together. I had to get creative. It was a small space but I made do.

Having the laundry on the main level made it easy to keep up on. Who wants guests walking thru your piled up laundryroom to get to the powder room? Not me. I kept up on my laundry doing 1-2 loads per day and folding it straight out of the dryer.

And this is my new laundry room. It's super tiny. Josh and my dad painted it. Yay! There's something about paint and making a room feel fresh and new. We installed a shelf above the washer/dryer so things won't fall behind and two long shelves that go from wall to wall. Can you say STORAGE!? Yay! What every Mom wants--a place for everything and everything in its place.

Each basket is labeled: stain fighters, softeners, socks, mending, clothes pins, rags, chair foot pads, 3m hooks, lightbulbs and vacuum bags. Whew! That's a lot of baskets but it's organized, just the way I like it.

My beautiful and brilliant mom came up with this amazing idea. Move the lockers and shoes to the garage and use the closet for sorting and all the folded clothes. The top shelf has a basket of beach towels. (We're lake people so I keep them close to the door.) Also on top is a large basket for Josh and my clean clothes. Then on the table and on the hooks above are five small rounds, one for each kid. Below the table are four sorting hampers: darks, lights, brights and linens. 

As you can see the kids' baskets are heaping full. The intent was for the kids to check their basket a couple times a week and put their laundry away when the basket was getting full. But I neglected the folding. Had a mountain. Folded it all at once. And now their baskets are overflowing. Yikes. This is real life people. 

I want to get back to my routine of folding right out of the dryer. It takes about seven minutes to fold a load and about an hour to fold seven loads. Seven minutes sounds much better! It's not so overwhelming. Back to the routine!

Here's the lockers in the garage. Yikes! More on that later.

What's your laundry routine? Do you feel buried by mountains of laundry or do you keep on top of it?