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Hello. I read your old post about organization being a journey and not a destination. It was recycled on Life..Your Way this week. Your comments about laundry made me tired. I wanted to share with you my laundry principles that have truly simplified my life. Pick one day a week for laundry and make it your religion to stick to it. You do laundry on that day and that day only. The only time I break this rule is when someone is sick or when a giant mess is made. Otherwise the laundry baskets just get filled up until laundry day (wet dirty things get hung up in a separate area until dry and then tossed in the dirty basket so things don’t mold and stink). The beauty in this is that you only have to do laundry once a week. When your child turns about 6 years old, let them fold their own laundry. You sort and wash it and hand it to them in a pile. They are old enough to fold it up and put it away. It won’t be perfect and you will have to accept that. It gets better with time. When my kids turned 11 or 12, depending on the child’s maturity level, they started doing their own laundry from start to finish. In order to avoid wasting water and energy, they wash all the laundry from everyone who lives in their room (so theirs and one other sibling). This is when we get more than one laundry day. I do mine and my toddlers’ and my husband’s laundry on Tuesday, teenager #1 does laundry on Wednesday (and Wed only), and teenager #2 does laundry on Thursday. Monday is for a younger child to wash all the household towels and fold them and put them away. We start them on towels, which are hard to mess up. This way they learn to use the machines and soap etc. without ruining anything important. The problem I have with doing a little bit of laundry every day is that you end up doing more laundry than if you do it once a week–and you’re never done. The reason is because you will find dirty stuff if your loads aren’t big enough. And unless you have a naked day here and there, there is always dirty laundry. I can barely take my basket to the laundry room to sort and return it to my closet without something dirty having beat it back there. You will always feel behind and overwhelmed if you don’t pick a day. I hope this helps you. Sincerely,
Lesli Dustin

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