Works for Me Wednesday

Works for me Wednesday brought to you by laundry!  Laundry is an ever changing and morphing process at the House of Smooches.  We find a good “system” that works for a while and then bam, we add a new kid, move to a new house or just forget the system until we are up to our nose in dirty laundry!  And so on the hunt I go for a new and improved system.  But you know, that’s ok, because laundry can get pretty boring if it’s always done the same way over and over year after year, right?!!?!?

While we lived at the Little House this summer, I did laundry practically every day…..not sure why, perhaps it was because about half of us were still living out of plastic totes and it was easier to wash and dry the clothes than go digging around in the totes to find clean stuff.  Anyway, when we moved back to the Big House I needed a new system.

I am working very hard to teach my boys responsibility.  I’ve also come to the conclusion that boys are not naturally “helpers” and that’s ok because really they were not created to be a helpmate, but at this stage in the learning process (ages 5, 8, and 12) I want to help them become a servant leader.  And let’s just face it, learning to do household chores is something EVERYONE needs to know!!  And so I decided my younger boys needed to learn to do the laundry.  And let’s just be honest…..I’m sick and tired of doing laundry, hehe

In order to make my laundry room as “kid friendly” as possible I made a lot of changes:

1.  We do laundry on Mondays and Thursdays.  Seven people accumulate WAY too much laundry to keep striving for the one-laundry-day-per-week ideal.
2. Carlos sorts dirty clothes on Mondays and Jeremiah gets Thursdays.
3. I’m still too much of a laundry control freak and I just can’t give up the washing part.  So I still load the washing machine.
4. But the biggest change …..a clean laundry basket for each bedroom.  When we rearranged the basement schoolroom the train table didn’t fit, so we moved it up to the laundry room.  It’s not the most attractive, but hey it’s the laundry room and it works.  Natalie and Jadyn get the purple basket, Jeremiah and Ben get a white one and Carlos gets the last white basket.  The baskets make sorting clean clothes SO much easier.
5. All four of my big kids get to sort the clean clothes into their correct basket and then each of them fold and put away their own clean clothes twice a week.  Do they fold and put away the clothes perfectly…..huh, NO.  But, hey who looks into their dresser drawers anyway?!?
6. Natalie, Ben and Jeremiah each get a turn at folding washing clothes and towels.

And that’s what works for us……for now……..for laundry!