Extreme Laundry, Part 2

Before I describe our long-standing laundry system, let me tell the tale of life before it.  When my 4th child was born we also had a 1yo, 2yo and 3yo, and someone came to help after the birth. This person worked all day, washing, drying, folding and putting away clothes, and they finished the job with relief and satisfaction.  I didn't have the heart to tell them there was a playpen full of dirty clothes in the closet.  The quantity just multiplied from there.  I remember huge piles of dirty clothes and a couch full of clean unfolded laundry which got wrinkled and dirty from children sitting on it.  True story, folks.

Then we moved from a spacious house to an extremely small one.  I knew I had to get control of the laundry situation.  So I bought lots of laundry baskets and put one (or two, depending on number of occupants) in each bedroom.  The laundry room closet also had one or two for household laundry such as kitchen towels and blankets.  Laundry baskets went into closets and dirty clothes went into baskets if I was lucky.  This cut way down on sorting little almost-the-same-size underwear and socks.  At the time I washed the whole basket together--whites, colored--with few ill effects.  Children who were old enough brought and put away their own basket.

This system has remained virtually unchanged for many years now, with the exception of refinements like specific laundry days for children and different-colored towels for each child.   

The reason this system works is that laundry does not STAY on the couch--it gets folded and put away as we go, or at least within a few hours.