by Carla Raley

Created on: July 28, 2009

Doing laundry for a large family can be a daunting task. Piles of dirty laundry in the bathroom, the bedrooms, and on the laundry room floor can be disheartening. Coming to the bottom of a laundry basket to find your favorite shirt for your baby has mildewed because the spill didn't get washed off quick enough, or that the dishcloths are moldy because they have sat too long is depressing and enough to make you feel like a failure. But as a mother of 10 children, I have found a few ways to conquer the laundry mountain in my household.

Go to the Dollar Store and buy a large supply of laundry baskets. You can almost not have enough of these, as they are handy for many things other than laundry. When you are not using them, they can be stacked inside each other, and pushed in a corner of your laundry room or sat on top of the dryer. Give each child a basket for the closet of their room, and insist they put their dirty clothes in there. One way to enforce this rule for older children is to refuse to retrieve and wash any clothes that are not placed in this basket. In other words, on the day you are going to wash their clothes, take out of their rooms only what is in this basket. Or better yet, don't retrieve clothes from their rooms at all, and make them personally bring their clothes to the laundry room. A couple of times of having to wear the same dirty jeans several days in a row is usually all it takes to convince them to comply.

Keep another one of these baskets in the bathroom, and empty it daily. Another basket at the top of the stairs is a good idea, and can be used not only for dirty clothes, but for anything else that needs to be taken downstairs. Be sure and empty the basket every day or so. If you have enough of those Dollar Store baskets, when you pick up one basketful of dirty clothes, replace it right away with an empty basket.

Once the baskets of dirty clothes are in the laundry room, you can either teach your children to sort clothes, or do it yourelf as quickly as possible. Have three clothes hampers in the laundry room, one for dark colors, one for light colors, and one for towels and washcloths. Spray any stains with spot remover as you sort. This will help cut down on stains and mildew.

Now that you have all the dirty clothes in the laundry room on a regular basis, don't wait to wash them. At the very least, begin a routine of starting a load of wash every morning, when you first wake up and begin to feed your

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