by Tena Kight

Created on: July 07, 2010

Large families find that day to day home chores call for extra organization in order to keep the home running smoothly. The never ending task of laundry can seem overwhelming. Here are a few tips to help manage the laundry in a large family.

1. Everyone gets their own laundry basket.

You can cut down on the time it takes to get started if you don't have to hunt for clothes in the floors or under the beds. Give everyone their own hamper and insist they use them. Have one extra for odd pieces such as dish towels, hand towels, and cleaning cloths. You can encourage the smaller children to use their hampers by letting them decorate theirs with paint, ribbons or even a name tag. This saves time on the gathering part of the laundry process, and it teaches responsibility at the same time.

2. Color or style code when it's possible.

Look-alike items such as socks and tee-shirts can be coded to help with the confusion when folding and redistributing the laundry. For example, crew length all white socks for one, crew with grey bottoms for someone and all over grey for another would just make folding and sorting socks much faster. To make this a more unique process for the children let them mark their socks with a colored laundry marker on the bottom. If any two family members wear the same size then coding can be done with any clothing item. Laundry coding will make doing the laundry easier and save time.

3. Make a laundry routine.

Large families usually have a busy lifestyle. The hours in the day aren't going to increase so a routine will help make the most of what time is available. For instance, put a load of towels in the washer first thing every morning. While the breakfast is being cooked and the hair is getting combed the washer can be chugging along too. The same applies to the dryer. It doesn't take but a few minutes to transfer the towels from the washer to the dryer and then carry on with your morning. If you don't have a full day to spend on laundry, then squeezing it in while multi-tasking is a great option. Make it routine for the first person that arrives home in the evenings to be responsible for folding the towels from that morning and starting another load. You have already knocked out two loads a day with this simple routine. Another idea is to assign laundry days. Mondays might be jeans day and Tuesdays all whites. This helps make sure the laundry isn't setting in the hampers for long periods of time and allows you to schedule the more time consuming

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