simplifying laundry
I talk about laundry HERE, in this episode of Make Joy Normal.
So, you have your centralized laundry. How does it work? How does it FIT? Laundry, like everything else in our homes is a stuff problem. A too much problem. It's sobering to go on a family holiday with nine people. Even three days away...three shirts per person (27 shirts) maybe two pairs of pants (perhaps 12 or 14 pairs), a couple of dresses for the girls (eight dresses, maybe) socks and underwear three a piece for three days...another whopping 81 small articles of clothing. And that's just the very basics! For three days.
How much more do they actually own?
When I first started centralized laundry, I was overwhelmed by how many articles of clothing we owned. And yet, my children wore the same two or three dresses, shirts or pairs of pants whenever they were clean. So I tried an experiment of having six shirts per child, and two or three pairs of pants. Six or eight pairs of socks and underwear. One pair of church pants and a couple of nice shirts for church wear for the boys and my girls, who primarily wore dresses, were allowed to pick five or six of their favourites, a few for every day, and two of their favourites to wear to church.
All the clothes are stored in the same room. They get their clothes the night before or in the morning and get dressed in the laundry room, in their bedroom or in one of our bathrooms. I keep a little laundry basket in the bathrooms or just outside the door. There is a laundry basket upstairs near the bedrooms and downstairs in the laundry room. Sometimes my kids have asked if they can keep their clothes in their room. I've said yes, you are welcome to do that, but I'll put it on your shelf in the laundry room. You can collect it there. That exercise usually lasts a few weeks. It's just easier to get it all, store it all, sort it all, clean it all in ONE place.
Besides sheer efficiency, another major benefit of laundry all in one place is that when you see all your clothes in one place, you become very aware of all that you own.
Some real life photos:
