Laundry Routine

I’ve tried just about every laundry schedule or routine in the book.  Our needs are ever changing when it comes to doing laundry.   So, in another effort to do away with schedules in favor of routines, I am implementing a new laundry routine. 

Now that the children are a little older, I think it is time to start training them to do their own laundry.  D is already capable, and K just needs a bit more training before I set her off on her own.  J is just 8 and a boy.  I make excuses for him, but honestly the boy is quite capable of learning to use these machines.  He could probably repair them in a pinch. The sorting on the other hand…well he will need supervision for a long time. Let’s just leave it at that.

I have decided to implement a by room system for this season.  We have 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, and kitchen.  Kitchen rags need to be done more than once a week, so that will get worked into our routine every other day or so.   I’m thinking it will look something like this:

Day	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Sat/Sun
Room	Bath/ Kitchen/ Whites	Master Bed	D’s Bed/ Kitchen/ Whites	K’s Bed	J’s Bed/ Kitchen/ Whites	Sheets

We don’t wash our sheets every week.  I know, some people are cringing, but we just don’t.  About every other week is what I would like to maintain. I’m not trying to make any huge leaps in bounds here in establishing new routines, just trying to be more consistent in what we tend to already do. I will likely rotate rooms each week.  Week 1 and 3 will be Master and K; week 2 and 4 will be D and J. That would be one large bed and one small bed each week.

I tend to get 2 loads done a day, but not as regularly as I would like.  I feel like if we make it each person’s responsibility to wash their own clothes, with the exception of my husband, people may be a little more motivated to help.  A week's worth of clothes for one person should take about 2 loads. I think that is pretty reasonable amount of laundry once a week for a kid to do.  I’ll do the rest for the time being, but part of the girls training will be to do the household laundry eventually too.  

Like with kitchen rags, I will need to do whites a little more often. Don’t know if 3 times a week will be needed; we have a lot of those types of things, but we also have the occasional accident that needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later.  

The other part of the laundry routine is deciding when this will happen during the day.  I think the best plan is to hit it in the morning before school, at lunchtime, and before bed, but we can be flexible with that because this is a routine, not a schedule.   Once laundry line season starts, it might need to look a little different. To get the clothes dried before the sun goes behind the trees you have to get washing done before 10am.

Mondays will be hard because we are in co-op all day.  That is why I have only put towels on Monday.  I think I can get Hubs to switch them at lunch time for me if I am sweet about it and I don't use the clothes line for towels.  

One of my pitfalls is that I have these great plans and then I don’t communicate them, but once.  I have a fantasy that I should only have to tell someone to do things once.  

Since I don't have a chore chart picked yet I'm not completely sure how this will be communicated, but for now I'll just add it to their lesson plan for the day under Keepers of the Faith. 


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UPDATE 12/15/15

This routine worked for a little while.  Eventually, I handed off all laundry chores to D, now 16.  Her system is to do a couple loads a day if she remembers or is reminded.  This has slowed things down and increased the pile.  Also, she is not that motivated to bring clean clothes upstairs very often.  Maybe more training is in order.

I'm going to rethink things while we are on Christmas break and see if we can't get back to a steady system.