dirty laundry

[iNTeNSeBLue98]

Literally.

How do you manage dirty laundry in your home? I need a new solution.

We have a separate laundry/mud room. I don't have a lot of space and like to keep the whites, colors and DH work clothes separated in multiple hampers.

I have two small RTA hampers (a little more than a load of laundry fits in each) and they are ready for retirement. These hampers are used after showering or when baskets of clothes brought from the bedroom are more than enough for a load of washing.

Laundry baskets are in the bedrooms, and they are exposed. When the clean clothes get put away the baskets are filled again with dirty clothes taken off in the bedroom, but I don't have a place to put them out of sight until wash day. I really wish they didn't have to be left in the "middle" of the room.

I think I want inexpensive replacements for the two hampers. I like having the hampers in the mud room, but the current (and future) usage/confirguration of the space is leading me toward not bothering to replace the hampers or add some to the bedrooms instead, using the baskets soley for transporting clothes to the laundry area and back.

What system/storage do you use?

 

[DVC~OKW~96]

We use a triple sectioned canvas "bag" with handles. Each section is marked. One is "colors" one is "darks" one is "whites." Along with that we use a separate mesh "bag."

We have a separate (very small) laundry room, so the laundry collection bags are kept in our small walk in closet and carried to the laundry room when we do laundry.

We don't have a particular day for doing it, we just do it when needed.

For our guests we just have them put their laundry (mostly used towels) on top of the washer and we take care of it...

 

[Disney Doll]

My laundry area is in my basement and I LOVE the fact that I can really spread out!!!!

I have a hamper in our upstairs bedroom and one in the downstairs bathroom. The upstairs bedroom hamper collects mostly DH's & My clothes & the towels from the upstairs bathroom...any of the washables that are produced on the nd level. The downstairs bathroom hamper collects mostly bathroom towels and kitchen-related linens (dish towels, cloth napkins, tablecloths etc.)...any of the washables that are produced on the main level.

I have a couple of those net pop-up hampers that I use to carry the stuff from the main or 2nd floor of my house down to the basement...they're light and the handles make it fairly easy to transport.

In my laundry area I have a basket for whites, a basket for colors, a basket for darks, a basket for hand washables and a basket for sweaters. I don't have a particular laundry "day"...I do it as needed.

 

[puffkin]

We have a laundry closet...there is no room to keep any laundry in there. We have a hamper in each bedroom closet for dirty clothes. In our 3rd bedroom (currently office) we have one of those 3 sectioned sorters. I separate colors, greys/khakis, whites. I usually empty the hampers in to the sorters every other day or so.

I have a laundry schedule. It isn't really for getting the laundry done, it is more for getting the laundry put away. That is the key to an effective laundry system. Since we work FT, our laundry gets done at night. I dump the clean clothes on our bed so that we have to put away before going to sleep. This is my schedule:

Monday- colors
Tuesday- DS3's wash (I find it easier to do his wash seperately and put it all away at once...i don't really seperate his colors too much)
Wednesday- Sheets/towels- beds get stripped and remade and towels get swapped out
Thursday- greys/khakis
Weekend- whites and any extra loads that may need to be done

I usually do an extra load of colors on the weekends in the winter since the clothes are bigger/bulkier and take up more room.

 

[wdwfan16]

We keep 3 baskets (darks, lights, whites) in a walk-in closet. We tend to do laundry on the weekend. We have the large front loader, so it does not take long. We will throw in a single load if that basket is full.

 

[iNTeNSeBLue98]

Thanks for your replies so far.

Hmm. I had a three-bin fabric sorter, kept it by the washer/dryer at our last place. Poorly made and fell apart when it was moved around.

I wonder how efficient it would be to keep one in each bedroom? We do laundry as needed. DD washes her own, DH washes his and I pick up the slack, usually mixing whatever is leftover with my things.

 

[golfgal]

We have 2 four bin hampers on wheels in the laundry room. We have a 10' countertop in the laundry room and the bins go under that. Everyone has a laundry basket in their bedroom, they bring their clothes down as needed and sort into the bins. DH and I have our own walk in closest (one each) in our bedroom so our laundry basket goes in there, DD also has a walk in closet in her room and her laundry basket is in there--nevermind that all of her dirty clothes are on the floor of her room . The boys have baskets in their rooms tucked next to their dressers so you can't see them from the door.

The size of this laundry room was a HUGE selling point for this house

 

[Kit'smommy]

We have two laundry baskets in the linen closet in our master bath. Everyone showers here (including DS 5). One is for whites (including towels) and the other is for colors and darks. When they are full, I usually have enough for 2-3 loads of laundry. We wash as needed, but probably do 4-5 loads a week, including sheets that are taken off the bed and washed immediately (they don't sit in the baskets).

Clean clothing goes in the clean laundry bin that sits on top of the dryer and gets put away when the bin gets full or someone wants a specific item.

If something gets removed in a different room, it makes its way to the master bath bins.

I will never allow separate basket in DS's room. My mother used to do that with my brother and damp towels and other yucky things got tossed in there and left to sour constantly.

Dry cleaning and DH's shirts go in a bag in the master closet and it goes to the cleaners when it is full - usually every other week.

 

[englishteacha]

I feel your pain. I have my washer in my kitchen and my dryer in my bathroom. I keep 2 laundry hampers in the bathroom. One for items to wash in hot, one for items to wash in cold. My husband keeps a laundry basket upstairs for his laundry. When I put items in the hamper I notice what's in there and when it gets close to full I haul it into the kitchen and sort. I'm not very choosy-light colors, dark colors, and dress clothes/delicates separate from the other laundry. When my hubby's basket gets full, it magically appears downstairs. (Yes, I know, I'm a push-over. I wash his laundry. If I'm too busy though, he will do it himself. Or if he's out of clothes completely!) Any laundry I don't get to gets put back in the hamper and back in the bathroom.

I usually do a load every few days but now I'm on vacation and am enjoying the "luxury" of doing laundry whenever I want to!

I'd suggest either 3 of the "pop up" hampers or 3 of the Rubbermaid/Sterilite ones rather than a laundry sorter. No one I know has had any luck with the sorters staying together.

 

[daisyduck123]

Subbing to this thread.....my house has such MAJOR laundry issues that I am at my wit's end .

I'm looking for any & all good ideas/solutions.

 

[momrek06]

I have the folding laundry hampers. Similiar to the picture with the 3 attached. I have yellow/white/black. Yellow = colors, White = whites, Black = darks. So easy. Everyone just sorts their own clothes into the hampers.

 

[Wall-E1]

We don't practice segregation in our household. Colored and whites get tossed in the hamper and washed together. They then enjoy the dryer cycle together and afterwards can sit for 1 -2 days in the dryer while they go through the wrinkle cycle. At that point, they are removed and ready to wear.

Disclaimer - This household only contains males - me and my son. I have no doubt that if a woman were present, this would not occur. We would be put in our place and made to wash our clothing properly.

 

[Tinker'n'Fun]

I guess I am totally different than most people. I have a large hamper outside the bathroom. It is a rubbermaid I think. Both of the kids rooms are on either side of it, so it is very central. I don't like my kids or hubby seperating the clothes. DD, DS, and DH take turns bringing it downstairs for me and putting it in the laundry room. I seperate and do wash 5-6 days a week and have 3-4loads per day. I also fold and place into piles and each person is responsible for putting their clothes away. I am very particular in how the clothes get washed and folded and will not let anyone else do it. I guess I am a laundry hog.

 

[LuvOrlando]

As my kids grew I found the laundry room on the main floor to be depressing because I was always reminded of work to be done 24/7. My solution was to move the washer and dryer into the basement when it was finished and I am a billion times happier now. My contractor tried to talk me out of it... silly man. I had him cap off the gas & other lines where the laundry used to be, bought a nice bench with room for cubby baskets underneath from Target, put up coat hangers for backpacks and coats and now I have a nice little mud room for the kids school stuff. It is sooooooo much better than having their stuff all over the kitchen

Once the laundry room was moved to the bottom floor I bought about 6 of those tall tough plastic hampers that double as laundry baskets that I picked up at Walmart for about $8 each. I have always kept 2 baskets in our master bedroom where all dirty clothes and towels go while the others live in the basement until filled with clean clothes. When a basket is full it is dragged downstairs and a full basket of clean clothes comes up.

I do not sort dirty clothes before they come to the laundry room. Instead, I sort on my basement floor and wash about 2-3 loads a day. I do sort clean stuff before it leaves the laundry room, and have one hamper for clean towels and one for underclothes etc. so when they go upstairs they are easy to sort on my bed at night. When I am done with my piles during TV time before bed I call everyone in to put their stuff away, which they MUST do because I am right there. Ages ago my Grandpa George taught me to hang everything on a hanger as soon as its dry so this is what I do with all our outer clothing, including jeans. This cuts down on using an iron to an amazing degree and requires zero effort. When the shirts etc come upstairs on hangers I simply sort them out and hag them in each person's closet. I think it's a good thing because my kids never ever have piles to be put away so their rooms are always relatively neat. Oh, as for the hangers, I have a rack in in the basement that I hang the clothes on after they are hung up and I carry a little up every time I do a load.

A few years ago I experimented with one hamper in each of the 2 kids bedrooms for a bit but this failed miserably because I tended to forget to go looking for the extra work and the kids ended up without clean clothes. Since everything is all mixed in each load ensures that everyone gets one pair of jeans washed at once, or one set of shirts, underclothes etc... you get the picture. Since the clothes end up in the hamper layered by day they get cleaned and come back upstairs the same way, KWIM.

My system works for me

 

[sbell111]

We keep four hampers, plus a little bin for baby clothes, in the master bath's closet. They fit in there just fine and it makes sorting the day's clothes super simple.

 

[iNTeNSeBLue98]

Oh wow! I made a post, previewed it because I added pictures...and forgot to post it! Well, let's try again.

Okay, the hampers I had look like this. I got them on clearance for cheap (and they are cheaply made I soon learned). Everyone knew to throw colors in one and whites in the other. It worked well - until the pins holding the lids broke (hate seeing the dirty laundry) and now I've found that the leg is broken on one of them.

So at Walmart this afternoon I found a 2-compartment collapsible hamper that will go in our bedroom. It looks like this, but has a cover rather than a lid. It collapses for storage (when would that ever happen?) It was only $8, and I might go back for another.

I used to get the pop-up hampers at Dollar Tree, but they don't carry them anymore. (guess they can't sell them for $1 anymore). The worked really well for us. We used them hard, until the mesh would get holes, the wires would break through and the handles would break.

I wish I could fit a hamper in the bathroom, but there is simply not enough room. Maybe once the hall closet is finished I can put one in there, along with the linens and toiletries.