Hello everyone!
I just dropped in to report on the single most life and family changing accomplishment I have made in my 15 years of marriage and raising a family!!! This accomplishment has lightened my work load, made me happier, made my family more organized, my family happier, and made the house less messy. It has taken one huge mess of a task out of my week so that I can focus on other things now rather than just being faced by the same task week after week.
I have tamed the LAUNDRY MONSTER!!!!
I have to do laundry for 6 people and it was just depressingly overwhelming. I hated it so much, that I would avoid it for days to a week and then be faced with a mountain of grunge work. Often it would be so backed up, my elderly mother would come to help me fold it just so I could catch up. Often things would get washed, but just sit getting wrinkled in baskets. Often the baskets wouldn't even make it upstairs. My husband would just dump a basket on our bed to look for something he needed, and at the end of the day, the laundry would get shoved back into the basket so we could go to bed. It was awlful. It made me sad all the time. Since clothes weren't getting washed in an efficient amount of time, The kids always felt like they needed more clothes. So everyone had too much clothes and I could go a week to 2 weeks without doing wash. Everyones drawers were so full of things they didn't wear, that it was too hard to put folded laundry away, so we all avoided that task at all costs. Socks were never matched. When my mother and I did catch up on the folding, it would be in piles all over the kitchen counters and kitchen table and it would sit for days until I could get it all put away. It was dragging us down! Kids would be late for school looking for clean clothes that matched. It took a ton of time every morning just for everyone to find their things to put an outfit together.
So for years and years I had this dream of the perfect laundry system that would make things easier. As I would sit in the dreary basement laundry room standing on top of a mountain of clothes strewn on the floor, scrubbing stains out of mountains of clothes, I dreamed of a brighter , happier laundry room, that I didn't hate being in so much. But I thought it was never going to happen because I didn't have my husbands cooperation with helping me to organize it. I needed him to build me shelves so that I could separate everyones clothes as I folded them, and there would be a place to put laundry and it wouldn't be all over my kitchen until it was put away. Well, finally, flyladys message, of "don't blame other people, you CAN do it yourself" sunk in! One day, after finally getting all the laundry folded and put away that my mother and I worked on for 2 days, I decided "NO MORE! I am fixing this!, it will never get this out of hand again!" I went to Target and bought a set of wire shelves that fit perfectly in my laundry room for about $40. I bought six matching plastic laundry baskets for $3 a piece. I came home, and guess what? I put the shelved together myself! It was easy!!!! Didn't even require tools. My 11 yr old daughter helped me. After waiting on my husband for 15 yrs, I did it in less than an hour. I used a label maker to label each basket with each of our names and placed them on the shelves. I went to IKEA and bought and inexpensive happy red rug to cover the icky old linoleum floor with. I put a radio in the laundry room to listen to as I fold and treat stains. I cleared the room of all the junk that didn't belong there. I bought a 3 bin laundry sorter on wheels and put in the room (again, I put this together myself). Then I started doing a couple of loads a day. As it comes out of the dryer, I immediately fold it and disperse it to each persons individual basket. I have a seperate basket for linens. Now - this is the BEST part! As someones basket fills, I tell them, and they take their own basket up and put it away themselves, because I cleaned out all of their drawers one person a day for a week. I put the out of season stuff away and took what didn't fit to goodwill. They are then expected to fill their basket with any dirty laundry from their own hamper in their rooms and carry it themselves to the laundry room on their next trip downstairs.
I taught each one how to sort their dirty laundry into the bins, darks, lights, brights. Then they place thier empty basket back on the shelf. If I have done any laundry for them in the time their basket was not on the shelf, I just fold and place it directly on the shelf where their basket should be. When they return their empty basket, they place that folded laundry into it. When it is full again, repeat process. All I have to do is keep booting the laundry by emptying the magically filling sorted bins in to the washer, bump to dryer as I immediately fold and place in baskets I do about three loads a day. When I take the folded linens and towels up and place them in the linen closet, I leave that basket under the cabinet of the kids bathroom (that I cleaned out of useless clutter) and that is where they place their dirty clothes as they get in the shower. So bonus - no more dirty clothes on the bathroom floor to be picked up every day! When that basket is full, someone brings it down and it is refilled with towels from the shelf to go back up to the linen closet.
The system is working like a well oiled machine!!!!!! I have had to stay on them a little to make sure they immediately put their laundry in their drawers, rather than just leaving in their room to be routed through and messed up. But they are all getting the hang of it!!!! I no longer have a full laundry basket full of odd socks. As socks come through they folded and placed in their correct basket right away and if there is an odd in the load it is placed in a small basket (like an easter basket sized basket) on the folding table. Next time an odd comes through - I match it up to what is in the odd basket. I am doing a few loads a day and it is heaven, I actually ENJOY doing the laundry now as the system is fun and I tap my toe to the music on the radio as I stand on my fluffy bright carpet. . I like moving the laundry through the room! I can stop in the middle of it at any time, and it is not on my bed, not on the kitchen table or counters, not on the dining room table, it is in the laundry room where it belongs. I can return to it at any time and keep it moving through.
This is LAUNDRY HEAVEN I tell you!!!
As the laundry monster is out of the house, I am able to turn my attention to other things like clearing more closets.
Sorry for the incredibly long post, but I was hoping it would inspire and help someone else, and I felt as thought I deserved to brag and celebrate a little.
Got rid of old plates and cups we NEVER use. Now it looks nice and tidy. Even my husband commented on how easy it is to get what we need out of there and it doesn't look cluttered!
I'm very impressed with your system. Also, kudos to your sweet mama for helping you all those years with the folding, that was so nice. 
