Laundry

It is like sweeping ants. No matter how many times you do it, it still needs done. Please send in your tips!

We use individual laundry baskets. They are in the kids' bedrooms where they change for the night. This allows kids to learn to be responsible for their own laundry at an earlier age, and it allowed us to teach them to put their clothes in the basket as soon as they took them off. Individual baskets eliminated sorting, and again, encouraged individual responsibility. By the age of 10, Mom and Dad are out of the laundry loop for kids, except to make sure they are wearing clean clothes, and that their floors are picked up. (But even though clean clothes go in the drawers, and dirty clothes go in the basket, there is a third type of clothes which I have not yet identified, which apparently belongs on the floor!)

We don't buy clothes for kids that need special care, or that require sorting. If it cannot be washed in cold water with mixed colors, we don't buy it.

We also do not by clothes that need ironed. I don't enjoy ironing, I feel I can spend my time better doing other things, so if it is not wash and wear, it doesn't come home!