My husband and I love to get out of town for the weekend. It doesn’t happen very often, but I am always so grateful for those few days we can sneak away sans children.
This past weekend, we were able to spend a little time in the mountains – our favorite getaway!
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Laundry for Six People
If you are a mama, you know how you have to move heaven and earth to go anywhere, even if it’s just overnight. We were in the mountains for 3 nights and my in-laws were kind enough to keep our children.
Returning home after 4 days away and dealing with the laundry of 6 people is no small task. Here are two tips I have found to be helpful in getting the laundry washed after a big trip.
You know, instead of letting it sit in the suitcase for 3 days after you return home. Not that I’ve ever done that. Ahem.
Put your suitcases near the laundry room
When getting your suitcases out of the car, head straight for the laundry room.
If you take them to bedrooms or leave them in the kitchen, you’ll be much more likely to leave them there for days on end.
So make a mental note for your next trip: Drop off suitcases by the laundry room immediately after bringing them inside.
No ifs, ands, or buts.
Yes, you’ll have to make several trips returning all of your items to where they belong (shoes, hair dryer, make up, etc), but your clothes are much more likely to end up in the washing machine.
And if you have a laundry that is large enough, go ahead and put your suitcases in the laundry room. You can get moving on the first load quickly, and it also gets those big cases out of the way.
Just make sure that it’s not a case of “out of sight, out of mind!”
Sort laundry as soon as you remove it from the suitcase
In the picture, you can see that I empty our suitcases straight into my laundry sorting bins. By sorting immediately from the suitcase, I combine two steps in one.
If I take all of the clothes and throw them in a pile on the floor, I still have to take the time to sort them. This easy step streamlines things quite a bit.
In addition to saving me time, I also can easily eye ball my stack and see which load needs to go in first.
By implementing these two easy tips, your post-trip laundry can actually seem manageable, instead of being a horribly overwhelming mountain of clothes on the floor.
What tips do you have for getting your laundry washed after a trip out of town?
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The Best Laundry Decision I Made This Year
We take a collapsible hamper/laundry basket (like the ones in your picture) with us, and we put the clothing in there on our trip. Dirty clothes do NOT go back in the suitcases. Then we take that directly to our laundry room when we get home. (But we usually drive on all of our trips. :))
Laura, that is such a smart idea! If you have room to store it on the way home, that is such an excellent solution.
Just got home from an eight day trip driving our kids to Disneyland. I’m certain I’ve never gone eight days without doing laundry! I put our whites in a separate bag at the hotel so I could start those as soon as we got home. Then I sorted the rest while that load was already working. I also put all of our clean things in a different suitcase so I didn’t have any of that stuff to sort through.
I love the tip to take the bags to the laundry room.
What a fun trip!!
I love your tips – thank you so much for leaving them! Yes, we often have a suitcase of the clean clothes we didn’t wear. So glad you mentioned that!
Thank you for stopping by today 🙂
You are the best!
I don’t have a washing clothes after trips trick, but I do have a few clothes when traveling tricks.
1. Put each child’s outfit of the day including socks n undies in zippy bags, smoosh air out. This helps w luggage space and takes hassle/time out of mornings.
2. Each person has their own carry on: put one days outfit in each person’s bag. No exceptions! If luggage gets lost , you will be miserable and lose a portion of your trip waiting/shopping/moping.
3. I pack a cheap pop up hamper on longer trips that I plan to launder at the resort. The small cheap ones fit in the large luggage.
4. For shorter trips where I save all laundry for home, I use kitchen catchers for dirty clothes. As the days progress, I start rearranging suitcases to dedicate one just to dirties.
Happy travels !
When I travel by myself for work, I bring two of the huge zip top bags and sort as I go into darks and lights. When we go camping for a week, we use pop up hampers. We usually get to a laundromat halfway through so we don’t have to bring as much clothing and have less laundry when we get home.
Pop-up hampers are an excellent idea! Thanks for sharing that great tip.
xo, Lauren