Last December, I wrote about 3 Immediate Ways to Reduce Your Laundry Pile. Today, I have 3 more ways for you to permanently make your laundry piles smaller. And isn’t that what we all want? I sure do.
Wear the same clothes all day long
You may have children who change clothes once they get home from school. Or you wear a uniform to work and then change into something else once you return home in the evening.
Unless they are icky and gross, try having everyone wear the same clothes all day until bedtime. When kids change clothes 2 and 3 times a day, that makes for a lot of extra laundry.
This won’t work for everyone, but it can eliminate a decent amount of laundry for those of you who have children that change clothes a hundred times a day.
Wear the Same ‘House Clothes’ More Than Once
While the above tip will work for some, I realize there are some of you that must change clothes after getting home in the evenings. Wearing a suit or nice dress clothes late into the evening just doesn’t make sense.
So if you must change into a different set of clothes each evening, try re-wearing those same house clothes the next day. If you haven’t spilled anything or sweated in them, there’s no reason why you can’t re-wear that set of house clothes the next day.
Simply hang up your lounge clothes or fold them neatly and put them back in the drawer for your next wear.
Purge the Amount of Clothes in the Closet
You see that there are 8 t-shirts in your son’s drawer, so you know it will be awhile before you need to wash again. However, if he has 23 t-shirts total and they aren’t washed until he is down to the last one, you’ve got a huge laundry pile on your hands.
Purge your clothes (and your children’s!) to a reasonable amount of items. The fewer clothes you have, the more often you’ll wash them since you will actually have to wear them in a reasonable amount of time.
Purging your clothes is a little like sabotaging yourself. It forces you to wash clothes more often so you’ll actually have something to wear. Having clean clothes to wear is a nice incentive for most of us. 😉
So how do you consistently keep your laundry pile from growing out of control?
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This is something I’ve been struggling with. I continue to struggle all the time with the kids wearing the same outfit all week (they have an outside the house outfit and an inside the house outfit – we homeschool) because I hate the constant laundry. However, they don’t like to follow this rule and take stuff out all the time. Then I thought, I could train them to throw all their clothes in the laundry each night and that way their floor would be clean, but I’d have more laundry. In the end, I still haven’t found something that works. Hmmm… could actually spending the time training my children for a few weeks work? Nahhhhh….
Just purged the closets today! My family pretty good about wearing same clothes… And I am guilty of not letting my piles get too big. I wash more than I should!
I agree, if you get changed 2 or 3 times a day your washing load and electricity bill will much higher. Also youyr clothes wont last as lont due to fading in the washing machine.
I love this article. I wish I could get my husband to wear the same clothes all day long! He is a mechanic and I will never understand why he thinks he needs to wear 2 pairs of boxers and 2 pairs of socks everyday!?!?!
I love your website! I have six kids, so the laundry can get out of control in a few days. I also homeschool some of them.
I labeled all the drawers in their dresses, so they can put everything where it goes and not just throw it in there. Since some of them are older now, as soon as I am done washing the clothes, I separate their clothes in piles, so they can put it away.
For the clothes that need to be hang up, I installed a curtain rod on my laundry wall, so I could have a reachable hanging place. After I am done, I call the kids again, so they can hang their clothes in their closets.
I still have much to learn, but your website is a great resource. Thank you.
Great suggestions, Johanna! It’s always so helpful to read how other people do things.