It seems a majority of questions I receive about laundry are related to how to form a laundry routine one can stick with. And a routine that’s fairly easy.
And a large portion of those questions is how to actually get clean clothes put away. It is so easy for clothes to just lie around on any flat surface – the dresser, the top of the dryer, the back of the couch, the kitchen table.
This is a problem for most everyone. So what is the solution?
I have found for me it is easiest to put clothes away when I fold them on my bed. I have a really nice 8-foot folding table and I l-o-v-e to fold clothes on it since there is so much room and it’s just the right height.
But it’s all the way in our bonus room, which is a little distance from our bedrooms.
And I may or may not be able to close the door to the bonus room and leave clothes on the folding table for days. Not that I would ever do that you understand… {ahem}
So I fold on my bed. I love my comfortable, perfect bed with my perfect covers and I look so forward to crawling in it every single night. That being said, I can’t get in it if it’s covered in everyone’s folded clothes.
Folding clothes on my bed forces me to put them away each night. I refuse to let myself put them on the dresser top or put a folded stack in a basket. I know they’ll never leave that spot and make it to someone’s dresser drawer!
Really, I guess this is forced self-discipline!
On my busy days I often can get laundry washed and folded but I can’t quite get them to everyone’s drawers. So I have a large stack waiting for me at the end of the day. While my husband is giving baths, I quickly scurry around and put clothes away.
Where do you fold clothes so you’re forced to put them away? I’d love to hear your method.
Most of the time, this works for me.
I am pleased to link this most to WFMW hosted my Rocks in My Dryer this week. Head on over for more great tips than you could ever dream of.
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I’m with you! I must fold them on our sweet, clean bed or they will LIVE on our guest bed for weeks. Until I realize that we’re literally picking clean clothes off the bed to wear & the guest bed has become our impromptu closet/dresser.
.-= Blair´s last blog ..No better way to say “Good morning!” than a latte. =-.
Oh yes, I can so relate….
Some, if not most days I have a lot of self-discipline to put away clean clothes or pick up the house or ____. But it’s on those off days that things seem to fall apart! So I have to enforce some mandatory self-discipline! Ha!
Thankfully, it’s worked for me so far.
I drape hangables over the couch and foldables stack on the coffee table, I lose my mind if they stay there longer than 15 minutes…when I drape hangables I drape by person so that i dont have to sort them into rooms afterward.
I love my bed but my room is trashed I think I need to get on that. Blah.
I love your simple productive ideas, my laundry has been a whole different thing since I met you!!!
.-= Jana´s last blog ..Excuse me…. =-.
Drape hangables by person. You smart girl, you. Great idea.
And is hangables a word? If not, I’m giving you credit for creating it – I love it!
I fold our clothes at the dining room table. I put everyone’s clothes (6 of us) in front of there chair at the table. This way everyone has to put their own clothes away before the table can be set for dinner. It works great and takes the “putting the clothes away” off my to do list and on the kids.
Smiles!
.-= Jennifer´s last blog ..Well that caught us off gaurd! =-.
Fabulous idea! If you don’t put your clothes away, you can’t sit at the table and eat supper!
That’s enough incentive for this girl to get moving! 😉
Great tip – thanks!
Okay, this is just brilliant! Love it!
My kids generally put away their own clothes (and sometimes put away their siblings’ if someone is at grandma’s for the weekend or what-not – helped along by the labelmaker labels I added to everyone’s drawers so no one can complain “But I don’t know which drawer his shorts go in!” :P) But as a full-time-working-single-mama-of-three-ages-7-&-under… usually my biggest downfall with putting away the laundry is sometimes I don’t get a chance to fold everything til the kids are asleep in bed. I fold all the clothes on my bed, then stack them in the empty laundry basket cause I don’t want to go in the kids’ room putting away clean clothes and disturbing their sleep (besides, that’s their chore 😛 ). So then I end up having a basket of clean clothes sitting in my room for the next week or so til I can get everyone to put their items away (all the while with them grabbing items out here and there until I end up having to refold everything! :-S ).
I am absolutely adopting your method of setting them at the dining room table. Maybe if I’m consistent, they will get into the habit of putting them away without being told (a mother can wish! ha). 😛
I use my bed too! Like you said, I have to put it away before I go to sleep. My problem is actually getting the stuff folded. I take it out of the dryer, put it in baskets . . . and there it stays all too often until we run out of this or that.
.-= Mrs. Mordecai´s last blog ..One crazy week =-.
I absolutely cannot leave clean clothes in a basket unfolded – even if I am feeling too lazy to actually put them away where they belong, I at least have to fold them right away. Otherwise, other people in my house (ahem, my children) will assume it’s a basket of dirty laundry – and start throwing smelly dirty socks in there! :-S
We fold them onto the couch.
Can we start a column on encouraging husbands to help? He does bath time while you finish up things like laundry- I am envious! That is so awesome! What is your technique for spilitting the home chore list?
.-= Crystal & Co´s last blog ..Homemade Laundry Detergent Recipe =-.
My mom does the same thing. She does all of her laundry for the week on one day. First, she strips the sheets and then does all the other laundry first, so she can’t go to bed until she gets through all the laundry, puts it away, and gets her sheets out of the dryer as the last clean load. Then she has to put it away so she can make her bed.
Maybe I should do that, since my baskets of clean laundry pile up…
Good technique! Thanks for sharing…
I fold on my bed (for the same reason as you!) or the dining room table. The table is in plain view from the family room. I don’t like looking at piles of laundry on that table each night. It’s a great motivator as well.
I am loving your laundry tips! Seeing as how I have about 6 loads in some form to do today (fold, put away, move from washer to dryer, etc). My mother would be so proud if she knew I was reading your blog. he he he
.-= Mandy´s last blog ..Put Me in Coach! =-.
Hey Mandy!
I’ve got 6+ loads as well. Hopefully I can get it put away before tonight because I am certain I am going to COLLAPSE once my body actually sees my bed!
Yes, definitely the bed although DH has been known to shove the piles of folded laundry to the MIDDLE of the bed and just go to sleep. lol Personally I have to get up and put them away because I like to have the whole bed available.
.-= kris´s last blog ..She Shall Be Praised =-.
Ha – mine too! I love coming to bed after the lights are out and finding a pile of clothes on my side….
HELP! hahahaha, I HATE doing laundry but I’m trying. Posted about it on my blog today 🙂
Folded clothes on my bed go straight to the floor (neatly) so I can collapse into my incredibly comfy bed. The dining room table is a great idea, but would require me to move all of our laundry downstairs only to go upstairs again…hmmm.
Oh girl….you definitely don’t want to take them downstairs only to take them up again (unless your washer is down of course). Way too much work… At least, IMO 🙂
I’ll go take a peek at your blog. Hopefully we can change your hatred of laundry! Tee Hee 🙂
Thanks for commenting!
nope, all of my laundry is upstairs…washer, dryer and bedrooms. It’s a nice arrangement, but I don’t have a good space for folding other than my bed. Which mostly, clothes from the dryer go to a nice little nook on my floor and sit there for awhile until I can’t stand it anymore. We’ve tried the separate laundry hampers but having boys…well they get lazy and their clean clothes end up in their dirty clothes and it’s just a big mess!
I think I posted my blog address incorrectly the first time…I fixed it this time.
Saved Quarter~awesome idea – folding on the bed before fresh sheets are put on! I used to like to fold laundry on the bed. But, for the last 4 1/2 years we have had a dog that sheds (even though he is brushed daily) and loves to get on our bed. We regularly take the coverlet outside to shake the fur off, but it’s a neverending cycle (I know that grosses some of you out that I even let my dog on the bed), but we love him and his snuggling, so we deal with a little fur.
Just found the blog…looks like I’ll need to stop by again!
Lisa
.-= Life is Crazy Beautiful´s last blog ..A Different What If? and a Meditation =-.
Lisa, you are quite the brave girl with that dog on your bed!
Thank you so much for stopping by! 🙂
-Lauren
Because our laundry is sorted by room:
– husbands and mine
– 2 and 5 year old
– 8, 11, and 13 year old
We fold the appropriate basket in the appropriate room and put the clothes away immediately.
Now, on occasion when we are doing several loads of folding at once, we have a laundry folding party in the living room using the couch, 2 chairs and the tables for different sorting piles.
You wrote the most important part in your comment:
“put the clothes away immediately.”
Most important part, but also the hardest part!
Thanks for sharing 🙂
-Lauren
I make the kids put their laundry away. They are kinda young, but it teaches them responsibility.
.-= lomagirl´s last blog ..almost =-.
Oh I completely agree with letting the little people put them away!
When days are going smoothly, that’s our plan too. 🙂
I bought a round laundry basket for each member of the family at the dollar store. I fold into the baskets and then deposit the baskets in the kids’ rooms. My kids are all trained to put away their own laundry, even the 2 yr old. It is one of the most basic skills to begin teaching responsibility and contributing to the family.
Beautiful system! Thanks for sharing it.
You know, I think this has given me an idea. I have some round laundry baskets that I stack clean clothes in and carry throughout the house to put away stuff – but they’re all too large for my kids to manage (they’re ages 7 & under and all put away their own clothes… mostly). I think I should get some smaller sized ones that they can handle on their own so they don’t have to do what they do now, which is multiple trips between where I’ve sorted & folded everything and their bedrooms taking a small stack at a time. I could maybe use a different color for each kid and also put in there other stuff I want them to put away for me (kitchen and bath towels, cloth napkins in the dining room – which we’ve gone to using and I absolutely love it. Picked up a ton of off-white ones at church rummage sales and no longer have shredded pieces of paper napkin that used to always somehow end up on the dining room floor, what the heck. :-S ).
I could combine that with the idea someone posted above about stacking everyone’s clean laundry on the dining room table… LOVE LOVE LOVE IT. 😀 Thanks for all the great ideas, everyone!
My secret is to have only ONE laundry basket. I can’t carry the next dirty load to the washing machine until I have put away the clean load! I line-dry everything (click my name for details) and I fold the laundry into the basket as I take it off the line. Meanwhile there’s a load in the washer, so I’ll need the basket to hold the wet clothes so I can hang them…so there’s just no way the folded clothes can sit in the basket more than a couple of hours.
.-= ‘Becca´s last blog ..We Eat This. =-.
I fold laundry as it’s coming out of the dryer (lay stuff that gets hung over the dryer door). I put the folded laundry in a basket, lay the flat, soon to be hung stuff on top, and bring it upstairs and put away the folded stuff immediately, hang the other (which will be steamed later, old habits die hard), and use the same, now empty, basket to bring down the next load of laundry. It prevents clean laundry from piling up, since I need the basket to start another load.
Now THAT is a fabulous system! Thanks so much for sharing it!
-Lauren
I have a basket for each boy and one basket for hub and I. As I fold, our items go into the appropriate baskets. The boys are assigned the job of putting away their laundry and hub puts away ours.
Great system! Thanks for sharing it –
-Lauren