Truth be told I love a clean house but not the routine needed to keep it up. For me, the two most demanding household chores are dishes and laundry. We're always eating and, to my youngest's dismay, always wearing clothes. When we fall behind on these two chores, life just feels more chaotic.
Thankfully, my husband takes point on dishes duty and is better at sticking to routine than I am. But laundry, that's sneakier. Laundry hides out in the bedrooms easily forgotten.
Once upon a time, I had just one child who napped each afternoon. My laundry routine was simple. I put a load in the wash first thing in the morning, switched it to the dryer mid-morning, and folded it while my little one napped and I watched a little TV. Fast forward 8 years and it's not uncommon for me to get busy and only do a couple of loads of laundry over a two week span. This doesn't cut it. I need to average a load a day so no one's hunting me down to let me know they're out of a needed clothing item (which they inevitably wait until they're completely out of to report).
When it piles up it can be very overwhelming. If this is the norm for you, I get it. I recently resolved to get absolutely every hamper empty so I could go through closets and purge unwanted items. At the bottom of the laundry mountain (in September) there was a holiday sweater that had been neglected for nearly a year. Doh!
I know some people have a "laundry day" and knock it all out. Again, just not a routine person here. With the variability in being pulled this way and that by my family's needs, trying to dedicate a consistent day at home each week to keep the laundry cycling through just feels cumbersome to me. So, for me, laundry has to be quick to toss into the wash.
Our house doesn't have an actual laundry room. The washer and dryer are tucked away in a little pass-through space between the garage and the house. The machines take up the only floor space that isn't the walkway. I envy those who have a proper place to sort laundry (and a utility sink!).
The kids each have a pop-up hamper. I don't sort my kids clothes. My apologies to any white clothing gifted to my kids....it didn't stay white. I don't buy or make clothes with white fabric for my kids because it doesn't survive co-mingled laundry. Otherwise, modern dyes have played nice. However, clothing for myself and my husband needs more sorting so I had to figure out a laundry sorting system that worked in our limited space. For us, having the sorting unit in our closet made the most sense as we could make room there and sorting where you undress makes sorting easy.
I rolled up my DIY sleeves and built these two sorters which tuck into our walk-in closet. The dimensions specifically fit the depth of each side of our closet and the height comes up just below hanging shirts. The six compartments we use today are: Whites, Dark Delicates, Light Delicates, Regular Wash, Jeans and Dry Cleaning.
The frame is built out of 3/4" PVC pipe, tees, and elbows. The frame without canvas looks like this (measurements in inches)...
For the canvas pieces, they are two, hemmed rectangles of canvas for each sorting bin. One runs front-to-back and the other side-to-side. The canvas is sewn together at the intersection to create a reinforced floor for the bin. The ends wrap around the frame so that the fabric overlaps several inches and is secured by sewn in Velcro. This sorter has served us well for years.
The sorter helps to keep the overloaded hampers from turning into mountains. I have just one other trick to keep myself from creating a laundry mountain out of the clean clothes. We have just one laundry basket for the clean laundry that comes out. It will hold two loads. This can be a bottleneck...folding the clothes and putting them away is the most time intensive part after all. BUT this keeps me from creating such a mountain that needs to be folded that it feels too overwhelming to even begin.
I'm happy to report that my holiday sweater is already washed and stored for this year. May our laundry mountains be forever conquered.
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