The Laundry Monster is tamed!

There's a monster who lives in our house and I never seem to be able to keep it under control. It haunts me on regular basis but especially at night. It's at it's meanest when I just want to fall into bed and sleep. It's name, you may ask...

Clean Laundry!

With 2 adults and 4 children, we almost have enough dirty clothes for a large load by the end of the day, which means I go through roughly 7 loads off laundry a week. Now that doesn't include soiled bedding and towels. I used to have 1 set laundry day a week but since we moved my schedule just doesn't allow for that. I now try to do a couple of loads every other day, which has helped a bit with taming the dirty laundry monster. We also use a laundry sorter and that helps even more. 

Now our biggest problem has been the clean laundry. I struggled with getting it all folded right away and many times the clean clothes would pile up unfolded in the laundry baskets till they all needed to be ironed, but who has time to iron every piece of "visible" clothing? Not me! So I started folding the clothes as I took them out of the dryer. It did help but then I ran into another problem...I sorted the laundry on our bed (usually during naptime when the house is, for the most part, still) but I didn't always find time to put the sorted laundry away before we put the kids to bed. This was when the clean laundry monster reared its nasty head. I'd be so tired and frustrated that all the nice, clean, folded, sorted laundry had to go back in the laundry baskets to be put away another day. It made me feel like I wasn't really finishing my task (and it took up a lot of space in our bedroom since we currently have 6 people crammed into a 3 bedroom, 850 sq. ft. house).

I'm sure you've seen the amazing pictures of laundry rooms that people have shared on Pinterest and wished your laundry room could be so neat and organized. Yes, I'll admit that I have. However, the Lord provided a way of escape from my temptation to covet, and this escape came in the shape of 4 dollar store "mini" laundry baskets. I found them by "accident" really, I was looking for some little plastic boxes for sort small items when I saw them. I figured that for $1 each, we could swing it. I am so glad that I did. I still struggle with getting all the hanging clothes put away but now the kids can easily put their own folded laundry away.