Another great reader tip! Colleen has 4 kids and just doing the laundry is enough to drive her mad, let alone getting it all sorted and put away. She had always made the kids help, but it was really difficult. She bought 4 plastic dish bins and labeled each one for each kid. After the kids' laundry is dry, she dumps it in a pile in the living room floor (stay with me here). Each kid is in a different corner of the room with his/her bin. When she says go, they rush to the pile and find their clothes, fold them, and run to their rooms to put them away. The first one back gets the laundry trophy and a special privilege (for her house, sitting in the front seat of the car) until the next King of the (laundry) Mountain challenge. The clothes get put away and Colleen literally sits on the couch while the kids do it. She has learned the hard way that someone needs to be there to see who makes it back into the room first. I love this tip. My kids are too little for the version, but after receiving this tip I bought a bin for my 3 year old. I put his socks and underwear in it and he walks with pride down the hallway to put them away while I sort the rest. Try it.
What is the longest you have ever put off doing the laundry? We promise we won't judge.
I was in an argument with my husband and went on strike with housecleaning. Then I got the flu. Laundry had piled up for almost 2 weeks. We had no clothes to wear. It took forever to get caught up.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE this idea! I also have 4 kids, and the laundry can be quite a chore. They aren't old enough for the races quite yet (I could just hear the tears!), but my kids do help me sort and put away laundry. I pull out a basket of clean clothes into the family room, then we start sorting things into 4 piles, one for each girl. When all is sorted, they each grab their pile and take it upstairs to be put away. It isn't the neatest, but it's one less thing for me to do and it teaches them some responsibility. It works for us!
ReplyDeleteAt least two weeks. It was so bad (family of 6) that my kids didn't have to pretend too hard about it being a mountain as they climbed all over it.
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