Since I spend way more time than I’d like to doing laundry for my family, and since organizing is in my blood (I used to be a professional organizer), I developed a few tricks for minimizing the laundry timesink.
1. I got rid of all of the laundry baskets in individual bedrooms and bathrooms. Instead, I set up three cloth hampers in the laundry room and labeled them: darks, lights, and whites. It took a little training, but now, all members of the family, even the smallest, deposit their clothes straight into the hampers and I no longer have to hunt down all of the dirty clothes. If you don’t have a laundry room, try to find another space where this will work.
2. In order to dramatically decrease the amount of time it takes to fold the whites, especially to match up all of the tiny little socks, I bought a white mesh laundry bag for each family member and color-coded each one by attaching a different color ribbon to the top of each bag. Now, everyone puts their socks—and underwear depending on color—in their personal laundry bag. I wash all of the bags together, dry them together, and then give the bags to each person to put away—except for the youngest, I put hers away.
3. I try to minimize wrinkling by following the FlyLady’s advice and taking clothes from the washer as soon as they’re done, drying them, and immediately removing them. Still, some clothes become wrinkled, and since I’m not a huge fan of ironing, I found this solution a few years ago: homemade spray de-wrinkler. Using an empty spray bottle, like the ones used for Windex, etc., add one capful of liquid fabric softener, then fill the bottle the rest of the way with water. Then, after you remove clothing from the dryer and they’re still wrinkled, just spray with this solution and let them hang for a little while. It works and is much cheaper than the commercial sprays. I’ve been using the same bottle of generic fabric softener for years.
4. I mention the FlyLady again, because before her, I was not as committed to keeping up with the laundry. However, with her method of doing one load a day—and following through with all of the steps of washing, drying, folding, AND putting away—our house is much tidier, and I’m not nearly as stressed by loads of laundry piled up in the laundry room, wrinkling in the dryer, etc. So, since putting all of the laundry away was a challenge, as my kids have gotten older, I’ve added putting their laundry away to their daily list. My husband or I still help my youngest, but the rest of us put our own laundry away.
So, if all of that was too much to read, here’s the gist:
1. Put clothes directly into labeled bins, as close to the washing machine as possible.
2. Use mesh bags to keep small items separate.
3. Use wrinkle removal spray instead of ironing when possible.
4. Have each family member put away their own clothes.
Time-Saving Tuesday: Laundry Tips
Pantry Challenge
I had another post planned for today, but since I’m a huge fan of the pantry challenge, I just had to tell you about this. As you know from an earlier post, we recently experienced an enforced pantry challenge during the power outage. And I’ve also chosen to conduct pantry challenges in years past, both to save money—and because I love a challenge.
Here’s a link to the NY Times blog about eGullet’s Forum where Steven Shaw’s story to give up shopping for a week has initiated a no-shopping challenge. Make sure to scroll down the page to read the guidelines.
I agree with Mr. Shaw that many of us in our land of plenty have stockpiles of food in our homes that we could better utilize, saving us money, time, and energy (both personal and environmental).
I also know from personal experience growing up in extreme poverty and homelessness that not everyone has surplus food. But if you do, get creative. Take the challenge. What inspiring new recipes can you come up with to nourish your family? And what will you do with the extra time and money you’ve generated by participating in the challenge?
Here are a few other links for your inspirational pleasure:
This is one of my favorite sites for all things frugal. I highly recommend the free subscription!
I used to belong to this pantry challenge Yahoo group when I had more time to spend online.
Read one family’s story and comments to give you ideas.
Mom's At-Home Retreat
This weekend, I took my first ever retreat. It wasn’t what you might think of as a retreat in the traditional sense, but it was definitely a retreat for me, and it might appeal to other busy, frugally-minded moms. Initially, I was going to attend or create a retreat for myself in some delectably warm place, far away from what I consider to be the recent frigid temperatures of my home. As a native Floridian, I consider the sun to be heavenly. However, the ice storm came the day before my birthday—when I was supposed to leave for my retreat—and so afterward, my husband and I compromised and came up with this plan.
First, I have to explain that my youngest daughter, now four years old, has never traveled well. After she was born, we quickly realized that ANY travel was out of the question. Even driving to the grocery store 20 minutes away was a nightmare, ending with her screaming in terror the whole time and me crying hysterically in response. (More on that another time.)
So, for us to even think of traveling with her became a question we never asked. However, as a gift to me, my brave husband took my two daughters, (and all of the SCD food my youngest daughter would need to his dad’s house two hours away. They left on Saturday morning around 9:30 a.m. and returned Sunday afternoon around 5 p.m., in time to get the girls reestablished into their routine.
On Thursday and Friday I finished up the laundry, cleaned the parts of the house that would be important to me during my retreat, such as the bedroom, including decluttering, dusting, and sweeping. Then I did some grocery shopping for the family (while picking up a few treats for me : ) and gathered some yoga dvds, guided meditation cds, and inspirational music cds from the library and Half-Price Bookstore to add to the Eckhart Tolle books that I’ve been studying. On Friday I also prepared SCD freezer meals to replace the ones that we lost during the power outage.
On Saturday and Sunday I did yoga (I’m definitely still a novice in this area), meditated (and in this one too), read and wrote. I made sure to eat at least one of my meals each day in complete silence, attempting to be fully present, meaning that I didn’t even read, which is really hard for me to do. I wanted the whole experience to be uplifting, yet grounding at the same time, helping me to focus on what’s truly important. I ended the weekend by attending a prayer and meditation service at my church on Sunday evening, just after my family returned.
If you’re like me, and haven’t seen that many consecutive hours strung together in more years than you can remember, then you’ll understand just how amazing the silence alone made this endeavor. Of course it felt indulgent, but cleansing. Apparently, it was a weekend of dichotomies ;)
I hope you’ll create a similar opportunity for yourself. When you do, make sure to let me know what you did and how it went for you!
