Organization

Organization time. Laundry is a huge problem in this small house. I have three laundry baskets, two dirty laundry bags, seven places the laundry is stored once it is folded. At any given time during the week there is at least one basket of laundry/ folded or unfolded sitting at the entryway, sofa, bedroom, bed, top of the stairs bottom of the stairs, bathroom. Usually it is more than one basket. And one basket takes up alot of room and two or three take up even more. I have tried doing laundry all on one day once a week, doing kids one day adults another. Doing it as needed. I have tried leaving it all unfolded on our bed and then dump the empty baskets back in the basement so I won't be tempted to leave the laundry undone only to be swept back into the baskets at bedtime. I have tried not folding just throwing stuff into drawers - yikes! And the shenanigans go on.

A few problems have existed until recently. And NO too many clothes is not a problem. We are frugal in this way I think. Anyway...not enough storage is first. Seriously. Each kids had one drawer basically and no hanging space. This might be enough for some people, but we do have alot of great hand-me downs and they deserve a place too. Second problem is the basement is not geared to process the laundry - only wash it. So it gets processed on the couch, bed etc. and it never makes it far from there. Third and probably the real culprit. Me. Basically the solution comes down to this: Just do it. Wash it, fold it, put it away - pronto AND enlist the help of the little ones.

So, we have new drawer systems from IKEA for each kid. Six baskets each with a few extra in the bigger closet for the hand-me-downs. They are awesome. The kids can open them on their own (old drawers were super sticky) The labels are to "help" so that they can kinda know where stuff goes and know where to find it. We'll see how it goes!