Taming The Family Laundry Monster
By Ann Douglas
Is the laundry monster threatening to take over your kids' bedrooms, the family bathroom, the laundry room, and pretty much every other room in your home? Here's how to encourage your kids to pitch in on laundry patrol.
Make it easy for your kids to sort their dirty laundry into darks, lights, and colors. Kids can be responsible for moving laundry from their bedrooms to colour-coded laundry bins in the family laundry "depot" (the hall, the family bathroom, or the laundry room—whatever works best given the layout of your home). Teach preteens and teens the laundry basics. If they know what's involved in doing laundry (water temperatures, fabric types, which colors can and can't be combined, and how to operate your laundry machines), you'll find it easier to stay one step ahead of the dreaded laundry monster. Come up with smart solutions to the little problems that can make doing laundry a major chore and/or source of sibling strife. Buy each kid a dozen pairs of socks in a unique color or pattern. That way, there will no longer be sock wars to mediate ("Hey, those are mine!") and matching up socks suddenly becomes a breeze. Fold laundry in front of the TV. Your kids will be less likely to succumb to couch potato syndrome and they're less likely to complain about how boring it is to fold laundry. Make sure your kids have a place to put all their clean clothes. Otherwise those clothes are likely to get piled on top of dressers and bookshelves or—worse—dumped on the floor. The result? Instant laundry!
Comments
