Why I Don’t Fold Laundry Anymore

I don’t fold laundry anymore. Here’s what I do instead.

 

Why I don’t fold laundry anymore

I’m currently doing laundry for 9 people every day. (There are 11 of us at home right now, but Elias and Malachi do their own laundry.) Meanwhile, I’m caring for 7 small children all day, so merely getting the laundry washed and dried is a challenge to keep up with.

So why don’t I fold the laundry? Because I could spend a lot of time folding small articles of clothing for 7 small children and babies, and after all that work, the clothes would immediately become unfolded. So I gave up trying, I save time and effort, and we just throw kids’ clothes into drawers!

I realize this sounds stressful to many of you who love tidy drawers and neat spaces. I like things tidy and neat too, but I hate wasting time and energy. Anytime a lovely helper comes into our home and assists me with laundry, try as I might to keep the clothing nice that they folded and put away for me, their effort turns into a mess in the drawers as we have to rummage through them to get the pants that match the shirt.

Three of our little girls all wear the same size, which is super nice! So we have one dresser for them to share, and we put all their jammies in one drawer, all their shirts in the next, and all their pants in the bottom. We open the drawers, we grab what we need, and we go.

Worth noting: It is actually much easier to see all of the items of clothing in their drawers when they are NOT folded. It is very tricky to distinguish which shirt is which when it is a tiny size 2T.

Also worth noting: Kids’ clothes don’t wrinkle. At least my kids’ clothes. So no one is the wiser that the outfit my kids’ are wearing were just tossed into a drawer after they came out of the dryer. :)

How I Fold Towels

I don’t. :) :) :)

Instead, we’ve found it easier to assign one special towel to each person. They come out of the dryer and get hung on hooks on the back of the bathroom door for easy access when we’re getting seven kids in and out of the bath, oy. Now that’s a big job – bathing seven children. I am exhausted and fairly soaked by the time it’s over, hahaha.

(I do have a couple of shelves of folded towels in our bathrooms for guests. We have our pride. Sort of.)

What about the grown-up’s laundry?

Well, Matt folds and puts his own laundry away. I personally only fold my jeans so that they fit into my drawer. :) Life’s too short to fold underwear, I say. :) So I just toss them into a drawer. Same with my socks. I can easily find a matching pair when needed.

I hang up my tops – when I get around to it, oy. And that’s that.

Dishtowels?

Sometimes we fold them, sometimes we don’t. They fit better in the drawer when they are folded, but our littlest girls often rummage through that drawer and mess it all up anyway, soooooo….

We are actually getting our 4, 7, and 9-year-olds involved in folding and putting those away, so that’s nice!

Odds and Ends

We have baskets and cubes for our kids’ socks and undies. I’ve long given up on finding matching socks for our littlest kids to wear each day – clean socks are good enough in my book. And having them unfolded and unmatched in a basket makes them much easier to access!

So back to why I don’t fold laundry anymore:

I’ve found that many of these unfolded laundry tips work better for us right now!

• Clean towels are hung on hooks right by the bathtub.
• Socks and undies are easy to grab in baskets.
• Unfolded little boy and girl shirts and pants are easier to find/match when they are gently tossed into a drawer.

I don’t ever plan to change this system, even when my hands are no longer so full of babies! Why? Because as each of our kids get older THEY CAN FOLD THEIR OWN LAUNDRY. Amen and amen. Hallelujah.