I’m not sure about you, but we seem to do A LOT of laundry. I found that the best way to at keep from drowning in my laundry it is to give my kids the skills to be able help around the house. My Kids are highly moldable and I need to give them more credit in this area. Now I’m not saying that I’m trying create children that are OCD or anything, but I truly believe that it is one of my responsibilities as their parent to give them the keys to success in this area.
When our daughter was about age 3, she always had to walk into our room closest to deposit her dirty laundry. While this is helpful, we didn’t always want her strolling into our bedroom all the time. I noticed these streamline baskets at Superstore to hang in our hallway. They taper just enough so they aren’t in the way as you walk by them.
I labelled the top basket “Clean Clothes” and the bottom one “Dirty Clothes”. The top one is for any clothes that my children think are still clean and probably doesn’t really need to go in the wash. We do too much laundry as is to be washing even more than necessary. The top basket also gives me a place to store any folded laundry that my daughter or myself haven’t had a chance to put away yet.
The bottom basket is obviously for Dirty laundry. This gives my 3 year-old and 6-year-old the chance to be responsible for their own dirty laundry. It’s their clothes, why should I have to pick them up? 🙂 While this is only one small step towards order in the home, I feel it is a huge one in regards to giving my children skills for when they have their own home one day.
Respect for the simple things like Laundry and other things that we have been blessed with is just the starting point. Teaching my children to respect things and others is really important to me. I hope this is an idea that could help you in your own home to give your kids ownership and confidence that they are contributing to the whole family unit. If you’ve found something that works for you, keep up the good work!
Ok, the wire baskets are great, however, that little basket for dirty clothes would just not cut it in my house. That would require ME to be on top of the laundry. Crazy!
Yanet of 3 SKBs
All I do is when I’m walking past I grab the dirty clothes and put them in our big laundry basket in our room. Yes, you are right if I didn’t do this then there definitely wouldn’t be enough room. I kept the basket small so it would be streamline in our hallway. Laundry sure seems to pile up, right?
I use wire baskets to store looser items in my family fridge. They perform wonderful, are unobtrusive, and keep us extra organized. I really like that you can take them out and put them back in with ease.
That sounds like a great idea!