Mom Hacks Monday: How I Keep Laundry Sorting to a Minimum

There are currently 5 members of our family - soon to be 6.  We use cloth diapers, cloth napkins, cloth wipes, cloth "paper" towels, dish cloths, and hankies.

We do a lot of laundry.

It used to be that I spent hours sorting laundry.  The actual washing and drying aren't so bad, because they are hours largely spent with me doing something else.  But the sorting, sorting, sorting!  The diapers and wipes were fairly easy, because they were always washed together and came out together.  Clothes for 5 people is a totally different story.

This year, I have hit on a lovely system, though!  I got every bedroom its own laundry basket.  Then there is a hamper downstairs.  About 95% of the time that the kids or I change our clothes, it happens in our own rooms.  So, they take off their clothes and put them in the basket.  Daddy keeps his clothes in his office downstairs and he usually changes in the downstairs bathroom, so there is a hamper downstairs for his things and for the clothing that anyone takes off in the bathroom.  Random towels and other laundry also goes in the hamper.

The hamper is the only laundry that I sort, all week.  When it is laundry day, I wash one laundry basket at a time.  When it is done, if it goes in the dryer, it comes right back out and into the basket it came down in.  If I hang the clothes out on the line or drying racks, I keep each basket together on the line and sort them right back into the correct baskets as they dry.  Anything from the hamper that isn't Daddy's gets sorted into the correct basket - which takes very little time.  And the baskets are each delivered back to their bedrooms where they are (hopefully) put away!

And, voila!  I no longer spend hours sorting laundry each week!

Do you use a "laundry system" in your home?  If so, how does it work?