My kids have officially survived week one of our summer experiment. I decided in the last week of school to put away all but one week’s worth of clothing for them.
I could be imagining it, as I tend to do that, but my laundry load seemed smaller today.
However, my 6yo had no clothes to wear today until the laundry was done. This has been the hardest on him, for some reason. He came to me on Saturday, and said that there were no more clothes in his drawer. That was when I explained that I had only put 8 outfits in his drawer at the beginning of the week, which he agreed should be enough . . . y’know . . . because of the 7-days-in-a-week-thing. Knowing Monday is laundry day, having 8 outfits made total sense to him. I pointed out that most likely, he had worn several outfits in one day, which tends to happen after going swimming. Hopefully, he’ll be more conscious of wearing the same thing after swimming that he wore before from now on. We’ll see.
Another issue we faced with him is that he’s still at the age where he has several matchy outfits. The only two things left for him to wear on Saturday were pieces from two different matchy outfits, that did NOT match each other. At all. In fact, it looked pretty ridiculous. But I held my tongue, as he didn’t care one bit, and we were going to hang with family, who also didn’t care.
As far as laundry goes, I did run two extra towel loads last week because of all the swimming. I haven’t come up with a great drying spot for four large towels. The kids have been hanging their swimsuits on their initial hooks, which is working great, but I’m afraid that the towels would be too heavy for that. So, for now, I’m just washing the towels more often. Besides, I may have been known to instruct a kid with a pool-induced-boogie to go wipe his/her nose on a towel. Selfishly, it’s easier to do that than to strut this mama-body out of the water and to the bathroom to get some tp. And I know, I could bring tissues, but paper products rarely enter this mind during pool-prep-time.
FYI re: the pool-induced-boogies. I teach swim lessons and, as you might imagine, the nostrils, they are a constant source of… EW. Instead of tissues, toss in a package of Bounty napkins. They are a little sturdier than tissues and won't disintegrate in wet hands.
Love your initial hooks. I should install shoe shelves in the middle of my kitchen walkway. That's where everyone takes off their shoes… 🙂
I store my daughters' clothes as outfits. I only have 9 non-dressy outfits for each of them. Even though some things could mix and match, it is much easier to keep them as a designated outfit, that way I don't end up w/ 2 non-matching pieces at the end of the week. It also makes it easy to grab an outfit when getting ready in the morning.
I fold my daughter’s match-y outfits together with shirts on the outside and pants/shorts/skirts on the inside. It usually keeps her from putting together crazy combinations, even if it does stifle her creativity a bit. Best of all it means that my husband can get our daughter dressed on the weekends! All by himself! 😉
Hi there, I have been reading your blog from the beginning and I would just like to say how much I love everything about it. The honesty, the humour and the inspiration you give me, a fellow trying-not-to-be-a-slob slob. This post has made me comment for the first time as I am baffled, you mention how you find it hard to find somewhere to dry towels as they take so long. I live in the UK where it is still something to have a tumble dryer, could you not possibly dry your towels outside? Am I missing something? Or is drying outside really such a no-no in the US?
Well now that you mention it, I’m baffled too! It honestly just never occurred to me to dry them outside. I don’t even have a clothesline. (THough I did at our last house and never used it.)
This may seem very sad but I’m so excited you replied to my comment! That is my first ever blog comment and I didn’t ever expect a reply 🙂 Moving back onto the topic, I was just thinking that since summer brings more towel drying as you go to the pool so much perhaps a small clothes horse outside for beach towels would give you more room and less laundry. I don’t actually own a tumble dryer so all of my clothes are dried on a clothes horse, I really look forward to nice days when I can hang the laundry outside.
Hehe I’m from Australia and I don’t get the dryer thing either. We do have one (in the shed) for emergencies, such as multiple wet beds, but otherwise it is always line dry in summer, clothes horse in front of the fire place in winter.
I do a small load almost every day so as not to run out of line space, so really, 4 everyday outfits would prob just about be sufficient for my boys, but I still have PILES of clothes tumbling out of the wardrobe, and they end up wearing the same things repeatedly anyway.
I’ve been inspired to do a box up today…I can handle that idea better than throwing straight out! 🙂
we use hankies – they don’t disintegrate when wet. they’re washable and reuseable. saved us quite a bit of of $ over the past 2 years. granted, they might not be well-suited to germaphobes…
oops! forgot to say i love your blog! we’ve learned so many helpful things-thanks!
totally thinking the same thing we don’t use traditional hankies. I have 7 by7 inch baby wash clothes about 80. got them to use as cloth baby wipes got way before baby arrived because of a really great deal. we use them as tissue when we have colds. softer and thinner than regular wash clothes but thicker than traditional hankies we use baby wipe box make them pop up like klenex. too much work for baby wipes but worth it for tissues
We have an over the door hook thing, that has 4 hooks on it. It works great for the beach/swim towels. The kids can hang them up themselves too!
With 4 kids getting a fresh towel for every swim, another one for every shower, a fresh cup for every glass of water, I was going nuts. So I got rid of all the towels and drinking glasses but 4 for guests. Then I assigned each child a color. Purple for oldest girl, green for younger girl, red for older boy, blue for younger boy. I bought a bath towel, a beach towel, a plastic cup, and plastic plate in their color. I do laundry once a week. If your towel is wet and smelly because you didn’t hang it up, too bad, so sad. I run the dishwasher once a day. If your cup and snack plate are dirty because you left it by the pool, you will have to wash it by hand. No more “but it’s not mine!” I know whose wet towel is on the floor, or whose cup is in the living room. After a couple times having to use a wet towel, they got very good about hanging it out to dry in the sun. And I’m not going nuts anymore.
Very smart!!! I’m all for not going nuts!!
At Christmas or Thanksgiving (when relatives and in-laws, kids and so on gather at mom and dad’s and camp out where there is space) there are a lot of towels in use and hung everywhere just from daily showers. Rather than investing in and assigning colored towels (too costly for the amount of people gathered short term, but an excellent idea otherwise) mom makes us write our names on a wooden clothespin and clip it to our respective towels when we hang them up. That way each person has a towel to reuse and we don’t run into the…hmm which one is mine…scenario.
Ps, Nony, still trying to catch up on all the old blog posts and have almost finished the podcasts. Can you ever really know just how much you’ve helped me in my day to day reasoning and detrashing/decluttering and ability to let go of things for donation or recycling? Thanks to your podcasts I’ve managed to get rid of things I’d held onto for almost 40 years of my life-without decluttering regret. (The eBay podcast, container podcast, idealism vs reality podcast…mind.blown. Very freeing.) Thank you.
Another commenter in another post said something like ‘ I don’t comment because I didn’t think you’d want to sort through an excessive amount of comments or email, etc.’ (Not a direct quote.) I feel the same way! I have so many ‘Yes! That’s exactly how I feel!’ Moments that it is tempting to comment on every post or podcast! I know this is an old post but keep up the good work. You are touching a lot of lives!
We have a very simple laundry system. I have a small laundry basket in each bedroom (about the size of a load of washing). Then when that laundry basket gets fullish – we wash that one next – we wash once or twice a day, rotating the rooms. Laundry seems to fit easily into life and never becomes an issue or overwhelming and already is already sorted for each room. Then we dump the load out on the bed in that room (from the tumble dryer) and put away straight into cupboards.
Love you honesty and openness – so refreshing! I’m a slob at heart too 🙂
Sounds like it’s going pretty good! Always growing pains in every new way of making habits.
It does sound like you need some sort of laundry line for the towels.
Since I don’t have a clothes horse or outside line, I purchased one of the expandable plastic shower curtain rods. It’s hung at the same height as the regular rod (to not bump head when in shower), but in the middle, front to back. I will put the damp from the washing machine clothes on their hanger and hang on this rod. As long as the bathroom has an air conditioner vent or exhaust fan vent so air can circulate, it works great! And, the bonus is that once dry, the clothes are already on a hanger ready to go in the closet. (Or, if you have a shower head on a move-able wand, I’ve been known to sit to take the shower so the clothes which are drying don’t get wet…. the problem is that they may stay there as an extension of the closet. But, that’s something I’ve worked on/resolved this summer with Dana’s insights/help/motivation.)