How We Tackle Laundry

There are hundreds of tips out there on how to conquer Laundry Mountain, but today I’m adding my latest insights, in the slight chance that someone else still hasn’t found what they’re looking for, and thinks like me when it comes to dealing with laundry.

The Problem

I’ve tried a lot of things over the years, but never really found a great fit. I cannot get on board with the idea of doing a load each day – I like to get everything washed and dried in one day, if possible, so that I have the rest of the week to enjoy my clean clothes and not feel like it’s a never-ending chore. I get everything clean on Monday, and do ironing on Tuesday, but it’s always been the huge pile of stuff to fold which does me in. If clean clothes start to pile up at all, it just spirals out of control.

I think it’s a mental thing – it starts looking really overwhelming, and I think it will take more time than it will, so I start to procrastinate because I don’t feel like I have the time to deal with it. Also, I like the idea of my kids helping with laundry, but my energy-conscious mind does not like the idea of everybody doing their own laundry, resulting in many little loads.

I needed a way to get everything done in one day, while still involving my kids, with absolutely no laundry piling up. I finally found what works, and it’s fantastic. I’ve stuck with it for a few months now, so I’m pretty confident this will be a long-term solution. Here’s how we do it:

Gather and Sort

Everybody rounds up their laundry on Monday morning. (I chose this day because after the weekend, I always need a day at home to regroup and get everybody back on track, so I can stay consistent with doing laundry on this day.) Sometimes the girls help me sort all the loads, depending on where we’re at with school work, our schedule for the day, etc.

Choose Your Load Wisely

I alternate highly “hands-on” loads with easy loads – sheets or towels look like a big load, but they’re faster to fold and clean up, so it gives me more time to catch up on loads that are more time-consuming and full of lots of little socks and underwear.

Separate Immediately!

To avoid laundry piling up, I’ve found that I need to sort it as I’m taking it out of the dryer. This is the key that makes everything work for me! I have a laundry basket for each kid, plus one for socks, and I throw everything into the right basket immediately. For clothes that need to be hung, I make a separate pile which goes straight to our closet. (I hang as much as possible, because it’s faster to hang it than fold it.)

All that remains on top of my washer and dryer is a very small amount of clothes belonging to Ben or me. Encouraged by how small the pile is, I’m usually very motivated to fold it right away.

Involve the Kids

The girls are responsible for folding and putting away their laundry, and pairing the socks. Everett loves to put away his laundry while I’m folding it, and we usually get all of the kids clothes cleaned up on Tuesday.

This leaves almost a full, beautiful week of no laundry to worry about, which I LOVE.

Bonus Loads

While I can’t get behind the idea of doing a load a day, I’ve found that thinking of it as “working ahead” is enough to motivate me to throw in a load or two during the week, only if I have time. Because I don’t have to do it, and I won’t get behind if I don’t, I feel like it’s an optional way for me to lighten the load for Monday, and it’s fun to feel like I’m getting clothes washed in advance. It’s all mind-games, hey?! But whatever works.:)

To Hang or Not to Hang

In the past, I’ve talked about how much I loved to air-dry all our clothing. There were two reasons for this – my laundry never piled up, because I would hang everything in closets immediately, and I wanted to save energy and money by using our dryer less. Unfortunately, after doing some research, Ben and I discovered that the energy used to remove the humidity from our house caused by drying clothes was more expensive than using the dryer! If I had a clothes line, it would make more sense, but that would be time-consuming and overwhelming, which I don’t need at this point in my life, PLUS we’ve got some allergy issues around here, and I was told not to dry clothes outside because the allergens would be on our clothes.

So, we’re back to using the dryer, and I found a way to get clothes hung immediately, and life is good.

And that’s how we deal with laundry around here! If you have any great laundry tips to add, I would love to hear them, because it’s such a huge job, so if anything can make it more manageable, we should be sharing it all over the place!

What’s your laundry routine, and why does it work for your family?

 

One Year In

Tomorrow it will be exactly a year since we moved away from Red Rock Bible Camp, and started our new adventure in Niverville.

People have been asking me how the year has been, which has gotten me thinking and reflecting. Here’s what we’re loving so far:

Friends

We are loving the people we get to live life with here in Niverville. “Community” looks different than it did at camp, but God has been so good, and has blessed us with really amazing friends. We also joined a family discipleship group and meet on a weekly basis, which has been fantastic.

I loved living with the people at camp, and I miss the way we shared life out there, but we’re starting to see how this could all work out here in “the real world”. It’s taken us a little while to get used to how different relationships happen out here, when you’re not sharing three meals a day with all your friends, but we’re happy to find that it’s still possible to become close to the people we love!

Routine

One of the hardest parts of making a major change was not knowing what our “new life” was going to look like – I just couldn’t picture it while we were still living at camp, preparing to move.

But now it feels normal and comfortable, and we still feel like “us”. We didn’t get lost in the shuffle! Which is kind of amazing, because the lifestyle at camp is quite different than anywhere else. I loved our routine out there, and how we did family. I was worried we would lose what was important to us.

But we haven’t, and although some things look a little different, we’ve been able to take what we learned at camp, and bring it with us into this new chapter.

Home

I love, love, love being at home. I love our house. But things were a bit bumpy in the beginning, which I wasn’t expecting. Since we got to choose everything about our house, I thought it would be like a dream come true to move in.

I’m not sure if it was very high, unrealistic expectations, or just the adjustment, but it took a few months for this to really feel like home. It wasn’t perfect. It was still just a house, and it didn’t magically transform my life, just because we moved in. It took some getting used to, and I felt a little lost, for awhile.

I’m done feeling lost. My roots are in. This is home. And that is a lovely feeling.

It has been a great year. I feel we have transitioned much better than I was anticipating, which is a wonderful surprise.

I am ready to dive right in to Year Two!

10 Ways to Have a Happier Morning

I love lists, and I love problem-solving.

If something is not working, chances are good that the solution can usually be found with a little bit of brainstorming, and a good list.

I’ve been doing this a lot recently, as I examine our morning routine. A bad morning routine can put everybody in such a bad mood that we’re lucky if we recover by noon.

As we’ve been making changes around here, our mornings have gradually been improving, which means we start off the day with a much happier attitude than we used to.

Here’s what’s been working for us:

1. Take care of the basics.

There is no way that I can stay calm and happy if I am not taking proper care of my body. How I sleep, what I eat, even how much water I drink, can all affect my mood. Praying desperately for some divine intervention and miraculous mothering skills is great and all, but I wonder if God sometimes thinks I should just go to bed earlier.

2. Clean up “Your Spot”.

I read once that everyone has a “spot” – that one spot in your house that makes you feel victorious when it’s clean, and defeated when it’s out of control. I didn’t think I had a spot, but it turns out that I have two: my kitchen sink/counter, and my living room floor.

If I come out first thing in the morning to a mess in those spots, I’m behind before I’ve even begun.

However, if I make sure that they’re cleaned up the night before, I come out in the morning feeling pretty fantastic about my clean house. It could be a mess in other areas, but as long as I have my kitchen counter and my living room floor, I’m good.

I highly recommend finding out what your spot is, and then protecting it like your day depends on it.

3. Get your schedule in writing.

We have a laminated chart on our fridge which Anika loves to check off each morning. I got SOOOO tired of nagging her every morning to get things done, that one day, I got some paper and markers, and I made the most thorough list I could think of. It’s even got “Clean boogers out of nose” on it. Everything that I want her to do each morning is on that list.

We have a separate list for Sundays, because we need to do different things to get out of the house for church on those days.

I still need to remind her at times to stay focused and get stuff done, but I nag a lot less than I used to.

4. Start with some quiet time.

First thing on my own schedule is getting up an hour before the girls (thank goodness they usually sleep until 8 am, I’m totally spoiled!), to spend some time reading my Bible, praying, and exercising.

I used to be very cranky in the mornings because I woke up when they woke up, and had no time to ease into my day. That is a BAD idea for me. I need my time to “wake up slowly”.

5. Pick a verse for the day.

When I’m reading my Bible, I try to pick one verse or thought to keep on my mind throughout the day. Sometimes I memorize it, sometimes I write it out and stick it on the fridge, just to keep it there to come back to again and again.

6. Turn on the music!

I don’t actually like listening to music during the day. Weird, since I love music and I’ve taught piano for years. But my favorite time to listen to it is when I’m driving, and can focus completely on listening to it.

When it’s on as I’m going about my day, I find it distracting and sometimes slightly overwhelming. With homeschooling, and housework, and everything else that demands my attention, I find there’s only so much noise I can take in at once.

However. When it comes to the mind, and learning to “take every thought captive”, music is the best way for me to be continually reminded to get things on track.

Ben’s been turning on the worship music each morning so that I won’t forget, and it makes such a big difference to have it playing. I think I could get used to the “extra noise”!
7. Plan a breakfast menu.

Giving kids a choice for what they want to eat may sound like a good idea, but it’s never worked out well for us. They always want different things, it takes so long for them to make up their minds, and the whole thing kept dragging out so long, that one day, I just quit.

I made up a breakfast menu, stuck it on the fridge, and now the girls know exactly what to expect.

It has completely cut out the complaining about what we’re eating for breakfast. It’s nothing fancy, and we usually stick to eggs, oatmeal, leftover pancakes in the toaster, that kind of thing, but it switches things up a bit, and it saves so much time.

8. Stay away from sugar.

When we were living at camp, I noticed how Anika always crashed hard, mid-morning, after those big, sugary breakfasts that were served at the lodge. It made homeschooling a nightmare, so we decided to experiment, and only allowed her to have sugar on weekends, when she didn’t have to do school.

It made such a huge difference! She eats sugar-free jam or a little bit of honey on her pancakes during the week, and it’s this big treat to get syrup on the weekends. At first, she hated it, but now it’s just normal.

I’ve noticed how it affects me, too. Usually, I have my green smoothie for breakfast, but every once in a while, when the pancakes are fresh, I’ll grab one.

And oh, my goodness – it makes me feel completely different. I cannot believe the difference in my mood. I don’t do well with carbs, especially first thing in the morning, and I find myself extremely irritable after eating anything like that.

9. Stay calm.

My movement therapist once explained to me that a muscle at rest is ready to move in any direction, at any moment. A tense muscle, on the other hand, has to relax first, before being ready to move in the new direction.

I find it’s the same with moods. When I’m relaxed and calm, and something unexpected comes up, it’s far easier to go with the flow.

But it I’m rushing around, we’re running late, my morning’s frantic and crazy, it’s only going to get crazier. I’m too tense, not ready and available to move in the direction I need to go. I’m trying to remember to take a few deep breaths, and calm down.

10. Be flexible.

I can make all the lists I want to stick on our fridge, but I cannot guarantee a perfect morning, every morning. Life happens. And that’s good – it’s the way it should be.

I need to be ready to ditch the lists, when necessary.

And maybe not every morning will be perfect, but lots of mornings are pretty good.

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I’m trying to begin each day with this verse on my mind:

This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.

How can I be glad in it?

What can I do to help things run more smoothly for my family?

In what ways do I need to become more disciplined so that I can be the wife and mom I need to be?

It’s a work in progress!

Any tips you’ve come up with over the years? I’d love to hear them!

(If you want some extra reading, Micheal Hyatt wrote a great post called How to Become A Morning Person. His first point is quite brilliant.)

More Pictures!

For those of you who actually like knowing about our lives in this much detail, here’s our afternoon schedule, along with a million pictures:

THURSDAY AFTERNOON

Getting my lunch ready to take to the lodge (my chicken was still in the oven, just in case you’re worrying that I only live on vegetables) :

On our way to the lodge:

Eating lunch:

Kaylia eating lunch/playing with spoon:

Hanging out in the lounge after lunch:

Nap time:

Rest Time – Anika lies on the couch telling stories and playing with her dolls while Kaylia naps and I read/nap/do yoga. I love it that she still talks to herself all the time!

Wake-up time – Kaylia is not her happiest when she wakes up from a nap!

Snack time – this always improves her mood. And no, she is not eating styrofoam, as I’m sure someone will ask. She loves rice cakes:

My snack (and no picture of Anika’s snack – she was eating hummus straight out of the container, and had a weird look on her face, so it didn’t turn out to be a very good picture) :

Diaper-change time:

Laundry Time:

Swing Time:

Sidewalk chalk time:

Just playing:

Bonding with Tiki time (she went and sat there all by herself) :

Playing with friends time – Anika and Chloe are pretending to be horses, and are giving Natasha a ride:

And that was our afternoon!

Even though I only took pictures in the afternoon, I still ended up taking 96 pictures! Don’t tell Ben. He thinks I’m out of control…

Week of Pictures

So I’ve decided to change things a bit for this whole “Week in the Life” project I’m doing right now. I’m thinking of making Wednesday the Morning Routine Day, today is Afternoon Routine, and tomorrow is Evening Routine. I’m getting far too many pictures, and can’t use them all anyway. This way will be more manageable, and it was the routine part of our lives that I wanted to focus on anyway.

Here’s our morning routine:

WEDNESDAY

Anika always wakes up first. When I get up every morning and peek in her room, this is what I see:

And this is what I see every morning when I go into Kaylia’s room (except that her eye looks funny in this picture…) :

Getting breakfast ready – no crust for Kaylia (rye bread is kinda tough that way!):

My daily bowl of porridge, always with chopped pecans:

Kaylia playing on our exercise bike while I make our bed:

Getting ready for the day:

Time to start homeschool:

Time to get feed Kaylia crackers so that she’ll sit quietly for a few more minutes of school:

Spelling on the floor with puzzle pieces:

Kaylia looking at books while I finish up spelling with Anika:

All the random objects that Kaylia carried around the house yesterday morning (she has a toothbrush/toothpaste fetish) :

Time to go outside! Kaylia’s favorite words are “side” (outside) and “shoe”, which she says over and over while we’re getting ready. Anika took this picture:

In the stroller:

Anika gets ready to go outside much faster that Kaylia and me, so she’s always waiting on the swings for us:

We collected leaves and flowers to press for making bookmarks later in the week:

And that was our morning! Pretty typical, which is exactly what I wanted! I’m just missing a picture of the girls saying good-bye to Ben as he leaves for work.