We have a terrible habit in our house. The kids, when they strip off their clothes for the night, put them beside their bedroom door. The pile grows and grows until Denis and I eventually put everything in the laundry baskets that are just inside the door of our own bedroom. And then once the baskets are full and we are desperate for clean undies and socks, we’ll schlep the baskets (and the hamper Denis and I have in the master bath) down the stairs to the laundry room. I’ll do the laundry, which will then sit in the laundry baskets in our TV room until someone (usually an aggravated Denis) takes them back upstairs, folds the laundry and puts everything away.
Have I mentioned I hate folding laundry? I don’t mind washing it (although it is definitely a CHORE for me), but I *hate* folding laundry. So I am one of those “leave it in the basket until you need to wear it†type of people. It’s why my clothes are frequently wrinkled. And yet somehow I manage to survive the plague known as unironed shirts and pants (this is where my mother pipes in with her thoughts in the comments below. Enjoy, everybody!).
ANYway, we got to a point over the past few months where occasionally the kids would come into our room to strip off their clothes and throw them directly in the laundry baskets. But at least 3-4x a week there would still be a small stack of dirty clothes scattered in each kid’s doorway.
I decided enough was enough and, using $15 in Amazon gift cards that I had accrued (thank you, Swagbucks!), I bought a rolling laundry cart with three sorting bags. It has three soft bags with handles that allow us to sort whites, darks, colors. It also has an adjustable hanging bar at the top so that now I don’t have to put my drip-dry, don’t-put-this-in-the-dryer stuff over the backs of our kitchen chairs anymore! I can actually hang them up to dry in a place that makes sense!
The cart arrived via UPS on Monday night and the kids and I quickly put it together. We picked up all the dirty laundry and immediately sorted it into each bag. Then we put a laundry basket in each kid’s room. Now, when it gets full, they can bring the basket into our room and sort the clothes themselves and take the emptied basket back to their room.
The beauty of the multi-bag system is that now I don’t have to schlep ALL the laundry down. When the darks bag gets full, I can just pull it out and take it down stairs and throw everything in the wash. Each bag holds exactly one full load of laundry! Thus far the novelty has not worn off and the kids have happily put their clothes in the new sorting cart each night this week. Let’s hope that lasts longer than to the weekend. *lol*
The best part though, is the wheels on the cart go round and round! When we build (next year, please?), we’ll be building a single-level house. Having the laundry on wheels means no more having to carry (or drag) heavy laundry baskets once we build the new house! At that point I’ll probably forgo laundry baskets altogether and get another multi-bag rolling cart like this one. I’ll put that one in the kids’ bathroom and let them begin taking care of their own laundry. If that ain’t a good reason to buy a laundry cart, I don’t know what is!
