The New Addition to My Laundry Room

As I was working in my laundry room tonight, I suddenly realized that I had neglected to blog about a wonderful change that was recently made in that room.  Now I won't blame you one bit if you don't get as excited as me about this change; my enthusiasm will more than make up for what you lack, believe me.    ;-)  But here it is, a fantastic new friend in my laundry room...

 A rack.  A laundry rack.  Gorgeous, isn't it?  ;-)

With being a stay-at-home mom, I obviously spend quite a bit of time on household tasks; and because of that, I like to learn how to do those tasks well: efficiently and joyfully.  I'm always interested in reading and hearing how other people manage the "systems" that run a home; and often when I become acquainted with a new idea, I analyze it to see if it would work for me and bring some benefit to my home and family.

So it is with laundry.  I've heard from several sources about a family closet--one room (or closet, if it's quite large) of the home where all the family's clothes are stored, rather than being divvied about in various dressers and closets in all the bedrooms.  With a family closet, you do the laundry, carry it all to one place, and put it away in one fell swoop, simplifying the process and saving time.  I like that idea!  But there's one downfall:  it wouldn't work for us because we don't have a room or closet that we could devote to that.

Another idea I ran across, however, was to have bins in the laundry room for each person in the family, so that the clothes belonging to that person could be immediately folded and put into that bin until the person put his/her own clothes away.  I contemplated that and decided that it could work very nicely for us.  After all, we're blessed with a laundry room that's large enough for such an endeavor; and, even more importantly, having the boys (just Josiah and David, at this point in time) be responsible to put their own clothes away would not only help me out but also train them in one more step along the path to maturity.

When I first ran the idea by Jeff, I was thinking of getting some wooden shelves to hang on the wall to hold the bins...or, alternatively, using some boards we already have and sawing them to the right length before painting them and attaching them to the wall.  Of course, I wouldn't be the one actually doing the work.  ;-)  Since Jeff would, I was eager to hear what he thought.  He came up with an even better idea: using this wire rack that had been out in the root cellar/pottery shed.  Perfect!  It didn't cost anything, and it saved us (him) the trouble of figuring out how to securely anchor shelves into the wall so that if an over-eager boy pulled on them, they wouldn't come tumbling down.

When he pulled this rack out of the root cellar, it was filthy: covered with cobwebs and smelling of mice.  The first thing we did was leaving it out in the rain and letting nature wash it for us.  :)  Then Jeff kindly painted it white for me (it was black originally), and it was ready to move into the laundry room.

I had gotten these bins at the dollar store and had a lot of fun one evening making labels for them.  For Josiah, his name in purple (his favorite color) and a picture of a runner, since that is one of Josiah's latest interests.  David got a soccer player and his name in green (his favorite color).  For Tobin Bear, what else could I choose but a picture of a teddy bear?  :)  Tobin's name is supposed to be yellow (his favorite color), but our printer didn't work very well and spit forth a green-yellow instead.  Shav always says his favorite color is red, so I used that for his name; but since he doesn't correctly identify colors yet with any consistency, who knows whether that will really remain his favorite color.  At any case, it's different than the other boys, so I went ahead and used it...along with a cute picture of a baby tiger.  If you're wondering about our daughter's bin, I'll let you know that yes, she already has one, labeled with her name and a picture of a flower; but in the photo above, I turned her bin around so you couldn't see the label.  Can't give away that secret yet, you know.  ;-)

Where are the bins for Jeff and I?  Well, our clothes are obviously bigger and wouldn't fit into a bin very well, so I just fold them and put them in one of our laundry baskets until I carry them upstairs to put them away.

I've been using this system for a couple of weeks now, and I'm quite pleased with it.  Anything that helps with such a integral part of family life makes me happy; and since, as a family of six-almost-seven, we make a lot of laundry, I might as well figure out a way to enjoy it while I do it!  :)

The other thing that makes me happy about this is the cost: for the whole project, I spent just a little over seven dollars.  A dollar each (plus tax) for the five bins, and about a dollar each for the two cans of white spray paint that I bought.  Without a doubt, it was money well spent!