Our Large Family Laundry System (Tips and Tricks With Kids)

As a mom of 5 (and counting!), we go through a lot of laundry each week. Especially during the summer months when our kids are playing outside more often and getting dirty.

I’ve tried a lot of different methods over the years to simplify our laundry routine, and the biggest thing I’ve learned is this: 

There is no one-size-fits-all large family laundry system. What works for some will not work as well for others. 

The more kids we have, the less time I have to create a Pinterest-worthy laundry room: complete with labeled sorting hampers and laminated signs on each basket with our kids’ names.

So if that’s what you came here for, sorry to disappoint you.

BUT, I hope you’ll stick around regardless, because I’m going to share the large family laundry system that’s made my life as a minimalist mama so much easier and less stressful.

If you’re struggling with how to keep up with laundry as large family, then this post is for you!

As our kids get older, I know that our methods will likely change over time. So with any large family laundry system, it’s important to be open and adapt as needed.

At the end of the day, my goal is to empower you to create your own large family laundry system – a routine that works best for your lifestyle, whether you:

• Have kids in team sports and need to wash dirty uniforms every day.
• Are newly postpartum and drowning in spit-up soaked baby onesies
• Have toddlers who are night-training and wet the bed often 
• Or are just plain overwhelmed by the sheer amount of washes needed to keep their laundry baskets from overflowing each week.

Large Family Laundry System Tip #1: Get organized.

This might look different for everyone.

Some homes are built with large laundry rooms that have multiple shelves and cabinets, space for sorting hampers, a folding counter, a pull-down ironing board, and more.

If that’s you, congratulations! You’re already more equipped than I am in this area. 

We have a small(ish) laundry room with a few cabinets over the washer and dryer and a small countertop with a sink for soaking stained clothes.

There isn’t really space for a laundry sorter, and to be honest, I probably wouldn’t use one if there was.

Our kids destroy their clothes so quickly, and as a busy mom, I don’t have time to worry about sorting them into piles by dark, bright, or light colors. I just throw them all into the machine and wash them with cool water.

In ten years, after doing probably hundreds of loads of laundry, we’ve had maybe one or two instances where colors bled. And that only happened when we washed something new and brightly colored with some of their light-colored clothes.

So I’m careful not to do that anymore, but for the most part, I’ve found that we can wash all of their old clothes together without separating lights from darks. 

I will add this caveat though – we actually don’t keep bleach in our house. If you’re the type who likes their whites to stay bright white, then you’ll likely want to bleach those loads, which means you’ll have to separate them out unless you’re using color-safe bleach.

If you are someone who prefers to sort your laundry based on color: I recommend the following large family laundry system process:

• Designate one day of the week as laundry day. 
• Bring everyone’s dirty laundry into a single area, and sort it into piles – one pile for each load. Most people have more dark/bright colors than light colors, so you can probably combine all of your kids’ light-colored clothes into a single load, and wash their darks separately – one load per child.
• Make laundry your #1 priority on this day! Move wet clothes from the washer to the dryer and fold each load as soon as it’s done drying. Be sure to put away each load as soon as it’s folded. This way, you’ll be able to keep up. 

My personal opinion is that sorting makes things way too complicated and is largely unnecessary.

(I say this as someone who enjoys the finer things in life and doesn’t buy cheap clothes, so yes, I am motivated to take care of them and make sure they last.)

But I used to sort my laundry way back in the day, and I honestly didn’t notice much of a difference in terms of how well our clothes held up when I sorted them vs now. 

If you’re like me and NOT into the whole sorting thing: you’ve already simplified your life (good job!) 

In our household, we have one basket designated for each person that’s kept in their closet. This serves as each person’s laundry hamper. When those baskets fill up, it’s time to wash! 

I find this much easier than putting laundry into color piles. All of our children have their own baskets, and we have additional baskets for towels.

Not sorting your laundry allows for more flexibility since you don’t have to wait for each sorting hamper to fill up. In that case, this next tip might be tremendously helpful for saving your sanity. It definitely has been for me.

Tip #2: Do one load of laundry every day.

It might sound daunting at first, but trust me, this is a life-changing laundry hack! Doing one small load a day means you won’t be overwhelmed with a mountain of laundry at the end of the week.

While I do enjoy “batching” certain tasks in life (like writing new blog posts), laundry feels a lot less stressful when I don’t have piles of it sitting around.

When I’m surrounded by clutter, whether its dishes in the sink, Legos on the floor, or dirty clothes in baskets, I literally can’t function.

There’s something about taking things in bite-sized chunks that makes them feel a lot less overwhelming, and laundry is one of those things. When you keep up with it on a regular basis, you feel more productive and accomplished. For me, that’s important, because I’m happier. And when I’m happy, my family’s happy.

So, how exactly do you go about doing one load of laundry every day? Here’s our simple step-by-step process:

1. Make your family’s laundry part of your morning routine. Pick one basket of dirty clothes from the closets and put it into the washing machine when you wake up. I usually go with whichever person’s basket is the fullest.
2. Move the wet, clean clothes to the dryer before dinner. 
3. Fold the dry laundry after the kids go to bed. This is a great way to wind down and one of those easy household chores you can do while you watch TV. With hubby’s help, I have each load folded in less than 30 minutes. 
4. Put it away the next morning. 
5. Rinse, and repeat (pun intended). 

With this system, I’m able to rotate through the younger kids’, older kids’ and my own laundry during the week days, plus a load of towels and sheets on the weekends. (We try and change all the bed linens in our house at the same time so we can wash them in just two or three loads.

My husband washes his own laundry. I guess I got lucky with that one… :) 

Tip #3: Have the kids help out.

Young kids love to help with the household, and it’s a great idea to teach them while they still have that desire! Whenever my toddlers see me folding laundry, they ask to help me. (This makes my mama heart so proud!) 

We use pods for laundry detergent, and my youngest son, who’s under 2, likes to throw it in the washing machine. He also enjoys helping me transfer the wet clothes from the washer to the dryer once they’re done washing.

Often, when I’m folding dry clothes, I’ll let my kids help out with the smaller easy items, like washcloths or underwear. They also enjoy making a game out of matching the socks in each load.

This is a great, real-life homeschooling lesson; they’ll get experience sorting and matching colors and patterns while doing something productive that actually helps out the household. It’s also a great way to spend some quality time with your kids. Win-win!

I’m a bit OCD when it comes to folding and organizing laundry, so sometimes, I find myself re-folding a lot of what they folded. But I wait until they’re not looking or no longer in the room. I don’t ever want them to feel like their effort wasn’t helpful. The fact that they even want to help makes me so happy. I’m sure it won’t last, so I’ll soak it up for as long as I can!

I imagine our heavenly Father probably feels the same way about us. If we’re honest with ourselves, we don’t really “help” God, but even having a heart to please him through our actions probably makes him proud.

Isn’t it so cool how he blesses us with children who teach us more and more about His nature–and simultaneously, our own–every day?

Tip #4: Invest in a high quality washer and dryer.

This is a must if you’re looking to create a large family laundry system to simplify life with lots of kids.

Chances are, you’ll be doing multiple loads at once and you need to have enough space to fit all the clothes in without overloading it. If you fill it with too many clothes, it may not be as effective at cleaning everything, so make sure your loads aren’t too big.

We have LG machines and they’re large enough to fit an entire king-sized comforter. 

High-quality machines are also able to do things like sanitize, which is important if you’re dealing with underwear, cloth diapers, or even clothes soiled by spit-up or baby poop. 

Tip #5: Presoak soiled and stained clothing.

I’m a big fan of OxiClean – we use it on every load as part of our large family laundry system routine. But you could also use Borax or vinegar to help break up stains before washing a load. If your washer has a presoak or prewash option with each cycle, that makes things even easier.

This is especially important if you have little boys who play sports or just like to get muddy. (Or if you have messy eaters like we do who always seem to think their clothes are a napkin.)

One of the best decisions we ever made was investing in a laundry room sink! There’s something soaking in it almost every day of the week now, since our youngest is potty training.

Tip #6: Consider a no-fold laundry system for your kids.

I know it sounds crazy. This is actually not something I’ve done. But I’ve seen people talk about it on social media, and it sounds like a real game changer for a large family laundry system. 

Basically, the argument is that kids are going to mess up their clean laundry anyway. They tend to rifle around in their dresser drawers when trying to find whatever they want to wear each day. Since those nicely folded clothing piles never last very long, you might as well adopt a no-fold system and not fold their laundry at all.

One mom was saying she has her kids put their own load of laundry away and gives them the option to either fold it or don’t. Chances are, they’re just going to shove those clothes right in, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not like friends and family are going to go through your closets and dressers when they come over, right? 

If you’re so overwhelmed with taking care of your household that you don’t have time to fold laundry, it’s worth considering the alternative – just put it away without folding it at all. 

I admit, I’ve always been way too much of a neat freak to do this, but now that we have baby #6 on the way, I may just have to try it one day soon.

Tip #7: Rotate clothes each season.

We have a spare closet full of bins that contain all our children’s out-of-season clothes. At the beginning of the spring/summer, we’ll switch out the fall/winter clothing in their closets with what’s in the bins, and vice-versa once fall/winter rolls around.

If we kept all of their clothes for every season within reach, they’d have so many clothes and would probably change outfits more often. (For some reason, our kids, especially the younger ones, like to change 5 times a day. Anyone else have kids that do this???)

The fewer clothes they have to wear, the less laundry you have to fold. Since they’ll run out of clothes more quickly, you’ll probably have to do laundry more often, but that’s not hard if you’re following the ‘one small load a day’ routine.

And if your kids are running out of options to wear, that just forces you to keep up with the laundry and not get lazy (which prevents it from piling up so much!)

Tip #8: Stick to low-maintenance fabrics.

I can’t remember the last time I pulled out our ironing board. I’m pretty sure it’s been collecting dust on the top of our laundry room cabinets since we moved into our current house over one year ago. 

Our large family laundry system includes this rule: don’t buy clothes that are prone to wrinkles and will likely need ironing. I also avoid “Dry Clean Only” labels like the plague, and we keep the “Hand Wash Only” items to a minimum as well.

With multiple kiddos, who has time to iron shirts and the extra space to lay wet clothes out so they can air-dry? 

I know I don’t.

Tip #9: Consider investing in professional laundry services.

Time is money, and some people have more cash than hours to spend. If that’s you, then it may be worth investing in a professional laundry service.

There are companies (like this one) that will pick up your laundry, wash it for you, and deliver it to your doorstep, clean and neatly folded. (It’s basically a done-for-you large-family laundry system.)

While I’ve never spent money on this, I have used a local cloth diaper service before – after our first child was born. It definitely made things easier when adjusting to life with a newborn. The convenience of not having to worry about washing soiled diapers every other day was really nice, especially since the process often requires multiple washes. 

If you don’t have the budget to pay for a service on a regular basis, it may still be something to consider during periods of transition, like when you’re newly postpartum or dealing with sickness for a long period of time.

You could even pay a family member to come over and help you during those periods. My mom is here three days a week and often helps with folding laundry.

Tip #10: Create your own laundry process.

As I stated at the beginning of this post, the best laundry system for large families is the one that works for your unique lifestyle. 

I’ve shared these tips in the hopes that you’ll feel a bit more empowered to use them and create a large family laundry system that suits your household and makes life a lil’ easier.

Embracing the ‘Twenty-Four Six Life‘ is all about living as our Creator intended. His Word states that we are to work six days a week and rest on the 7th – the Sabbath Day, which is to be remembered and kept holy (Exodus 20:8). 

Having an organizational system in all areas of life, even one as simple as your family’s laundry, helps us to keep that commandment.

So I hope you’ll take as much as you can from this list, make it your own, and use it to help you embrace a lifestyle of holiness, even in the most seemingly mundane tasks!