 |
Laundry...and the Dresser Dilemma Editor's Note: We have gotten so much positive feedback on our family closet features. Many readers have been excited to share their family closet solutions with us. Below is another take on the concept. We simply love this idea! It does not require a whole room, or even a large part of a room, like other versions. |
|
There is no such thing as laundry day with 7 kids...well, unless you consider every day to be laundry day! We do so much laundry, it is never ending. It seems that laundry cannot get washed faster than it gets dirtied around this house. The baby, Mister Crinkle-Nose, generally covers himself with food at every meal, so he goes through a few outfits a day. Yes, I could undress him before meals, but he is a squirmy-worm. The minute he *thinks* he will eat, he will let you know in no uncertain terms how impatient he is about eating. I did the undressing thing for about three days, and figured that changing into a new outfit once he was satiated with good food was much easier for my ears and heart. The rest of the brood don't dirty themselves that much, unless you count muddy/rainy days. Then, outfits need to be changed (so two outfit a kid=14 outfits that day). If you add the fact that they spill drinks, food or even window cleaner on themselves (while "helping" Mom), you just added a few more outfits. Let us imagine for a moment the day where the kids went to the beach. Well, you have their bathing suits (7), their towels (7 more), their previous clothes that cannot be worn because they are full of grass/sand/ice cream (7 again) and their extra clothes for after swimming (7 too). We *could* not count the baby in all of those, but generally he dirties himself probably just as much as the others, so it evens out in the end. We have pajamas for all the kids (quite a few pairs actually) but unfortunately, they end up getting dirty faster than they can be washed. I would need about 10-14 pairs of pajamas per kid if I wanted to keep up. This is mostly due to the fact that the laundry turnover rate is about 10-14 days. What this means is that if you threw a dirty sock in the pile, it would take between 10-14 days to make its sluggish way back to your laundry basket. Needless to say, some nights they just wear comfortable clothes to bed. What is the point of this you ask? Well, it is not to scare anyone away from having a big family. We are very happy to have 7 kids. We just never really considered how much laundry was multiplying per child. I mean, we have added a bit of laundry with each child, so it is only when I sit back and think about doing a bare minimum of 15 loads a week, not counting the towels/sheets/bedspreads/etc, that I think: "Wow, that's a lot of laundry!" The point is mostly to clarify how we changed this crazy situation. Assuredly, laundry has always been a pain, mostly because it does not involve only cleaning the clothes and then drying it. Nope. It also involves folding it, putting it in laundry baskets and then lugging it up two flights of stairs. Now, we could give you a bunch of excuses, but it came down to the fact that: 1- The laundry basket rarely made it upstairs, 2- If on the twilight-zone occasion it did make it upstairs, it never got put away, 3- Since it never got put away, we lived out of laundry baskets, 4- Looking for clothes in laundry baskets messes up the folding, 5- Which caused stuff to be thrown back in the dirty laundry, especially for the perfectionist child who hates to have anything wrinkled. { no names here ; ) } We came up with a solution. What if the *dressers* were on the same floor as the laundry machine? Well, this would be good. The kids are bunked up with a roommate so they have very un-matching dressers. Consider the fact that our basement is actually finished (except for the laundry room) and I was not about to stick old falling-apart dresser in our recreation room/extra living room downstairs. So what can you do then, you ask...br> Option 1 - to buy matching dressers. Nixed this idea because that would be too expensive, and dressers drawers never seem to be big enough/wide enough/deep enough/numerous enough anyways. Option 2- to build a unit against the wall that closes up. To take it one step further, what if the shelves were the perfect fit for laundry baskets? And what if we used those laundry baskets as their "drawers"? Well, this was a winning idea. So I called my dad to make up some plans on the Visio program. He always uses this program for building projects around the house; it's perfect for him. He came up with a beautiful design. Simple and solid. My dad generally builds stuff on which you could sit the biggest dumbbell weight, jump up and down on it, and never break it. His theory is that he is a working lazy intellectual. This means that he will think very hard and work very hard, so that he never has to redo anything: build it well, it will last. Good motto. It has worked well for him so far. {and me, Daddy's Little Girl, I admit it!} My hubby likes to build stuff, but his work makes him busy during the day, and weekends are super crazy around here. I worked nights so my husband was busy then also, taking care of the kids. Thankfully, my dad loves building stuff and helping out if it is possible. So during a break at his job, he spent a week banging our walls and building us *the* perfect dresser. Before we decided to build:   During *The Job* (primed doors, grey and bleh):  Yay! It is done ! (And Yes, the doors are light yellow, not white in this picture)   What do you think? This is the perfect solution! Rosie is a happily married mother to seven kids. She is French Canadian and lives with her family in Northern Canada. You can find her at her site, The Telling Mom, where she shares her tips and tricks, and blogs about live as a large family mom. 2008 - Lotsofkids.com |
I so want something like this- but we are military and move about every 2 years- either renting or in govt housing-(too much time and money to put into something you have to rip out and patch back up when you move) :(
oh well! I'm so happy for you tho :0)
-christina mom of 5
for the perfectionist child who hates wrinkles...there is a spray you can spray on your clothes that takes out the wrinkles. Generic works great for Sunday dress clothes for me :) !