Try these easy ideas for storing and organizing clothes. They’ll save you time and money and make it easier dealing with your laundry!
Storing And Organizing Clothes
It’s that time of year when we are hauling out the winter clothes and putting away the summer ones. Trish submitted the following question so I will try to give you some pointers and at the same time I answer her.
I have 4 small children and am always way behind. Do you have separate bins for each child and wash each person’s pile separately? Do you limit clothes for each person?
Another is storage of clothes… I try top separate clothes by size but find myself finding a dress at goodwill for the winter and it gets thrown wherever. Should I have a misc bin to organize clothes to put away for later? Thanks sooo much!
-Trish
I usually wash everyone’s clothes together. If I am washing dark clothes that day, I gather up everyone’s darks and wash those. It seems like if I do just one person’s clothes at a time someone else is running short by the time I get around to them. You shouldn’t have so many clothes for each person that you are able to wait until it is that person’s time for darks, lights, etc. If you do, you have way too many clothes to be dealing with. Cut back on the clothes and wash everyone’s clothes together.
For a family of your size you should be doing about 2 loads of laundry every day (weekdays). That should more than help you keep up with it. If you find it isn’t, then you need to get your family to cut back on the amount of clothes they are wearing each day.
Check out my list here regarding how many clothes each person should have. Each person can wear the same pair of jeans a couple of times at least and if an item isn’t dirty don’t wash it. Of course, the exception is if you have a bed wetter, a baby in cloth diapers, or someone who has been ill. Those circumstances might cause you to have to wash a couple of extra loads of laundry a week.
Storing Clothes
- Sort through one person’s clothes each day. If you sort more than that, you can easily get overwhelmed.
- Be ruthless. Get rid of as much as possible. Toss or use for rags clothes that are in poor shape and give the rest away. Don’t keep your five prom dresses, your fat dresses and your skinny dresses. By the time you get into them again they will be out of date so toss them.
- You can keep 2-3 “memory” dresses and get rid of the rest. That goes for baby clothes, too. If you still can’t bring yourself to get rid of them at least make them into a quilt, pillows or something useful. I had a favorite formal dress that I loved but it was outdated. I made throw pillows for my living room and a cover for my Bible out of it. I enjoy it much more now than when it was in my closet collecting dust and I still have the memory.
- Limit everyone’s clothes. No child needs more than five pairs of everyday shorts, four church outfits, etc. The same goes for moms. You don’t need 5 pairs of black pants. If you are doing laundry the way you should, you won’t run out of clothes and you will find that you will keep up on the laundry better because it is not so overwhelming and out of control.
- Let the clothes go. Make a list of what each person really needs. If you have 4 church outfits, that means that you could wear a different dress for a month and not wear the same thing. Two pair of black pants should be enough, one to wear while the other is in the wash. Five pairs of pajamas is more than plenty for an older child. They could really get by with fewer if they wear the same pair for 3 nights in a row.
- Once you have reduced things down to as small an amount as you can, you can figure out the storage situation. Keep your winter clothes separate from your summer clothes, especially for kids. A little girl will grab her red velvet swirly dress when the temperature is hitting 100 but if it is stored away it is out of sight, out of mind.
- Regarding storing children’s clothes: It is better to store kids’ clothes by sizes or, if you only have one boy and one girl, you can store by gender. The miscellaneous box is the way that Tawra does it. She has a box and sometimes a shelf where she stores the new finds and then when that box gets full she sorts them into their proper sized boxes.At one point, Tawra had a large laundry room. She kept 3 large plastic storage containers in the laundry room by the washer and used one for each child. Then, the clothes could just be put into their bins as they were washed fresh from the garage sale.You could also keep a box or things stacked on a higher shelf in the child’s room. That way, when you put away the child’s regular clothes, you can lay the bigger size or garage sale find on the high shelf. Just try different ways and see what works best for you.Again, keep the number of clothes you save to a minimum. No little girl needs 10 summer dresses stored away. And unless you have your clothes and the space super well organized, it isn’t always best to store all of your 11 year old’s clothes for 10 years waiting for his one year old brother to grow up. Considering the fact that I can outfit a child for a whole season for $10 – $15 or less from garage sales, it really doesn’t pay to store these things that long, especially if I don’t have the space.
There are a few exceptions, like a special heirloom item, an extra expensive piece of clothing, things like little boys’ expensive suits or a special something handmade by auntie or grandma.
Be ruthless. If you need even more help dealing with laundry, organizing and cleaning, you might want to check out our How To Organize And Clean Your Home e-books, which include an entire e-book just dealing with clothes and laundry, which includes many more tips like this in it.
-Jill
The How To Organize And Clean Your Home ebook set includes 3 ebooks to make it easy to organize your home, eliminate clutter, conquer the laundry pile and reduce your stress with better organization. Learn more here!
This may not work for others but I find it very handy. We are a very casual family so we don’t have many “dress clothes” at all. I hang each pair of pants with a top on the same hanger. This cuts the hangers in half. I can see Jill and Tawra freaking about not wearing the same pair of pants more than once but this actually works well for us as we all change out of our school and work clothes as soon as we get home. The selected outfit gets put back on the hanger at the end of the day and the hanger is hung backwards in the closet so we know it’s been worn once already. On the second wearing, I decide whether it is too dirty to wear again or not. It may seem confusing but it actually works well. I end up doing 5 loads of laundry per week max for a family of 3 with this system…whites, mediums, darks, towels and sheets. Wednesdays seem to be good for laundry days for me so it all gets done at one shot. It’s all dry by Thursday evening (all of it hang dried) and put away so my home doesn’t look like a laundromat for the weekend.
Also, we each have 2 pair of warm jammies and 2 pair of cool jammies and that is all we need. As for seasonal storage, as long as we keep the amount of clothing we have cut down to minimums, we find that we don’t need to store away seasonal stuff.
It sounds like you have a really good system. I’m not even “freaking out” :) :). Actually that is the way I do it too. We would wear an outfit and then come home and change.
I didn’t do the hanger idea which I think is a good one. I did it some what for my kids for their school clothes but I don’t do it for mine just because I am a mix and match freak. I don’t wear the same two pieces together most of the time so it is hard for me to do that.
What I love most about your comment is that you have a very good system in place and one that is working great and that is the whole object.
I also like it you have your clothes down to a minimum. It drives me crazy to see on TV people who have a closet the size of my bedroom and say they still don’t have enough room for their clothes!!! :):)
Jill
My Mom made us change out of school or church clothes to play clothes. I did the same with my daughter. It gets so cold here in the Northeast I have to store winter clothes. Sweaters, long sleeve tops, warm pants, coats, hats, gloves scarfs boots have to be put away in the sping. I don’t have big closets.
What do you do if you live in a town home where there is no closet on the main floor you walk into where the kitchen and living room is? There is no front hall closet and no where to put coats etc so they pile up on a chair or couch.
I most of the time never had a closet by my door or any closets at all. What I have done is have a hall tree (you can get just tall narrow one), my mom use to have a small 3 ft wide little bench by the door that she just laid them on, sometime people years ago use to take the people’s coats and lay them in the bedrooms, or you could get a board with large hooks to put behind the door or somewhere near it.
the page: http://http//www.livingonadime.com/articles/how-many-clothes.html is not working :(
Thanks for letting us know. I think it is fixed now.
Jill
Jill those house hunter shows that women curl their noses up at not enough closet space and I swear they are the size of my now guest room and bigger.
I have 2 and a 1/2 useable closets in my house.
One in our bedroom and one in my husbands office come hobby room. The one in our bedroom is just barely wide enough for a coat hanger to sit on the rack. Not the greatest but until we decide to rip out the entire room not much point in complaining.
My 1/2 closet in my husbands room has gun cases and filing cabinets in one side so the other side holds his suits ties and my few go to meeting clothes. All in travel cases for suits. Just take a peek and see which outfits are in each one and grab the one we want. Even have dress shoes in the shoe slots.
The one in the mud room has winter coats, and spring coats all the time. We need the winter ones when we go boating and fishing on Lake Superior which is always cold. The hunting coats (bright orange) do get taken to the basement where they are stored hanging along with the other orange things for hunting and the life jackets.
But I do wish I had more closets with doors.
We wear mostly t shirts and jeans or slacks so only the jeans have to be on hangers so I use the pant hangers for my husbands. Am looking for a few more since those are handy.
I also use wooden hangers with the bar across the bottom since they are sturdier and can have slacks or a skirt on them along with a top if I run out of hangers.
I also keep my wool in that closet using a shoe storage bag that hangs. Keeps the cat from stealing the balls of wool and my circular needles.
I am slowly getting rid of my fat clothes and I feel sort of like my mom when we would ask why she didn’t get rid of some of her old dress up dresses. She said if she got rid of them her closet would look empty and she would feel poor. She is 80 now and has gotten rid of a lot of things but you can still see it in her eyes that she wants lots of possessions but doesn’t want to have to pack them from home to Florida for the winter.
Sometimes it is all a mind set. But I am getting out of that mind set, at least I hope I am.
Our family includes a mom, dad and 4 children ages 5 and under. I can keep up with the laundry at 1 load a day with the exception of Mondays when I try to wash the sheets. I think 2 loads a day seems a little much.
I agree Amy. I had a family of 4 and I usually did 1 load each of whites, darks and lights plus a load of sheets a week. A lot of people do way more then to loads so I gave them a number that was reasonable and they could ease into. Plus that was only during the week and that included the sheets in with that too.
Also it makes a difference the size washer you have. In my old washer 2 loads in mine would equal 1 load for Tawra in her larger washer. There are often many factors we need to take into consideration that is why I say each family and situation is very different.
I have mixed feelings about being too aggressive in eliminating clothing. I have a very nice wardrobe of clothes I purchased over the last 15 years that I feel I will need, use and enjoy over the next several years and of course they are paid for which means I do not have to spend money on clothing at all for a long time. With prices continually increasing I think of this as an investment. Many of the clothes I purchased came from thrift stores so I did not pay that much for them but I was very lucky to find high end clothes.
With our economy so poor I wonder if thrift stores will continue to be the “goldmines” they have been for so many years?? I have stored some basic things like pants and shoes for later so I am prepared. I like clothes a lot and I am probably a bit like “grandmas” mom but if I can keep my things organized I guess it is okay. Are you concerned about the future of thrift shops for those of us who are frugal? I just have a feeling that people will hold onto their things longer and not shop so impulsively anymore…which of course benefited those of us who took advantage of that.
Janice I am not too worried about the thrift stores. They have been around for a long time and even during the depression they still had “thrift” type stores and we are no where near that bad of shape yet.
If you keep things organized and they aren’t taking over your home then there is nothing wrong with storing things. I am mostly talking to people who have so much stuff they don’t even remember what they have and in many cases they can’t take care of their homes or families as well because of the stuff taking over their lives.
The other thing too is when keeping mounds of stuff becomes an emotional thing. If we keep it because of fear, for security or because we are missing emotional things in our lives then we need to seriously look at ourselves and try to deal with what the real problem is because we are trying to solve an emotional problem with physical things. It would be like giving a man who is dying of thirst in the desert a great big hug and thinking that is going to help him. You are giving him something emotional when physical water is what he needs.
We can never be happy if we are always trying to make ourselves emotionally happy and secure with things. Now that is not to say there is anything wrong with having things to make our physical bodies more comfortable but we all have to make sure that is why we are keeping it all and not as I said to soothe our feelings of fear and insecurities.
As far a being afraid of what the future will be I don’t worry about it too much. Part of the reason we have this web site is to teach people that if the worst does happen how to be equipped to deal with life when you have absolutely nothing. To learn how to handle your money, get out of debt, how to cook, sew, garden, do home repairs etc. Your knowledge and life skills maybe be all you have some day. Not even your college education can always help. You could lose everything in an instant. Your house could burn and you find your insurance had lapsed or won’t cover it so you could lose all of those things you store in an instant.
Those types of things have happened to me so I know from experience it is better to learn to how to live when you have nothing left. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t have an emergency store of food etc. but I don’t count on that or put all of my eggs in one basket.
I have to say that before I read your site, I had a real problem getting rid of my children’s outgrown toys. I just could not separate myself emotionally from them and I felt like I was saying goodbye to that part of their childhood. Also I’m very sentimental and attached to things–my husband gave me this necklace on that anniversary; my grandmother wore this ring; and so on–and that didn’t help when getting rid of mountains of toys either. But as so often, something you wrote clicked with me about saying a prayer over the object before letting go of it, and I’ve gotten a lot better about it.
Janice my father was an alcoholic manic depressed mentally abusive man so I think my mother held onto the nice clothes until they fell apart to try and remember the good times when my father would take her out and buy her a nice dress to attend meetings where he was the big shot guest.
When he died she changed a lot in her thinking and her habits.
I am the opposite. I hate holding onto things and I hate buying them in the first place. I don’t hold onto things for the memories except a few things my children made in school. It is my husband who is the pack rat. I think the Japanese style home is the way to go.
The house car and boat insurance are one of the two bills that are taken out of the account every month before anything else. That way anything we lose is replaces.
Life insurance is the other. If they are paid then every thing else is more flexible. Hydro you can tell them to wait a week or two or pay part of the bill but insurance is the biggest necessity.
Storage!
With times turning tough or little finances coming my husband and I are trying to cut back on bills. We kept talking about this and I realized one day about our storage bill every month. I am now trying to let things go from my storage either bring it back home, toss it or leave it in storage. We have 2 small storage units. My goal is to have only 1. I am actually enjoying obtaining space in the storage and saving $ at the same time.
Good show Amy. We have several readers who have decided to seriously dig away at their piles and the more the dig the better they feel and more excited they get. I love it. I have written a huge book on organizing and cleaning (way bigger then Dining) but have never printed it because I couldn’t get the chapters “organized” right. HA!HA! What a crack up.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned eBay yet! I get I would say 90% of my clothes from eBay – OK, I’ve had a few disappointing purchases where they have been too big or too small but I sell those on and recoup the money. I normally pay between 99p and a couple of quid for my tops and blouses and find the quality of clothes is so much better for much less money. On the odd time I’ve gone into town to look for something I’ve found they charge the earth for, basically, rubbish, compared to the good stuff I can get on eBay for pennies!
Oh I do find I have far too many clothes, but end up wearing the same items most of the time…….so I admit I do need to have a real good clearout very soon!!!!
I am surprised no one mentioned Flylady.net. She is the queen of decluttering. It’ s a very helpful website for conquering clutter and figuring out what to save and store.
I’ve just read my post from Oct 22nd – well it’s virtually a month to the day, and I STILL haven’t started my clearout yet! LOL
Just wanted to share with you. I am now storage free! After two months of going through my two small storage units and taking some of your advice from living on a dime. Everything is in my small apartment now. We are a family of five. It is still crowed in here and every day I am letting things go. Giving them away, tossing it, or trying to make some $ from it all. Also two less bills!
Wow!!! That’s wonderful!!
Hi all!!
I have recently started washing clothes by the room they go in. For example, my two oldest daughters (6 and 3) share a room. Their clothes go in the same hamper. I wash their clothes once a week ( the same as it would be if I did laundry on the weekends). What I find (and the reason I started doing laundry this way) is that because all the clothes come from the same room…I take them out of the dryer in their hamper, take them to their bedroom, fold them and put them away, set their hamper back in place and it’s done. I was having great difficulty getting everything put away because I was have to go to five different places to put 1 load of laundry away. I also have a 1 year old, and then my husband and myself. I was so excited about the fact that it WORKS!! My husband has even noticed that we’re not drowning in laundry (clean, mostly) all the time. Thanks for the inspiration to think outside the box a little. Happy Thanksgiving!!
Great job Amy!
Hi! Just wanted to make a clarification, as I would never hear the end of it from my mother, if I don’t :-) I posted a comment a few days ago in which I said that I wash my two older daughter’s clothes, take them out of the dryer into their hamper, fold, and then put them away. The clarification is that I don’t wash them ALL in the same load:-) Usually two loads depending on the clothes that were worn, usually lights and darks. Hopefully, this will save my ears…LOL!
I really lucked out about 1 & 1/2 years ago. My room-mate & I often check out all the thrift stores on Saturday morning. One place had a Captains platform (6 drawers of storage under your bed), for only $7! Extra bonus, it raises up my mattress & boxspring, so it is WAY easier to get out of bed in the morning.
I just thought you all might find this story kind of funny. Click the link below if you can’t the picture in the posting.
http://mylitter.com/mylitter/something-extremely-disturbing-look-away-faint-of-heart/
Something EXTREMELY Disturbing… Look away, faint of heart!
by Tiffany on September 29, 2011
I realize that many of you have no idea what you are looking at. Those of you with children, especially ones with 7 or with a lot of girls who change clothes a few times a day, or even those of you who have 1 little boy who changes 10,873 times a day, will recognize this as a pile of laundry. If you have never seen laundry like this, do not judge. Just be glad it is not your house!
The saddest part about this pile of laundry is that it is actually CLEAN laundry. Or was. See, in our house laundry has a cycle this is how it goes…
■Buy clothing from store.
■Sometimes it gets washed before it is worn, but mostly not.
■Child #3,5 and 6 wears it, not once, but usually a MANY times.
■Child #1,#2,#4 and #6 wears it for a few hours and then finds something else.
■Clothing is thrown on the floor for a few days.
■Child/ren is yelled at for another few days to clean up room.
■Older children run out of clothing and finally do their own. Only to leave them in the wash until they smell or in the dryer until another child tosses them onto the floor so they can put theirs in the dryer.
■I finally gather up clothing to wash when the 3 year old is out of underwear and has to wear his sister pink ones. Or when we finally realize that he has been going commando…
■I wash 17 loads in one day and because I am doing them in between baseball, cleaning the kitchen, blogging, cleaning up bathrooms, paying bills, etc. I start tossing them on the love seat in hopes that someone will fold them later onto the couch.
■They never get folded.
■People start grabbing clothes off the couch for the next few days. In my head I try and make time to fold clothes.
Finally, it is raining and lightening and I come home from work hoping to curl up on the couch with a good book and relax. Instead, I wonder if the pile has finally started to come alive and fold itself! It’s a Christmas Miracle! No, it is actually the dog who has made himself at home on my clean clothes that he pulled off the couch and apparently wants me wash again!!
Then the cycle starts all over again!
Please tell me for your sake that I am the only one who hates laundry, and has to see something this horrendous in my home on a weekly basis?!!!!
I totally love that post!! Thanks to Jaime! hahaha! Sounds like my house. I do about 2-3 loads a day. We have 6 people in our family, but my husband works out daily. He includes a sauna/steamroom in his routine and his clothes are completely drenched. He brings them home after work and they need to be washed immediately (they don’t smell very lovely). Plus he has work clothes, and then either clothes or pjs. His pile of clothes is 3x as big as anyone else in our house. I wash and dry all the laundry hoping someone will fold it. Everyone in the family looks through baskets and the dryer looking for their clothes, but no one will fold it (unless I ask, but then they are usually folded pretty terribly and have to be REFOLDED by the person putting them away).
I just folded 4 loads and then realized the dryer was full too. Then I just wanted to cry ;)
Ah, but someday I will only do 2-3 loads a week. Until then I will just grin and bear it!!!
You’re welcome, Angela D.
New to the website, but love reading through the comments posted by problem-solvers! Here are two procedures I’ve implemented since my son was born was born four years ago.
1). I don’t fold his clothes. I keep them on hangars in the closet(our closets are small). When he wears them, the hangar goes into the hamper along with the dirty item–if the clothing can be worn the next day, it goes on the floor at night and in the morning he puts it on again (Okay, I do that, too, but I put my clothes on the trunk at the foot of the bed.). When I do the laundry, the hangars are conveniently with his clothes in the basket. When the clothes come out of the wash, they go back on the hangar and hang in the laundry room for about 24 hours. Then, they get returned to his closet. No needless time consuming folding!! I use his drawer space to store bigger sizes and seasonal clothes. Makes for very easy rotation.
2). I put his dirty socks in his own personal laundry mesh bag. When they come out of the dryer (yes, I use the dryer for some things), I dump them into his sock drawer. They are all white, except for one pair of navy dress socks, so finding a pair to wear is easy. Again, no searching through the laundry or trying to match socks for me!
I plan to continue this practice with my daughter who will be born within two weeks. I even requested a laundry basket and a mesh bag as shower gifts! She’ll get her own laundry day and load until I run out of baby detergent, then her clothes will get dumped into the family laundry.
Granted the day will come when I have to tweak this system to adjust for larger sizes, but it works for now.
I give you all great praise! You have handled the area much better than I have. Here I am always single, no children, one dog and I am getting ready to move to a much smaller place. Hence my question about how many clothes I really need? I am a recovering hoarder and lack the energy in doing laundry often. I have always been like that so I have ended up with a lot of clothes. The house I am moving from has two sets of washers and dryers. I only brought the old ones from my old house as backup and it was a good thing. My new washer quit spinning and the new dryer made plenty of noise and only blew cold air after a couple of years of use. They quit after the warranties expired and I had no money to fix them. What I liked about them is that they were on the same level as the bedrooms. No stairs!
I am almost 65 and I will have to work for at least another 6 – 10 years so even though I work in a casual atmosphere, I still need dressier clothes. I usually change when I get home to keep them in fairly good shape and dog hair free. Now back to the plan I need to make the move easy like moves usually are. HA HA! Thanks for this site. I will be following it and try to pick up hints along the way.
Don’t envy your moving at all Gretchen. Here are some moving ideas if you need more tips. Tawra and I between us have moved about 20 times in the past 20 years so we are getting this moving thing down pat. That’s not to mention the fact my dad was in the military when I was growing up too. Hopefully some of our ideas will help you if you need it.
I have always enjoyed doing laundry; something very satisfying about making something fresh, usable and stockpiled in drawers. I have line dried most of our laundry in one form or another, whether indoors or out. My tip is something I learned when I had my four kids at home. Because socks for the family were at a premium, and I did laundry about once a week, I had a rack to hang up all wet socks as they came out of the washer, regardless of their colour. The socks were all in one place, dried quickly, and were available sooner than they would be if I had waited until all the various coloured loads were done, and line dried. As the kids all got into their teens, I bought all tube socks, in a dark colour (usually black) and I dried and folded socks together and left them all in a bin in the laundry area. This worked especially good for teenage boys, who were always looking for socks, and arguing whose socks were whose. As well, as any socks wore out, they would eventually be matched up with another ‘loner’ to make another pair eventually.
I have three sons and it was sometimes difficult to know which item belonged to which son-especially, when they outgrew an item and it was passed down. They hated a name in their clothes so I used a marker on an inside tag and put one mark for the largest child, then when he passed that down and additional mark was added for the next largest child and the third mark was added when he passed it down to the smallest child. This also worked when something special was purchased and they did not want to share special clothing. When folding or hanging clothes it was easy to organize.
Love your site, I always get things I can use here. Thanks±
It is hard to keep track of kids clothes so this is a super idea Pat.
I picked up this ides in Survival for Busy Women and expanded it a bit. Works great for a family with 5 kids under 12 (worked when I had my first as well!).
I have a Sterlite box for each age ((0-3, 3-6, 6-9, 12, 2T, 3T etc.), boys’ separately from girls’. Bigger boxes for older kids. When a kid outgrows a set of clothes, put it in the correct box and hand it down to the next child. For the babies, I take the whole box into my bedroom and then put it back and pick up another one. SO easy to keep in order and especially when you have to move!
Separate boxes are useful for swimwear, tights and socks, summer and winter hats, gloves, scarves, accessories (ties, baby headband etc.) They accumulate.
I kept a box for things I buy ahead of the kids’ages. Now I added more boxes with specific age slots for future use. For my 6 and 9 y/o girls I have a box marked 8, 10-12, 12-14. This allows me to buy things when they are really cheap or when I had a bag of hand-me-downs. They find their place right away. A few days ago I bought a ton a t-shirts and shorts for my boys and girls at $1.5-2,5 at JCPenney. Now I have a few items for each box. My oldest son is all set for the next summer. And I do limit clothes, they don’t have too many!
A hamper in each bedroom is very useful and easy to use. If kids prefer to leave their clothes on the floor, it costs them 25 cents (maid service). Cures the habit real quick! No clothes on the floor, period. Bedside chair is acceptable for used but wearable clothes.
I have hampers in my now larger laundry marked BLACKS (blues, browns), LIGHTS (pastels), BRIGHTS (mostly girl’s pinks and reds – these can bleed), WHITES, OFF-WHITES (with prints, bands etc). When bedroom hampers fill up (Some would be half-way) I bring them to the laundry room, sort by color and do the hamper that is full. A few loads two times a week is good, or I do one or two as I go, especially when kids were sick for weeks this fall and I couldn’t stick to a schedule anyway.
For socks I finally bought GOLD TOE all in black. Small size has 1 band, med – 2, large – 3. Easy to sort and know who wears what. Durable too.
Hope, this helps someo one!
This list is fine for those who have a good well or who live in the city and do laundry often. However…remember…the more loads you do…the higher the cost of electricity!! In our part of the country, we rely on cisterns as the wells are sadly….all salt water. So we must collect rain water from the roof and store it in the cistern. I have several large wastebaskets of sorted clothes in my laundry room. When we have a GOOD rain, I do TONS of laundry that day as the cistern is overflowing with water!! However, in the dry times, we NEED to have a LOT of extra clothes as we have to wait for rain in order to wash the clothes. So…really the amount of clothes needed depends on where one lives and the water supply.
When we right posts it is usually for the average person. If I tried to write a post for every single individual case – well it would be humanly impossible. As I have said over and over again these are just guidelines and I figure most people have enough common sense to adapt it to their own situation and needs and to figure out what I am talking about.
I know one way to reduce the amount of laundry you do when you have children….make them do it themselves! When my daughter was about 13 (you could probably start a little bit younger) I typed up a chart on how to sort, temperature appropriate for each type of clothing. And a simple how to. Then I showed her a few times. I used to do tons of laundry and now it is reduced easily by half! She realized well yes she can wear those jeans more than once, or pj’s more than one night. And now I don’t have to yell at her to get her clothes gathered (she also used to throw clean clothes in, since they were on the floor with the dirty!) So I highly recommend trying that with the older kiddos :)
I recently retired and just moved. I used a clothing purge system I think based on Jill’s post on how much clothing do you need. I kept 3-5 dresses(making sure they fit), the same for slacks and skirts, about 6 suit jackets, my 3 favorite pairs of high heels, some boots, etc.
I kept 2 pairs of jeans, but quite a few heavy sweaters as winters are cold here in New England and my house is very old. layering is important here —
I was able to give all my dress shoes to my DIL’s sister, who is young and she was so happy, which made me feel great. I realized I had suits with shoulder pads that I probably thought I could wear on “Dynasty” I had them so long, LOL.
It really felt great to donate all that stuff.
Had to laugh at the shoulder pad thing. I saw a show the other day from then and could not believe what the gals were wearing. I thought we really did wear those things and thought we looked so cool. Too funny. It is amazing how great everyone feels after getting rid of things. I can say I have never had one person post and say “I wish I had not purged my closet and had kept all my stuff.” I wish more would do what you did because not only they but their whole family would feel good about it.
To the woman whose husband wears 3 sets of clothing daily,
Consider having him sleep in his work out gear. I regularly sleep in sweats or shorts and walk the dog, go to the dog park, work out, and clean house in them. I don’t own any nighties or pjs.
One time I ran into a dog park friend at Sam’s club showered, made up, and dressed nicely. I asked Mark if he recognized me. He didn’t. I didn’t care but had a chuckle out of it.
Cold and ironing are against my religion. So is wasting time and energy on non essential laundry!
Hope this helps.
P.S. I started doing my laundry at age 12 and take meticulous care of my clothing, hanging it up each night to air out before I put the still wearable garments back in the closet.
To address the lady at the beginning of the comments who wondered if there was any reason to be afraid of thrift shops drying up, I wanted to tell you something peculiar that I noticed. We live near a small isolated northern town that has a good sized thrift shop. I worked at this thrift shop for 6 years and have always been a patron of it. During times of great economic down turn, a curious thing always happened…regardless of how many people were suddenly out of work, the donations would increase, not decrease. I mean, the stock coming in was at all time highs and for months at a time. Initially we thought that it was related to people moving and selling their houses, but the influx just went on too long (over a year of peak donations after one shutdown in a local industry), and the excellent quality of new or nearly new clothes and household items would astound us. Our thrift shop does not buy any items or sell on consignment. My guess is that people perhaps buy more impulsively or more often while under the stress of job loss or cut backs. Of course, that is the worse thing anyone could do. I don’t think that thrifting is going away any time soon. Years ago, I went to the thrift store with a lady who would only buy clothes in a regular retail setting, or make her own clothing. She agreed to come with me of her own free will, but I wish she hadn’t, once she arrived. She was so uncomfortable, and acted so terrified of used items, it was embarrassing. Our thrift store washes all donations of clothing on site at the shop, before putting them out to sell. So the store was (and always is, clean). Finally, the woman agreed to buy a skirt (her idea) that had not been washed, but was brand new, with the original sales tags on it. It was high quality, and her style and size. Later, she returned (or donated) the skirt back, without even trying it on. My point is that there will always be those kind of people. There will always be good sources of second hand items, as there will always be the “only new from the store” people.
Once or twice a year I turn all of our hangers backwards in the closet. Every time an item is worn, washed and added back I turn the hanger the opposite direction. In a couple of weeks I discard what has not been worn.
Mary Jane, I wonder if people donate during down turns in the economy because they are unemployed and have time to clean out their closets.
It could very well be, that people were cleaning out overburdened closets and cupboards, with their down time. If things were bad for us, my natural inclination would be to sell the good stuff in a yard sale, re gift the really good stuff, or keep one back up of things like a working toaster. I remember seeing items like brand new bathroom towel sets, still packaged with bows for display, clothes with the tags on them, and brand name kid”s clothes and good quality footwear coming in. In all likelihood, there was probably a lot of reasons people donated so much good quality stuff.