Rescue me!!! Laundry and socks

julifish

julifish

New member
Help me please!!!!! I need a new system for laundry in general and sock specifically. We are a family of 4 and my kids are 10 and 14.

I seem to have constant mountains of laundry on the couch, then I fold it and stack it and then it sits in their rooms. Sometimes it even gets rewashed before they ever actually wear it.:cursing:

I am so lost on what to do about socks...it makes me want to cry. We always have straggler socks without a pair when I'm done with the hot loads. How do you store them in hopes of finding them a new home?

I'm up for any kind of good laundry organizing and sock keeping ideas!!! What works (or doesn't work) for your house?
 
I have never put socks in pairs. I do the laundry, fold everything but underwear. Underwear/socks get thrown into a basket. My youngest child's chore is to go through that basket and sort them by owner. Socks just get thrown into the pile of undies and we each have a drawer for undies and socks. We match them when we're grabbing them to wear. So it's entirely possible I have an odd number of socks, but I don't know if I do and it never bothers me. I can find a pair myself in less than 5 seconds so it doesn't take more time to do it that way.

My kids actually do their own laundry now. They accused me one too many times of losing their favorite shirt/pants/bra when in reality it had never made it to the laundry basket. So now they have their own baskets and it's their responsibility to get it washed. My kids are 13, 17 and 19... a little older than yours, but I bet you could teach yours to do their own laundry.
 
My mom had us use safety pins in our socks. That way the pairs were washed together.

But by high school I was already doing my own laundry, and I no longer do that. DH likes having all of his white socks the same and all of his black socks the same so that matches are really easy.
 
I was going to suggest having your kids begin to either do their own laundry, or at least have them fold their own laundry.

I keep a basket up above the laundry area where unmatched socks go to live. Occasionally, I pull the box down, hand it to one of the boys and have them pair the socks up. Any unmatched go back into the wash.
 
I wash clothes by kid and dh..I can usually get a full load from each person. Probably makes my workload bigger but I hate sorting/folding clothes. My older two will usually fold their own from the dryer and put them up right away..working on that with the others. I'm horrible myself about putting clothes up...I'd live out of laundry baskets if I could (and I can lol) I'm the person that has to buy new laundry baskets frequently b/c I don't have any empty ones :0x

I'm like Darcy I keep a basket in the laundry room for straggler socks...I think the dryer eats them
 
My kids do their own laundry now which really helps. Back in the day, I had lingerie bags and had each boy put their underwear and socks into their bag so they didn't get mixed together. It worked great!
 
We have lived that nightmare!! We now have a 'sock bag' that we hang on the back of our bedroom door (it doesnt smell!! haha) . . as soon as the kiddies (5 and 10) get home and take off their shoes, their socks are straight in that bag. My 16 yo doesnt do this and she never has any socks, always loses them. This works for the little ones now they are in the swing of it. Before that lost socks were a constant annoyance.
 
glumirk said:
My mom had us use safety pins in our socks. That way the pairs were washed together.
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This is what my hubby does... when his mom died when he was 10, he had to take over the laundry and they started the process of pinning socks together before putting into the wash... and it's a thing that has stuck (pun :D) with him for the last 29 years. My socks are all over the place... so I just buy the same type of sock... haha... then I have a bottom drawer that has one and every few months I go through it... those darn socks!
 
My son Loves to do the laundry. We have front loaders so they are his height. He is as OCD as me. So he knows the proper amount of liquids for what and washes things separately. My kids also fold and put away their own laundry including their socks. My son likes to do the towels himself. Sometimes when my daughter is lazy my son will get annoyed and fold her's too. She could care less if her socks match and wears them miss matched. Drives us both bonkers. My son has all Adias socks and I have all UA socks. My daughters are characters. This helps keep them separate for each of us. I don't mind matching socks. I hate folding the fitted sheets. That's my downfall.
 
When I was little, my sisters and I had to wear school uniforms with white socks so to keep all the socks separate, my mom labeled the bottoms of them all with our initials. Worked fine for my sisters who were S and A but since I was an L, I'd sometimes get asked by people why I was wearing two left socks. :D

At 10 & 14, your kids should be old enough to help with the laundry. I started doing my own laundry in high school, but even when my mom handled all the laundry, my sisters and I were each responsible for making sure the clothes we wanted washed were in the dirty clothes bin and sorting and putting it away after. If it wasn't in the bin, it didn't get washed. Once the clothes were clean, we'd sort out who's was who's and then put them away in our rooms. I'm sure this was much easier on my mom since with three girls, we tended to have a better idea of who's shirt was who's, haha.

As far as lost socks, I only buy white socks that all look the same so once I pair them up, I just toss any un-matched stragglers into my clean sock bin and pair them up the next time there's a lonely sock.
 
I have a little bucket for mismatched socks and the youngest goes through them every so often.

My kids do their own laundry and I'm adamant that laundry isn't done unless it's put away. I can't stand piles or baskets of clean clothes hanging around.

As far as socks, all three of us wear the same size and have similar styles so we color code ours with dots of fabric marker, when we get new ones. I dot them appropriately, one of us is blue, one is purple one is pink :)
 
There are companies like LittleMissMatched or Oddsocks that sell sets of three coordinating, but not identical, socks. This is a more fun solution for people who don't want a drawer full of identical white socks.
 
glumirk said:
DH likes having all of his white socks the same and all of his black socks the same so that matches are really easy.
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This is what I do for my kids. I buy the boys all white socks, all one size and style for each of them. Then I don't bother matching. The socks get thrown in the drawer and they just grab any 2.

For Lauren, who does have lots of different colors, I have a small plastic bin within her sock drawer for socks missing a mate. Every month or so I throw out any sock that has lived in the bin for a while.
 
This is probably somebody came up with 'mismatched' idea! :) They sell them at Walmart! No need to worry about losing one. My daughter loves those!

But before the mismatched socks were the 'in' thing, I would just buy same color socks. So, there is no need to worry about the lost one... or having to throw away the pair when one of them gets the hole.
 
I use something like these. Each child has their own bag for putting their socks in. They get washed together, and come back all together! I got so sick of all the odd socks that I went in search of a solution, and we haven't had any missing socks since I started using them.
 
I love all these ideas, especially the ones where the girls do their own laundry. I'm working towards that but we just aren't quite there yet.

I'm like Meg - I keep buying laundry baskets because I never seem to have an empty one to use. Of course that is better than in our last house where the washer and dryer were in the garage and a quarter of the garage was dirty clothes thrown on the floor. My laundry room is too small for anyone to throw stuff on the floor at this house.

I've decided to go back to my "sock bag" and just stick socks that don't have a mate in the bag after each load. Then once a week I will assign someone to go through all the socks and see if they can find matches - no one will want to do this so I think it will be an extra job for whomever doesn't do the jobs they were asked on time.

I'm also in the hates to fold fitted sheets club. I own two sets of sheets for each bed and that is it. If I can get away with washing and putting back on I do, but sometimes you need that back up set and end up having to fold. I try to do that when my MIL is here so she can fold them for me. :)
 
julifish said:
If I can get away with washing and putting back on I do, but sometimes you need that back up set and end up having to fold. I try to do that when my MIL is here so she can fold them for me. :)
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LOL-that's my mother. Normally I'm terrible about getting laundry folded, so it sits in the basket clean for a few days until I get around to it. But when my mother visits I fold it as soon as I take it out of the dryer, otherwise she'll do it all. (And I know that should be a good thing, but she spends so much time with the kids when she's here, giving me a nice break, that I feel very guilty if I let her fold my laundry on top of that!)
 
I don't have much more to add. DS started doing his own laundry at 12 and I'd take care of DH and mine. Now that it's just Cheyanne and I we do ours together and each fold our own.
 
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