Another quick tip for helping to control that Laundry Monster and keep things neat and tidy in the kids’ rooms is to get rid of the socks! I’m not talking about just the stinky ones, the mismatched ones, or the ones that have seen better days and I’m not saying to get rid of all of them.

You may want to consider getting rid of some of them though as it has been found that some people will tend to procrastinate on doing their laundry until they are out of socks and/or undies. If you only have a set amount of socks then you would, in theory, need to wash clothes more often. If you have more socks than clothes then you may, in theory, also buy more outfits which results in more clothes that have to be dealt with.

We all know that kids need clothes but honestly, they usually don’t need more than a couple of weeks worth of outfits… that might even be a little much for some. We do have a few extra sets that are only used for special occasions and are hung up in the closets but everything else fits into their cubby storage with room to spare. Each child has 6-8 cubby bins in their ‘color’, the girls chose different colors for their bins to match their room decor.

When we did the room makeovers we also sorted through clothes and I was amazed at how much they had accumulated… it was no longer a mystery as to why the rooms were staying a mess. They had too much stuff! We also sorted their toys and applied the same concepts of making sure that each set had its own bin and if the bin gets too full then something needs to go. Many of these bins on the toy shelf are still empty! Check out the link to the room makeovers to see what items we used for the organization.

I’ve applied this concept to many areas, even the kitchen! We donated a lot of our dishes and only kept enough for us and a few guests. We don’t host many large dinners and when we do we usually get disposable plates… why did we need so many plates before? I guess I just felt better knowing there would always be a clean dish… but that wasn’t always what happened.

The more plates we had the more plates they would dirty up and the longer the kids would wait before they felt that they actually ‘had to’ take care of the pile of dirty dishes. Then they would grumble and complain because there were so many dirty dishes!

Having fewer things, socks, or dishes, means you will need to deal with the dirty stuff more often but the ‘piles’ will be smaller and more manageable to deal with. This means you spend way less time washing, drying, and putting away items… leaving more time for the fun stuff.

If you aren’t completely sure that this will work then you can try a little experiment. Box up some of the extra stuff and put it away for a week or a month… see if it does make a difference in your life and see just how much you would feel comfortable getting rid of. Some of the clothing wasn’t donated when we sorted but it was put away so that we can ‘shop’ later as clothing gets worn out or needs replaced because kids are kids and things do wear out.

Hope this helps!