The other 3 Moms:

• DeputyHeadmistress @ The Common Room
• Kimberly@Raising Olives
• Connie @ Smockity Frocks

Welcome back!  This time, we’re going to air our dirty laundry, literally.  You have questions, we have laundry.

Oh, you were hoping for answers?  Sorry.  I have more laundry than answers.  Maybe you can sympathize?  I thought so.

I have to admit that we might have less laundry than you would expect.  All told, we wash 12-15 loads/week.  Cloth diapers added 3 loads/week, but we’re taking a break from those.  At the Baby Conference, I mistakenly told the audience I did 3 loads/week instead of 3 loads/day.  I’d like to know what they thought about that.

We ditched the electric dryer nearly 2 years ago, opting for the solar powered one instead.  This saves not only on the electric bill, but also makes clothes last longer and is surprisingly quick in warm weather.

With our huge and very cool drying rack from IKEA, we can hang up to 3 loads in just a few square feet.

The breeze and heat outdoors dry the laundry almost faster than we can wash it if we keep on top of things.  In cold or rainy weather, we dry the laundry inside with a fan blowing on it.  This takes longer, of course, but it’s still not hard to keep up.

Question:  If you line dry your laundry, how do you prevent lint build-up, especially on dark items?

This is one problem that has plagued us.  We sort colors carefully and wash towels and rags separately, but somehow we still get enough lint to cause problems.

Speaking of sorting laundry, I do love my stacking bins from The Container Store.  They weren’t cheap, but they are super sturdy and just the right size.  We have 4 of these, labelled white, light, dark and towels.

Each bin holds one load when it’s full, and the laundry is already sorted and ready to toss into the washer.  They can easily be rearranged or moved, and can also serve multiple uses – we find them very handy in the van on road trips.

For detergent, we briefly made our own.  It was fun and cheap, but unfortunately it’s not a good choice for extremely hard water like ours.  Nothing really works well in our water, but for the time we have settled on Charlie’s Soap.  It’s as effective as anything I’ve tried.  I love that it doesn’t have fillers so it’s very concentrated: we’re a year into our bucket and it looks like it will last for several more months.  Not only is it inexpensive, it’s also one less thing I have to remember to buy.

Right now, dry laundry is sorted in the living room, either on the sofa or the coffee table, and people are called to come put away their laundry RIGHT NOW.  Stalling or forgetting is a third degree misdemeanor, punishable by forced nudity.  OK.  Maybe not, but it sounded good, didn’t it?  Anyway, they’ll do it right away if they know what’s good for them.

I still look back with fondness on the days when all the kids were little and I sorted their laundry on the dining room table.  Each child’s pile was at her place, so she couldn’t eat until her laundry was put away.  I just might go back to that system.  I didn’t have to issue threats and reminders then. Food is a mighty effective incentive.  Maybe better than clothes, at least for some people.

Want to share how laundry works in your home?  Join the linky below.  Remember to make sure your link points to a single post about your laundry, and the post must link back to at least one of the 4 Moms.

Upcoming topics:

• September 16th: Storage Solutions
• September 23: Questions for the Four Moms, in which we answer questions from our mailbag.
• September 30: How to find individual time with our husbands without spending money

The other 3 Moms:

• DeputyHeadmistress @ The Common Room
• Kimberly@Raising Olives
• Connie @ Smockity Frocks

The bedrooms?  The kids’ bedroom?  Surely you jest.  That’s the door that we always close when companies comes.  That’s the door that I close for the sake of my own sanity and the safety of my children.  That’s the room where I imagine horrible, unspeakable science experiments growing under the carpet of clothing on the floor.

But it’s no worse than my fridge and anyway I need your advice, so we’ll open the door, close our eyes, and plunge onward into the fray.

Yes, the rumors are true.  Nine of our children share one moderately sized room.  We have a 3rd bedroom in our house, but they begged us to let them turn it into a dedicated library and we agreed, glad to have clutter-catching bookcases gone from every other room of the house.

Here is their room when it’s – get this: Company Clean.

OK, I exaggerated a bit.  It’s not always as dirty as I let myself believe.  It gets cleaned almost daily.  It just looks like it’s never been cleaned 10 minutes after they finish.

Really, it’s a pretty simple set up.  Just 2 dressers, each with 4 drawers and 3 shelves; a few baskets and door hangers to hold the multitude of shoes; 2 mirrors; 2 sets of bunks, and the upholstered bench that recently moved out of the living room.

The big fan provides extra ventilation to the beds on one side of the room at night.  There’s an identical fan that spends daytime in the kitchen and ventilates the other set of bunks at night.

Since they each have just one drawer, most of their clothes hang in the closets: 4 children hang their clothes in the closet in this bedroom, 3 in the library closet, and the 3 youngest have their clothes in the closet that Perry and I share.

Like the other bedrooms in our house, the floor is unfinished.  It’s near the top of our list of things to do.

But the beds – have you heard about our beds?  We love the beds!  Here’s a better shot:

…and another…

These are heavy duty pallet racks from Costco.  Each shelf is rated for 2,000 lbs. (that’s 8k lbs per unit) and they are the same dimension as navy bunks.  For mattresses, we cut 3″ memory foam into strips the width of the beds (a king makes 3 strips), then doubled them and sewed slipcovers out of sheets.  Finally, we cut queen-sized comforters in half to make perfectly sized comforters in fun, coordinating colors.

We’re very happy with the beds.

The dressers: not so much.  We need to replace them.  There’s a reason you only saw them from a distance.  It was nice of you not to show your shock at how run down they are, but we know they need to go.  We’re just not sure we want to replace them with more dressers.  Drawers just don’t hold up under heavy use, and they also don’t seem to make the best use of wall space.

We’re tossing around some alternative ideas, and would love your input.

Here’s our favorite idea so far.  The unit below is from IKEA, but we could also build it ourselves.

The kids could use boxes or bins like this in some of the openings to hold underclothes or odds and ends, and keep books in the others.

What do you think?  Will it work, and will it look nice?  Do you have a better idea?

Or do you want to skip ahead to the linky?  I don’t blame you.  Join the fun!  Your post this week can be about any or all of the bedrooms in your house.  Just remember to link to a single post (not your homepage) and link back to at least one of the 4 Moms.

Upcoming topics:

• September 9; Laundry Linky
• September 16th: Storage Solutions
• September 23: Questions for the Four Moms, in which we answer questions from our mailbag.
• September 30: How to find individual time with our husbands without spending money