I hear that you should only write about things that you are passionate about. Well, I think I can honestly say that I passionately dislike doing laundry.

With a family of six, laundry feels never ending. I can spend a whole day sorting, washing, drying and putting away laundry only to have enough dirty clothes at the end of the night for another load.

The longer I try to avoid doing the laundry the worse it gets. The laundry room gets filled with buckets of clean laundry and before long instead of having 5 loads to fold I have ten.

I knew something needed to change. So I reached out to friends to get ideas on how to make doing laundry more enjoyable. After trying some of their ideas out and implementing a few ideas of my own, laundry has become a little less terrible.

5 Ways to Make Laundry Almost Fun

 

Make it a family affair

Rather than washing and folding all the laundry myself, we have set two designated laundry folding nights each week. I wash and dry all the laundry during the day. Then after dinner, we all help sort the laundry into six separate baskets.

Since my kids are still young, my husband and I fold all the clothes. My daughter who is six folds the towels. Big Boys job is to keep the babies from pulling all the folded clothes out of the buckets.

Spending time together as a family can make even the most daunting tasks more enjoyable. Also, I think it is good for children to help out with housework and be active in managing the home in appropriate ways.

Play a Sorting Game

Set the laundry buckets up in different spots in the room. Assign each person’s clothes to a different basket. Place the clean laundry in the center of the room. Then try to make a basket as you toss the clean laundry into the appropriate buckets.

Offer a prize

As we fold laundry on our two designated laundry nights we always watch a family movie. My kids used to argue about which movie to watch, but now I’ve found an easy way to solve that problem. Whoever has the least amount of laundry in their basket that night gets to pick the movie.

This encourages my children not to wear more clothes than they need to. I have one child who was routinely wearing about 3 outfits a day. Offering a reward for having less dirty clothes gives them an incentive to consider how often they really need to change.

Watch a show while folding

Choose a special show or movie to watch and only watch it while folding laundry. During college football season my husband often folds the laundry while watching games.  I’ve also chosen series on Netflix to only watch while I do laundry.

By choosing a show I really enjoy and committing only to watching it while folding laundry it becomes a great motivator. It’s also a great way to stay productive while doing something enjoyable.

Make it a competition

The only thing I enjoy less than folding laundry it is putting it all away. Make this more fun by making it a competition. Have everybody race to see who can get their laundry put away first.

Alternatively, you can set a timer and have the kids race to put away their laundry as you keep track of their time. It might even be fun to keep a record of their fastest time to help motivate them to improve each week.

What ways have you found to make doing the laundry more enjoyable? I would love to hear please comment and share!