One of the challenges of having a large family is keeping up with the laundry. A lot of moms have found their house gets taken over by laundry mountains if they do not have a good laundry system in place. Not to mention how much time is spent to try to find 8 pairs of matching socks, since they always seem to get lost in those clean laundry piles or baskets.

There are different systems, which work for different families. These article will go into a few of those, and you can pick and choose the method that works best for you and your family.

Doing laundry can be divided into three parts: how to get the clothes to the dirty clothes hamper and sorted into different types, when to wash them, and how to get them folded and put away afterwards. Several methods for all three steps will be discussed.

Where are the dirty clothes?

Both my husband and my kids seem to have a hard time realizing that dirty clothes belong in the hamper when they want them to get clean. And where I think it is not unreasonable for the kids to not be perfect in that yet, I think my husband has reached the age where he should know better. So, I used to look around the house for dirty clothes, including his, I don't do that any more. I have made him fully responsible for getting his clothes to the washer. If he doesn't, there are days that he wakes up and finds that there is no clean underwear any more and can deal with the consequences of that. Usually he gets better about putting his clothes in the hamper for a while. I teach the kids to put their dirty clothes in the hamper, but they sometimes forget. The older ones will be called to rectify that oversight, the younger ones get more slack for now.

Some people have different laundry baskets, and sort the laundry in there according to the different washing processes. Colors cold, colors warm and whites could be a workable division. Make sure you teach the whole family which basket to use for which clothes. It saves some time once you are ready to wash, since the pre-sorting is already done and it is easy to see whether you have enough colored things for a full load of laundry already.

There are families who have a laundry basket in every room, so that the kids (and the husband) don't have to go to a central location to put in their dirty clothes. Another advantage of this is that you can choose to wash every kids clothes separately, so that you don't have to sort them later. Even if you don't do that, it is pretty easy to walk around the rooms when you plan to wash and for example pick up all the whites from the different baskets.

The most fun option of course is the laundry chute. We have lived in a house with one, and the kids loved it. Somehow it is more fun to take care of your clothes by throwing them down and hearing them fall. Still, it always scared me and I was afraid that one day one of the toddler would decide to try out the laundry chute for herself. Luckily they didn't do it, maybe because we lived there only a few months.

Now when can I get them clean?

That is dependent on your personal schedule. I personally often put on a load of laundry before I go to bed, so that I wake up to clean clothes in the morning. In the morning I put them in the dryer and there is another load done! I also like to do it before we go on an outing, so that the laundry gets done, while I am not even home.

There are people who wash different family members on different days. So on Monday they wash mommy's and daddy's clothes, on Tuesday the twins, on Wednesday Kaylie and Robert, and so on. If you have only five kids, you could do one person a day. Although combining two or three might work for you too. The advantages of this are again that there is no sorting afterwards involved, or just a little when two kids outfits are combined in one load of laundry. When the kids are old enough, you can make them responsible for their own laundry. You can either let them wash on a certain day, or give them the freedom to wash whenever they need, letting them find out for themselves that if they don't do laundry in time, they might wake up some day and have no clean pants left. I have also heard of letting the older kids do their own laundry and that of one younger sibling, so that all the kids laundry is done by them.

If you use the presorting method, you could wash every time one of the baskets is full. That way you always have a full load in the washer, which is more energy efficient than if it is only half full.

The last method is to wash only every so many days. I have a friend with eight kids, who only does laundry once every two weeks. She then spends one or two days washing, sorting and folding, getting it all out of the way in a large laundry frenzy and having it over with for another two weeks.

What about the clean laundry mountain?

OK, wash is clean and dry, now what happens? In our house, the moment the dryer buzz goes off, I have some excited toddlers run over to it and unload it all. But then it often ends up in a big stack somewhere, or in a few different laundry baskets, but never makes it to the closets. I am getting better in keeping on top of it, but it still is my weak point. Here are a few different methods and ideas.

Best way for me is to fold it immediately. The only problem with that is that it is not always possible, due to other commitments or mini crises with the kids. Or just because the baby keeps crawling over the folded clothes and messing them up again. I find that the longer it is laying around, the harder it gets to start folding it. If I can fold it immediately and put it away, it is done. If your kids are older, this might be a good chore for them, it is easy and helps a lot in managing your household.

What has made a real difference in our house is when I started 'dot coding' all the kids clothes. I put dots on the label of every piece of clothing. I use a black laundry marker. Kid #1 has one dot, kid #2 has two dots, and so on till kid #5 with five dots. This means that everybody, even the toddlers can sort clothes and know to whom a certain piece of clothing belongs. Even if somebody from outside our family offers to help, they will know immediately how to sort them for the different kids. When a kid outgrows something, I put a new dot on it before it goes into the dirty clothes hamper and next time it will be put in the next one's closet.

If you can't fold it immediately, have a folding party once a week or once every few days. Get the whole family together and spend one or two hours sorting, folding and putting away all the laundry. Kids tend to like it more if it is followed by a fun treat or an outing to the park. If you let your older kids do their own laundry, it is logical to also make them responsible for folding and putting away their own clothes.

If you have too many kids to be able to fold during the day, it might work for you to do it at night, while watching television. It is very easy to just fold and fold, and gives a real feeling of accomplishment. Or you can intersperse folding and on line time. Make yourself fold laundry for 20 minutes and reward yourself with 20 minutes on line time after that. Keep doing that until laundry is all folded and put away.

Then there is the ironing issue. For me it is simple, I don't! The only on in our household who does any ironing is my husband, since he wants his shirts ironed when he goes in to work. So for us the principle of everybody irons his or her own clothes works great, the kids don't care about whether their clothes are ironed and I have not touched an iron in years!

And if all else fails and you didn't get it folded and the kids run out of matching socks, just declare a 'silly socks' day and tell them that today, as a special treat, they can wear non-matching socks, because it is Silly Socks Day! This will seriously decrease the digging time in your laundry mountain!