Laundry Chores at the Farmhouse

Since doing laundry is an important part of homemaking, I thought I would share with you how I do my laundry chores. This is what my cheerful little laundry room looks like on an average Saturday morning with piles of sorted laundry all over the floor. I have some ideas for decorating it, but for now it serves its purpose as it is. I enjoy looking out the window while folding laundry.



The laundry room also serves as a half bath and the place the hot water heater is installed. There is a potty behind the door (blushing) and the small window.



My hubby had this shelf installed for me for storing my cleaning supplies. You can see my stockpile of laundry detergents. I only buy them if they are on sale for an unbeatable price and/or with a coupon. I'm not brand loyal as you can see. Our clothes don't get very dirty, so most any detergent will work for us.



I hang out some laundry when times allows. There are some things that do nicely on the clothesline, such as sheets, and certain types of clothing. I am trying to combine these things together in order to make good sized loads so that its worthwhile to hang them on the line, saving the electricity that each load would have used. Every little bit helps!



This is the first clothespin bag I ever made. Its quite different from the ones I now make that I sell in my Etsy Shop, but it works great.



A laundry drying rack comes in handy too. I like to sit mine over an A/C/Heat vent to multipurpose that electricity a little bit.



This decorative basket sits on the floor in our bedroom and is used as a dirty clothes hamper. I take it to the laundry room, dump it and return it to the bedroom. I have a more practical plastic rectangular laundry basket that holds the clothes I am hanging on the line and also the folded clothes from the dryer and the line. I use it to carry the folded clothes to our bedroom, stack the clothes on the bed in piles by type and my hubby and I then put away our own clothes.



Since I do use the dryer most of the time, I need fabric softener sheets. I find that 1/2 a sheet works just fine. These sheets are $1.00 for 40 at Dollar General. Sometimes I have found 50 for $1.00, but most of the time its 40. I have never found a name brand sheet that was this cheap, even if it was on sale and bought with a coupon. The difference in quality may be a hindrance to you, but for me its fine. You can always use a whole one if you think a particular load needs it. When my son did laundry at my house in the past, he would throw in 2 or 3 halves! :o)



Just cut them in half like this. By the way, scissors are a great tool to keep in the laundry room. They come in handy for cutting loose threads and strings, tags and also for cutting your fabric softener sheets in half.



I liked the picture on the box of the sleeping kitty so much I taped it onto the front of this old tupperware container to make a cute fabric softener sheet holder.



A couple of laundry room funnies:

1. After moving into the farmhouse I found myself scrubbing the inside of the toilet in the laundry room which had rust stains. The only way to clean it was to stick my hand into the water and scrub with a scrubber. I noticed that the water felt warm and got hotter each time I flushed it. The plumber has hooked up the hot water to the toilet!

2. I once had a friend who had 2 teenage stepsons. She did their laundry and took the folded piles of clothes to their room, very nicely placing them on their beds and asked them to put them away. She headed back to the laundry room and just as she entered it, she heard a "kerplunk". It was the stacks of clean clothes being thrown down the laundry chute to be washed again. It turns out they didn't want to put them away and this was how they tried to get out of it! Talk about lazy....

Hope you are enjoying the lazy days of summer!