- Now I have a confession to make.
Our laundry has been a little out of control lately
and I, you know, used to have it under major control.
So I thought I would give Dawn
from The Minimal Mom's laundry system a try
with my quite ADHD family.
And let me tell you, this is going to be interesting.
Now this is part of the Mega Motivation Challenge,
so check the link below
to see more awesome laundry and storage videos this month.
Now grab your tea and let's go.
(inspirational music)
So the very likable Dawn has a really unique laundry system
and she claims it's basically like autopilot,
but I'll explain a little bit more in a second.
I will also get into how I am going to work
some modifications to fit my family.
Okay, so I lied.
It's actually not my laundry that is the problem.
It's my teenagers'.
Now, I'm Robyn and I have three boys
and they're all awesome, awesome boys.
I also have a reasonably minimal house,
yet our laundry is a huge problem for me right now,
and here is why.
Teenagers are a pretty special breed, let's just say.
Now I remember people complaining about teenagers
before I have them, and now I kind of get it.
- Why do you have to be so mean?
I'm just trying to do the right thing here.
- My kids are awesome. I am not complaining about them.
But the thing is, teenagers are not as compliant
or as complacent as younger kids can be.
With young kids, you could be like, "Hey, let's do this,"
and they're like, "Okay," right?
With teenagers, it's a little bit different.
They have more responsibilities.
My oldest son, for example, he's 16.
He is learning to drive,
he's trying to do very well in school and he is doing great.
But the thing is, they have a lot of responsibilities
including laundry, and house, and whatever.
The other thing is like they're growing into themselves.
My middle son is a really, really cool, interesting kid.
He plays guitar. He plays the bass.
He is restoring a Volkswagen Bug.
Like he's a really busy kid.
So getting them to step out and be like, "Do your laundry,"
is a bit of a chore.
And I mean, I'm not saying I let them shirk those duties.
I'm going to get more into that in a second.
The thing is they're learning.
My youngest is very interested in learning how to do things
but at the same time, he hates laundry.
In recent years, I had wanted to put more responsibility
onto my kids to learn some new things.
And I thought that it was very, very important
that they learned to do laundry.
I started making a chore chart and I had laundry on it,
and it was literally a like the least effective thing
for them to do.
They would do everything and avoid their laundry.
So I basically had to like hunt them down
and say like, "It's time to do your laundry. It's your day.
Did you switch it? Did you dry it?
Did you fold it? Did you put it away?"
And there was literally laundry sitting on their floors
all of the time, and not only on their floors,
but on the landing.
And it was like I was always managing it.
And I thought, "How is it that I can live
in this like nicely, reasonable, minimalist house
with laundry all over the place?"
It was driving me crazy.
And then I was picking it up and I was like,
"This is not fair and this is not how it should be."
So I wasn't sure how I could work with Dawn's system
but I'm going to break it down for you,
because I think that this is going to be great.
Now, I love Dawn.
She's super smart, she's creative,
and she has some pretty interesting systems.
So I love you, Dawn, and this is how we're going to do this.
So number one, she recommends
having a smaller inventory of clothing.
Now I can get behind this. It makes complete sense.
- For most of us, we have too much inventory
and it completely overloads and overwhelms
our laundry system, and that's why it doesn't work.
- I mean the less stuff you have,
the less you have to deal with.
We had already decluttered our clothes
and we do it all the time.
But I thought, "Hey, why not? Let's go a little deeper.
I'll do a little bit more decluttering."
And basically overall,
you just have less to process, which is great.
Now with kids and teens, it's an ongoing battle.
(clears throat) I mean, it's a process, anyway.
They just don't have an interest in doing that,
in particular boys.
They're just not interested in clothing, at least mine.
And that's fine.
I shuffle the kids clothes down the line.
I got three of them. It just goes down, down, down.
Sometimes I have to replace them. That's fine.
My biggest issue here
is keeping up with the decluttering of the kids' clothes,
which is okay.
Every couple months, I go in and I do some.
Now I don't want to be the mom of boys
who grow up just to be a burden on their future spouses
or living in a mess, which is why on the second
it starts to get a little dicey come the second thing.
So the second thing is, one load per day.
Now I love doing one load per day.
I've been doing this for a while.
It's something I started a few years ago
when I started doing Flylady.
And Diane in Denmark, I love that lady,
and she really got me on board with this.
And I started doing it with the kids' clothes
initially year ago when I would do it.
But then I just started doing my husband's and mine,
because I wanted to start getting the kids
doing their own, right?
Like I'm trying to give them more responsibility,
but it's kind of not working out right now.
So let's see if we can fix that.
Now the third thing she recommends is no hampers.
This is a really interesting one
because Dawn has said both bathrooms
are on her main level by their laundry room,
and her bedroom is on this level as well.
I love the idea of just having one basket.
So basically like your kids can just like shower,
change in the bathroom,
and put their stuff in the basket, which she does.
I love it.
Diane from Denmark does the exact same thing.
She does her morning swish and swipe with a cloth,
puts it in the hamper or the little basket,
which looks like it's in their bathroom.
Everybody's stuff goes in there.
I think that is a great idea.
So initially I really, really resisted this one
despite growing up with a house that only had one hamper
for our whole house until we were teenagers,
and then I think we just started doing our own laundry.
The problem with this, for our family,
is that we have a large house,
and a large houses that sound great,
but there are a lot of drawbacks.
There's more to clean.
People feel like they need to fill it with stuff,
which I don't necessarily agree with
because I think that I love seeing some blank spaces.
Although I am a reasonable minimalist. I digress.
Now my eldest son's bedroom is in the basement.
We also have a laundry closet versus a laundry room.
So if we wanted everyone to put their stuff
in one central basket,
no one would be near where they are changing
if it was in here.
So I'm going to come back to that one in a second.
Moving on.
The fourth thing that she recommends
is folding as little as possible.
I could get behind this one.
I hate folding laundry.
For me, it is the absolutely worst part of laundry.
It has always been like my biggest burden
when it comes to doing laundry.
But the thing is, for my husband and my clothes,
we are the adults going out and representing ourselves,
and I just hate wearing wrinkly clothes.
It doesn't take long.
I pop my AirPods in, I put on a podcast,
and I just suck it up and I do it,
which is like me talking to me because I don't like folding.
Like my grandma, she would sit and do it
like on the back of the couch
and she would just like fold, no problem.
So for me, I just throw my stuff on the bed,
listen to a podcast or a book, and I just get it done.
I don't even do a good job. (chuckles)
As long as it's like a little bit folded, I am happy.
I am married to a man
who has the technique for folding socks.
Okay, yes, he has ADHD
and he doesn't seem to mind many other things lacking order,
but I digress some things he doesn't care about.
(clears throat) Anyway, so we fold
and hang out most of our clothes.
I just like it that way, and as Dawn says, "You do you."
So I love the flexibility.
I am all flexibility in every way.
I always tell people I'm a reasonable minimalist.
You can go extreme if you want to.
You can go not very minimal. You can just do whatever.
You do what works for you.
So for our own clothes,
we will continue folding and hanging.
Now for the kids, on the other hand,
I have asked them to fold for years
and this is the results of one of the drawers.
Like there's a pillowcase, a food wrapper,
a battery.
Ugh!
Now this is obviously where my kids have gotten hung up.
And I have another one who hides his clothes under his bed.
Hmm.
Dawn also uses bins and drawers
a lot for her kids' clothes instead,
and I'm like, "Hmm, that's very interesting.
That's actually how we started doing it,
but maybe I get back on that."
Now we have hung up clothes and used drawers
for a long time.
As a combo, we basically hung up all shirts,
and of course, like I hang out my dresses and stuff,
but I really like the idea
of just going bins and drawers instead.
Closets and kids results in one thing,
and that equals clothes on the floor.
Now a couple of other tips Dawn has
are to process things right away.
So she's basically saying like,
"Fold it and put it away ASAP."
I love this so much. I love it so much.
Like this is what I was doing before.
Before I let the kids help.
It's not really helpful.
I feel like wanting to teach my teens to do things
holds me back.
I mean, like that is really parenting, right?
Like anytime you're teaching anybody to do anything,
it's like holding you back
and then it's supposed to help you.
I mean, my poor kids. Right?
Okay, anyway.
All right, only start if you can finish
is another thing that Dawn recommends.
So don't leave anything in the dryer
or don't have anything in the dryer when you start.
It's okay...
Like for me, I actually like to just leave things
in the dryer and then fold them the next day.
Although, the chances of wrinkles increase,
but you know, it depends on if you're folding.
Whatever. You do what works for you.
This makes perfect sense,
because backed up laundry baskets are a huge pain.
I absolutely cannot stand it.
Clearly, I am still playing catch up. (chuckles)
I swear that's like my biggest problem right now.
Okay, so here's what I love, and here's what I am modifying.
Now I will assume all laundry washing from now on.
Now I will get into one big reason why
in just a second, but...
And don't worry. Like I'm not letting them off the hook.
But this is what I'm going to do that's the same.
Number one, inventory.
We will continue to declutter every few months
to keep the inventory low,
like definitely, definitely hands down.
The second thing we will do one load per day.
No problem. I absolutely love doing that.
I will continue to do that.
The third thing, we will process it right away.
So of course, like folding it right away
and putting it away.
We are going to just go straight back to drawers
for the kids and bins, if you want to use bins.
We're probably just doing drawers.
And of course starting when you can handle it.
So when you have time to complete it.
Now what I will be modifying, we will have two hampers.
I considered letting my oldest keep one in the basement,
but I don't think that's the answer.
Because the funny thing is,
he was already putting a lot of his dirty clothes
in his little brother's hamper,
and so why not just cut out the middle man,
have one hamper for all three boys,
and my husband and I, we can do our own thing
because that was not a problem before.
Although I would love to,
and I may try just one in the future,
it probably will be when we're down to like one kid
or maybe when we're down to one kid,
they can just do it themselves.
Okay, so with my layout, I'm going to have my basement son,
and that sounds like so medieval
and I love this child to death,
but I'm going to just have him bring his clothes
all the way upstairs.
Like he can bring it to the third level
because that is where he showers.
I will maybe just keep a basket in here as well
and he can just throw it there.
Like I have this empty space right there
and he can just throw his stuff in there.
Should be fine.
Now the other thing is,
I'm not going to fold their clothes for them,
but what I am going to do,
because I will be doing all of their clothes on one day,
I will just lay it out in categories for them.
So I will just put like one kid's pants in one pile.
In fact, I might even just like throw all the pants
in one pile, like just sort of like out, right?
Like out.
And same with the shirts and stuff,
so they can actually do that.
And then when they get home from school,
because I'm assuming it'll be on a school day or not,
but when I'm ready for it,
they're going to come home and they're going to do it right away
because there's no need for it to be an excuse
and it should be done more frequently,
so it shouldn't be as much of a problem.
And then they can put it in their drawers.
It doesn't even have to be completely folded.
If they just like put their shirts in half
so it's not wrinkled, I'm happy with that.
Now, one thing that I did not mention
is just how annoying socks can be.
But years ago, I did come up with a solution
that works out really well.
Each kid has their own color of socks,
and basically I will buy a couple packs of each brand.
It doesn't cost a lot of money overall.
And then I, you know...
Like these, these are my oldest. They're inside out.
You know, you get the idea.
And like this is for my youngest.
And so basically, it's so easy.
Instead of like putting together
many, many different kinds of socks, it was just one kind.
A huge game changer.
As the mom of two ADHD kids and a husband with ADHD,
it's not an excuse
why I am sort of taking some of this back.
It's more of like a reason.
Schedules and executive functioning can be a real challenge
for people with ADHD,
and I have taught them how to do laundry.
They know how to do laundry, I've shown them how to wash,
shown them how to put away, like they can do it.
But with ADHD, learning comes in steps.
So I'm going to give them
like instead of a basket of clothes to fold
and saying "Put it away,"
like no wonder it didn't usually happen.
Their brains will dissociate, so they kind of wander away.
I've been like getting ready for bed.
But I was like, I have to quickly say
that this is actually just a plan
to get our schedule back with the laundry.
And then I plan on helping the kids
kind of like adapt this plan to themselves
so that they can be more self-sufficient
like when they're adults.
But for now, we need to get things under control
and just work bit by bit, right?
Like I just mentioned with the folding,
and washing, and everything,
and then slowly they will learn more.
So I'm not going to do it all forever
but I need to help get it on track,
and sort of like slowly help them learn
how to manage it all.
And I don't want to harp on them.
And so they can decide what they want to do.
I can't control everything
and I want to enjoy my next decade.
So thank you so much to Dawn from The Minimal Mom.
She has such an awesome system
and I love her videos and I linked it below.
And I bet you will love this video
about when I decluttered my closet,
because then you can see exactly how I make that decision.
Thank you so much for watching. Bye!
(soft music)