With 9 family members taking a daily bath or shower, wet towels built up quickly! I found myself having to do a load per day of just towels.
I solved this problem by buying 4″ lengths of colorful grossgrain ribbon. I let each member select the color they liked, and write their name on the ribbon in permanent marker. This ribbon was safety-pinned to the edge of a bath towel to last all week long. Every Saturday morning, one of the young children was assigned to go and collect all the towels in a laundry basket to be washed.
Just doing this small thing reduced my laundry load by one-seventh!
I also took a short length of masking tape, wrote each family member’s name on it, and taped it above a towel rack or hook so every towel had a place to be hung up. This necessitated buying some more towel hooks, but that made me realize that without a place to hang their towel, no wonder those towels ended up on door knobs or on the floor. Now, no matter where the towel landed, if it wasn’t in it’s prescribed place, it was easy to see who the culprit was. Since the ribbons were different colors, the owner could spot his towel easily without having to read the name on it. No one wanted anyone else to use his towel, and everyone, including the little ones, become much more responsible!
The result? A drastic reduction of laundry, more neatly hung-up towels (as the owner wanted their towel to dry out well for tomorrow’s shower), and no towels left on the floor!
Hurrah!
May I recommend:
Before I had children, I had read an article about assigning a color to each child by Dian Thomas.
I did with all 6 kids. My husband thought I was a little crazy, but later he totally agreed with me. It was easy to know which child had left a towel, a notebook, a pencil, a cup, a plate, even a backpack or or suitcase (though sometimes we had to tie a ribbon to it in the correct color like you did with the towels.) It has worked super well for out family for the past 27 years! Every one knows who left out the item. Even our dentist has it noted on his records as to which color toothbrush to give to which child!
Wow, you sound like a super-organized mother. I laughed about the dentist! I think you saved yourself a lot of work that way. Thanks for sharing. ; 0 )