Disclosure: This post was sponsored by OxiClean™ through their partnership with POPSUGAR Select. While I was compensated to write a post about OxiClean™ Laundry, all opinions are my own.
When my little family grew to 5 members, which included three little boys, I wasn’t prepared for a lot of things. When they were all under three years old, I joked about not knowing how to handle three teenage boys down the road. I thought about the amount of food, dishes, and laundry we’d go through. I pictured it being astronomical and unmanageable. Who would have guessed it would have happened by the time by oldest turned six?
The one thing I have been most surprised with is the amount of laundry we go through in a week. Seriously, the boys are 3, 4, & 6 and can go through more than a load of laundry a day. It’s not just that they are messy (they are though), but it seems they have to find the smallest reasons to change clothes throughout the day. If my four-year-old gets a drip of milk on his shorts, his whole outfit is ruined. He has to immediately (even in the middle of dinner), find something else to wear.
When they come in from playing in the sandbox, he has to change clothes. It’s like any change of scenery equals a change of clothes.
It no longer surprises me that by the end of the day, the kids’ laundry basket is overflowing and I need to throw another load in the washer. I don’t enjoy spending half the day doing laundry. I mean, I like cleaning and all, but I can only take so much laundry a day. Through the years I have figured out a few ways to ease the pain of tackling the mounds of dirty clothes my boys create.
Tips for Tackling Kids’ Laundry & Stains
1. Multiple Laundry Baskets – I have laundry baskets at the end of the upstairs hallway, in bedrooms, bathrooms, and one that moves around to gather all the loose laundry. Since my kids are young, they are always trying to change clothes wherever they happen to be standing, for whatever reason. Keeping baskets or hampers in convenient places throughout the house helps keeps things together and easier for the kids.
2. Sort Laundry in the Laundry Room – Once we got our front-load washer/dryer installed; my husband built a platform for them that fit 3 baskets underneath. Now we have a basket for the kids’ clothes, dark laundry, and white laundry. I also have a basket for towels & linens in the laundry room as well. Right when the laundry hits the room, it goes right into the appropriate basket. When it’s time to do a load, it is all together already sorted.
3. Have the Kids Help – My kids actually love doing the laundry. I am sure it won’t last forever, so I am using it to my advantage as long as I can. Each night, Chase takes the large laundry basket and does a quick walk of the house gathering any loose clothes and emptying other laundry baskets into his. Then he sorts it all in the laundry room.
They also help out with folding and putting their clean laundry away. Working together helps it go quicker and we are still spending time together even though we are doing household chores.
4. Make Laundry Fun & a Learning Experience – When my 3 year old helps with the laundry, we practice color matching, counting, and any other educational factor I can throw in there.
5. Eliminate the Need to Pre-Treat Stains – Stains are unavoidable in my house. No outdoor activity is complete without a grass or soil stain. No meal is eaten without at least one spilled drink and food on someone’s shirt.
However, I always forget to pre-treat stains. ALWAYS. I get side-tracked, distracted, or just too busy to worry about it. I can’t tell you how many times I ended up trashing something because I didn’t pre-treat the stain and it was taking too many washes and too much work to get it clean. Those days are over.
Using a laundry detergent that is powerful enough to fight stains- even those that are dried on, is essential. OxiClean™ Laundry detergent has me covered. It’s an all-in-one solution that can be used on all of your laundry* to help remove stains, brighten your colors & whites and leave a long lasting freshness. It also helps save you time since it can help you get out tough, dried-on stains the first time.
Great for a busy mom with three messy boys, like myself. No need to worry about pre-treating stains and no need to wash over and over again to try to get it out.
The most common stains last week involved grass and spaghetti sauce. I was close to tossing my son’s favorite sleeveless shirt in the trash because he kept getting red sauce and fruit juices all over it. The stains were starting to set in.
After one wash with OxiClean™ Laundry, there was no trace of stains. None. With all the time saved on laundry, we can enjoy other fun activities throughout the day.
Like getting dirty all over again, playing in the rain and in mud puddles.
*Please follow manufacturer directions for your garments. For best results, pretreat stains with laundry detergent, wait 5-10 minutes and then wash.