How to Outsource Your Laundry for Free

Posted by Susan Epstein on March 21st, 2011 at 09:30pm

Here is an excerpt from ‘Are You Tired Of Nagging?’

(Back by popular demand)

How to Outsource Your Laundry for Free: Life Skills Training

Most parents struggle with getting kids to pitch in and do chores and most parents feel like all they do is nag the kids day in and day out. This can lead to explosive behaviors or parents doing everything for their kids to avoid conflict. Either way, a problem gets created. Teaching personal responsibility is an essential component of parenting and raising successful children and young adults.

Parents have described their kid’s room in the following way: ‘A sea of clothing, wet moldy towels, science experiments growing and not the type you get credit for!’ Is it so horrifying that I would rather watch the latest Stephen King film, than open the door to my son’s room.’

And to top it off, I have to beg, threaten and coerce to get my kids to hand over their dirty clothing so that I can wash it. ‘Once I give it back, neatly folded, stacked and ‘clean’ they don’t even put it away!’

Ages: 9-18

Purpose: To teach independent living skills, appreciation for one’s belongings and to reduce parent-child conflict.

How to:

Purchase two laundry baskets for each child: one white and one other color and place inside their rooms.
Write out easy to understand instructions for your laundry machine and dryer and tape them to the front of your machines.
Have a field trip with your kids to the laundry room.
Explain to your kids that they will be in charge of their own laundry from now on, including their towels and sheets.
Give a laundry lesson and tell your kids that as they undress, the whites go in the white basket and everything else into the other basket.
Assign your kids 1 or 2 days each week that they will ‘get to’ use the machines.
Inform them that if they don’t transfer their clothing from one machine to the other or remove their clothing from the dryer that they risk having it dumped on the floor by the next person in line to wash clothes.
Do not bail your child out. Let them forget, let them find their clothing on the floor, wet and smelly.

You are teaching independence, accountability, respect and consideration for others. You are also teaching that all the household chores should not fall on one person (YOU). You are giving your children a gift for life. And at the same time, you get to stop nagging and you get free time and it didn’t cost you a penny!