When we became foster parents, we went from zero kids to two under two with special needs, literally overnight. During the licensing process we had been told we could expect one tox-positive newborn to come to us from the NICU, but God had other plans. Instead we welcomed two beautiful babies, ages 7 months and 17 months – which meant double the love, and double the laundry. I remember being completely shocked in those early days by the sheer amount of dirty laundry they could generate! 

With one child just starting solids (and all the icky sticky messy messes that come with that) and the other spouting out streams of spit up like a geyser, we were changing the children’s clothes what felt like every five minutes. The laundry piled up fast. Add a sudden and dramatic decrease in sleep, it didn’t take long before we had not one laundry mountain but an entire laundry mountain range.  Every flat surface in the house was a tectonic plate from which another ridge emerged. Foster care also meant we now had social workers in our home one to two times a week. After a couple slightly concerned, slightly judgemental faces I knew I had to find a way to stay on top of it. 

Why Our Old Laundry System Didn’t Work Anymore

Prior to kids, we had a wonderfully organized walk in closet, with bins and labels and matching hangers. As you can imagine, this did not work well for us in the new baby stage. Not only did we have way more inventory now – an influx of additional clothing and items that needed homes – but we also had way less time, and as I mentioned before, way less sleep. We needed something extremely, almost stupidly simple and easy to maintain. I did not have the bandwidth to sort and re-sort and fold and put away and find again. 

The Low Maintenance Laundry Hack That Finally Worked

The game-changer was repurposing a 1×4 cube shelf that we had previously been using for toys. I added fabric bins inside the cubes – one for each family member – and placed a small, single-load sized laundry basket above each cube – so four cubes, and four laundry baskets total. Dirty clothes went in the baskets. Clean, dry clothes got tossed right back into the cubes. No sorting, no folding. 

My husband and I still had some clothes that needed to be hung, and that was fine, because I was no longer spending precious mental and physical energy separating underwear from socks and socks from pajamas. Anything and everything that didn’t absolutely have to be hung up just got tossed in the clean bin. 

Letting Go of Laundry Guilt

At first, I felt self conscious. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t even keep up on the laundry? But eventually, I asked myself: Who the heck cares?! My family had clean clothes. They knew where to find them and where to toss them when they were dirty. Bam! Problem solved. No more Sierra Laundry Range in my living room. No more shoving laundry off the bed onto the floor to sleep, and then back onto the bed from the floor in order to walk out of the bedroom. Just a simple, effortless system that was easy to use and easy to maintain. And for that season, that was absolutely good enough. 

If you find yourself drowning and overwhelmed in the new baby season, allow me to offer a word of wisdom – Let good enough be good enough. Those first weeks home with a new baby are not the time to be going above and beyond. They’re a time to slow way down, simplify more than you’ve ever simplified before, and discover systems that work for your actual family and your current season. No guilt – or folding! – required.