How to Get Your Kids to do Their Laundry by Harold Brucia

For some reason, getting my kids to do their chores has always been a difficult task.  This is especially true with laundry.  My wife and I could do the housework ourselves, but my mom always made my brother and me do chores when we were kids, and I think it helps build character.  I am a firm believer in letting kids be kids, but I also think responsibility is an important thing to teach – plus it’s not fair that either I or my wife has to always pick up the slack.

            Last summer we started working on getting the kids to do their laundry on their own.  First we tried just telling them to do it, but it would just pile up and never get done, or they would try to do a ton of loads at once and tie up the washer and dryer when we needed to do our laundry.  We would get frustrated and just do it ourselves.  My son would either forget how to work the machines or pretend he forgot so someone would have to walk him through it each time, essentially doing it for him.  We were getting fed up.

Then we had a genius idea.  We bought a dry erase board with a weekly calendar, just like this one.  Each kid was assigned two days each week to do his or her laundry.  The rule was that they could only do laundry on their day, but they could do it at any time that day.  If they didn’t do it, they had to wait until their next day.  My wife also typed up very detailed laundry instructions and taped them to the laundry room wall so everyone knew how to use the machines on their own.

At first, I think they thought we were kidding.  The first week, Michael didn’t touch his laundry.  Then came the day of a pool party we were having and he had no clean swim trunks.  In fact, both pairs were wet since they’d been stuffed in the bottom of his hamper.  Since it wasn’t his laundry day, he had to wear stinky, wet swim trunks.  He still remembers it, and Samantha likes to remind him of how gross she thought it was.  Never again have we had a problem with getting laundry done!