RRR Room by Room- Laundry Room...theoretical deep clean

The laundry room is across the hall from our office. Once upon a time, long before we moved in, it was a bedroom. It's a nice, large, out of the way room in which we can heap pile upon pile of our dirty laundry. Seven people dirty a lot of clothes.

I can't catch up. I hate laundry, not the washing, but the folding. I have been meaning to do a deep clean of the laundry room for days, and I've been avoiding it. It's overwhelming. Blankets and socks and jeans...oh my. Because I've been so remiss at actually doing the laundry, it's holding up my efficiency checklist, and my blogging. If I wait until I've caught up the laundry, I'll never blog again.

Why is it important to have the laundry done?
1. I would be calmer if the kids knew where their clothes were & didn't need me to chase them down. (Are they hanging in the laundry room? Are they hanging in your closet? Are there any clean pants? The suspense is killing us.)
2. When the laundry gets behind, so does my cloth diapering. We have to switch to disposables. It's like pouring money down the drain, and it's such a polluting mess. The inserts aren't an issue, but the covers have to air dry, so if I get behind, we have to wait.
3. Wrinkles! Running the dryer to de-wrinkle clothes: not eco-friendly.
4. Knowing who really needs clothes & who doesn't. Boy 1 & 2 are growing like crazy. Keeping them in clothes is a trick, but if I have them all washed & they are put away, I can tell what they are really running low on, and what they aren't. Plus, if I had all the laundry caught up, I could sort out the outgrown stuff & post it on threadUP.

So the meantime solution:

Piles & baskets full of humiliation

I've made piles. Stuffed things in baskets. Scootched all the dirty laundry to one corner of the room. For the record both my He washer and dryer have been running all day. So there has been a little progress. My embarrassment at this full disclosure (which isn't full at all, you don't get to see the rest of the room. Hideous.) hopefully will inspire me to keep pushing the laundry through. 

Some plans to get the job done:

Sock basket

• Tonight we're playing Sock Go Fish with the kids. This involves the giant basket of socks which I refuse to fold (I hate hate hate pairing, folding, sorting socks. h.a.t.e. it.). We pull out the sock basket, each of us grabs out 5 socks and take turns looking for matches. "Do you have a Hanes with green letters?" "Go fish." 

• The children need to put their laundry away. They each have a shelf in the laundry room with their name on it. The shelves are filling up as I attempt to get all this laundry done. It needs to go into their dressers & closets, rather than having them gather in the laundry room to get ready for school every morning. 

• A routine. There has to be a way to make laundry a part of my daily routine. I've tried the Fly Lady way, but I'm really bad at sticking to it for long, and it doesn't allow for all my crafting, content managing, blogging, kid playing time. It's too restrictive. Maybe a load every morning & one every night? I hate schedules, but something has to happen so that the laundry gets did.

I have to get this room under control and then find time & energy efficient ways to keep it going.