The $400 obviously does not include the washer and dryer themselves.
And presumably they’ve done all their own electrical, plumbing, and carpentry work.
How can that dog just sleep calmly on her lap when so much awesome stuff is going on in the laundry?
Wait, the kids don’t have to fold their own clothes? Slackers.
Here’s the laundry cart her kid is using:
We have several of these at home and I endorse them 100%. They fit under the shirts and blouses hanging on our closet rods and absolutely work a treat.
All those kids are old enough to be doing their OWN laundry. Her oldest is twenty. Assign each kid a day of the week for their laundry and pour yourself a glass of wine, woman.
Seriously! Jeez, my mom made us fold our own clothes before we hit double-digits.
That is some really nice work. Faux marble!
But, c’mon: “Ronda Batchelor and her husband, Les, have six kids. Yes, you read that right. … Needless to say, when it comes time to do laundry for the family of eight, Ronda spends a solid day or two doing nothing but sorting, washing, drying and folding.” Needless to say? I live in a family of two, and I know it’s my job to do half the laundry. Time to pitch in, Les!
I would imagine that a super efficient laundry room would do a lot more work for me…
Sure if they both work but with him being the only income earner it makes sense for her to do laundry while he’s at work. Or should she watch tv and drink beer? Hey that sounds pretty good, I’m gonna go check with my wife on something…
In addition to everything else already said…
-
They have DRAWERS to dry lingerie, which don’t work well (surprise, surprise) so they’ve rigged up an electric fan. There are so many things wrong with that I can’t even
-
Apparently the wife/mother does enough ironing that putting in an ironing board was on the short list. Between hanging clothing to dry, using the right setting on the dryer, and/or buying clothing that doesn’t wrinkle so much, she’d save herself time and work.
-
One of the biggest advantages to having everyone sort their clothing into appropriate bins is that you can throw in a load whenever the bin is full enough. Spending an entire day doing laundry makes no sense if you’re not boiling water or using rocks. You’ve got machines…use them and walk away. Makes it easier to hand dry and fold, too, because there isn’t too much to deal with at any one time.
I also wonder how they managed to do that entire redecorating with only $400. Even if you don’t value the hours spent doing much of the work yourself, there’s still a lot of raw material cost and did they really already own all of the power tools needed to put it together?
What’s wrong with the fan concept? Seems like a great idea to me, no worse than having an exhaust fan above a shower.
But you only have one of each machine… So if the dryer takes an hour to dry a load, and lets say she’s going to do 6 loads - at best it’ll be 6 hours + whatever the wash time is. (Or the last wash could be delicates to drawer dry.) Realistically she’ll fold and hang in between cycles, but that’s still a solid 3+ hours of work.
I’m a guy so the concept of sort and wash is wasted on me. Outside of my work clothes (which get soiled with grease and hydraulic fluid) I wash everything together. I mean maybe the first time I wash a new shirt it goes in with the appropriate pile in case of color bleed, but let me be realistic, most of my clothes aren’t THAT nice.
Having done a good deal of remodel stuff, I’m going with “time” to find cheap deals. They mentioned thrift stores, salvage lots, used good - basically anything you can get at a super good price. Outside of a decent miter saw a lot of that would go in with hammer/nails or drill/screws (minus the electrical work, and it doesn’t look like they did much, if any, on the plumbing side.)
I think the real thing here is space - that’s a large laundry room by my standards. It’s certainly large for any house I’ve ever been in. It’s efficient because they have the space for cabinets, and pull out this and that. I think they only thing I would change would be to make the faux granite counter top fixed to the wall and have it flip up - then install a small sink under that area.
They could hang more items at a time, and bigger items, and have them all dry quicker if they put up a retractable clothes line over the counter, which could in turn be lower and offer more space because they wouldn’t have to deal with drying drawers.
Some examples:
Also, a lot of the wire shelving is made in such a way that you can hang hangers off their front edge, which means there could be a storage shelf above the head with a built-in hanging rack that way. (Hint: that’s what we have.)
“You only have one of each machine” is the key phrase there. You start a load when you wake up and then go make breakfast and pack lunches; you move the load over to the dryer/rack after everyone leaves. Same thing again when you’re making dinner, and maybe one more load after that in the evening. If you do two to three loads a day, every day, it doesn’t pile up so much, it isn’t so overwhelming, it doesn’t take up as much space, and no one in the family is ever totally desperate for clean clothing. Devoting an entire day to laundry sounds awful for the person doing it, and then what happens when a kid comes home the following day with a filthy team uniform that has to be clean by tomorrow for the next game?
What about knit sweaters?
My wife has lot of those, and I’ve been “reprimanded” more than once for putting those in the dryer. Anything short of lying them flat and they stretch to all kinds of distorted shapes, hanging is out of the question. Drying things flat isn’t just for “lingerie” as you put it.
Also the logic is certainly there to space the washing loads out, but it is always hard to say how that works in reality. I’m going to assume her kids don’t wear school uniforms, so it’s possible they like to have their favorite outfit clean on Friday or the weekend or some such thing. Of course that circles back to my whole no sort, wash as you go mentality.
It was the “needless to say” that got me. If there’s a reason why she is doing the laundry for seven other people, it needs saying. It shouldn’t just be assumed she will because she’s the wife and mother.
My dog folds my clothes for me.
Okay, she steals them and makes a nest to nap in.
Okay, all the animals just lay directly on top of dad.
Good kitty.
Seriously, I still want to know why she hasn’t got at least 5 of those kids doing their own laundry. I have had friends that got to college without knowing how to do laundry. They’d just pack it up and take it home to mom every couple of weeks. I don’t feel like she’s doing them any favors doing it all for them.
