There are Rabbits in the Laundry Room!

    In any house it seems like laundry "breeds" like rabbits. You just feel like you have it caught up to find someone hid the other half of it under the bed. I have tried a number of ways other moms of many have said they handle laundry. I am all for kids learning to do their own laundry. I found my kids forget to check the pockets of their pants. This has caused on a number of occasions to have to rip apart the washer to remove a screw, a nail, more than once a lego or two, and a baby sock from the pump. The water mess and finally a new washer caused me to do it mostly myself.
Here's is some of the ways I have tried.
-Each child over 5 yrs old does their own laundry on a certain day. (a younger child clearly needs  supervision)
-The older children have a day assigned to help do the laundry.
-Baskets are assigned to each child and they are responsible to bring laundry on a certain day and take back their items to their rooms and put away.
-family closet

      Family closet was new to me 5 yrs ago. After having twins and bringing the tally of 7 kids 10yrs old and under I knew I needed a better way.  I found the best I could do while nursing infant twins was wash, dry, and get laundry into baskets and then it sat in the laundry area until needed. Following through on children putting clothes away and getting them to the washer was over the top for me. By the next baby two years later we had decided and started a family closet. We use dressers in bedrooms for extra blankets and sheets for beds. I like to have a few extra sets for when the stomach bug comes though and takes the pressure off of keeping up with the daily 4 loads normally and then then the extra sheets to run through the wash that day and get them back on the bed in 12 hrs. I often forget the towels and clothes that also seem to get added during a sickness too!
      We have a basement we were (are still) attempting to finish so this is where the idea and the space for the closet came in. We have a wood stove in our basement, so in the winter I hang dry clothes. Things dry fast and the kids clothes can be left to hang and be considered put away. I do hang each child's clothes together and try to use a certain color hanger for each child. Only my husband and my clothes go into our closet. I made counter to get clean laundry baskets off the floor as young children seem to love to dump clean laundry! Each child's good pants and shirts are hung. Pjs, socks, and underware are in bins under one of the counters. The younger three have play clothes in the bins as well. This saves a lot of time as everything gets put away quickly. No carting to rooms, following though it gets put away, and it seems the dirty gets to the wash area easier bc nothing is in the kids rooms except beds and dressers with sheets.
     The hardest thing for a large family is space. I am ridiculously blessed for space. If your are thinking about a family closet this is the list I would start planning with
      -you must figure out a space.
        -How will you store clothes?
        -Is everyone able to access their clothes easily?
        - who is responsible for the laundry? (me mostly, my daughter takes care of kitchen, the older       boys towels and linens for upstairs bathroom)
        -how will people change clothes? (we have a powder room near the washer)
        -how will things flow through the space? (we have a lot no available to everyone)
        - is the area the best space or is there a better area?
        -how do you deal with hand me downs?

   This is why the basement became the best solution for us. Our washer and dry was in an upstairs  small entrance room as we came in the side door. It was also where coats boots and extras were dropped on entering. Trying to get clean laundry out of the dryer and not have muddy boots interfere really helped push the idea. We do have to run a dehumidifier in the summer because in a rainy summer it can get damp even though our basement was suppose to be "Dry Loc" sealed. It has improved the use of spaces as we now have this good size mud room big enough for boots and coats when we come in. We save time and energy on clothes and the space is bright and lots of room to put things away. Under the added counter space is room for bins for hand me down clothes. Easy access to put away outgrown clothes or pull out needed items.

The kids bins are under this counter. The kitchen laundry is sitting in these baskets on top as well as the jeans I pulled out to fix or use for sewing projects.

 I need to get more tile board to completely hide the totes I use for hand me downs. You can see how we store extra clothes and keep them close access for easy storage and retrieval. The shelf above is boots and shoes in bins for hand me down use.

I washed our laundry yesterday and it is dry. I need to just take up to my closet and hang it. From the lime green shirt (over the dryer) is kids clothes. We have two washers and a dryer. It helps keep ahead. I do on average 4-5 loads a day. I could probably get away with one washer but on days I don't get to laundry 10 loads is a lot on a washer the next day. the baskets next to the washer is for different laundry. Kitchen and downstairs powder room . The upper is suppose to be whites (notice the red hankie) and we have darks on the floor and you can't see it. As you can see we have a full load of rabbits breeding in the laundry area. I am glad we do have it contained to this area of our home!

Bittersweet Life on a Farm

In September of 2014 we decided to break out the checkbook and buy some market pigs. Our 11 year old wanted to try raising a pig. His older brother was only half enthused. So an hour and a half drive in our 15 passenger 8 kids and a dog crate we came to the farm. We asked questions about what to feed how to raise and ended up with 3 piglets 8 wks old. We named them Mary, Paul and Sally. Oh those piglets were fun. Squealing when you scratched their little backs and running like crazy around the 12x12 pen. They were very easy to keep the water and food in one corner and a bed in another with hay and they found the corner across from the stall door to be the "bathroom" for them. This was easier then our cows, horses, and goats that would sometimes mess in their hay! Before we realized they were ready to go. It had been so much fun. So we decided to keep Sally. I loved Sally. She would away grunt and "talk to you." She would see me and call me. I would say "Hey Sally how are you?' and she would oink at the pen's edge hoping I would come over and give her a back scratch. As I would scratch her back she'd grunt in delight. She kept growing and was coming regular into heat and we could tell she would stand to be bred. We were told it would be hard to AI (artificial insemination) but she took the first time!! We were so excited we would have baby piglets!! However about 6 weeks into her pregnancy she got very ill. We ended up giving her small spoonfuls of applesauce and apple juice I had canned for us to get her to eat after she expelled the babies. We had the vet come a few times. We tried medicines and shots.The vet wasn't even sure she would recover. He felt that it was feed that contained mold. It will make a mama pig deathly ill and the piglets almost always die. Thankfully Sally came around and became her normal self but she would not go into a standing heat. Month after month we waited. We finally thought she was close and order semen again, but this time she was in heat but would not stand. We tried one more time. She again would not stand. We knew then what had to be done. It was the heartbreaking decision as we knew we could not keep a 400lb pet pig. She would have to be sent for processing like we originally had planned. I loved her like I do my dog. 
There is a bright side to the story. When Sally got sick we decide to get a registered breeding pig. While raising the 3 piglets my older son actually got quite fond of them. He chose the breed he wanted to start with. We bought a Register Duroc from the original farm we had bought Sally (who was a Yorkshire cross). The second time Sally would not stand we bred Missy the Duroc. The babies won't be registered but at least we didn't waste the second AI. Missy is very big now ready for babies Feb 13th.We took Sally to Warsaw Packing yesterday and this morning got a weight. She was a very healthy 274 lb hanging weight. I will miss her. I should have taken a good bye picture. Everyone else can't wait for bacon. This is the bitter sweet life on a farm.

The top picture was not long after we got Sally, Mary and Paul. The next is Missy this summer and this is Missy now. I plan to tell the next chapter of life in winter with baby pigs!!