rofl............I used to sing that song. You don't have teenagers in your house, do you?

We solved the white problems exactly how you were teasing. We buy them by the dozen at Hanes website. Identical and all one size. Then when one gets past the point of redemption, we have a spare and it gets paired up with another spare to make a pair.

I go so far as to put a stack of each person's clean clothes on their dresser. Take it to their rooms? Ha! I haven't trained my husband to take it to his room.

I'm not much one for buying things I don't need, but I think some cheap plastic bins should be on your shopping list. Put two in each bedroom, ugly or not. Label one clean and label the other dirty. You might not ever get your family to sort out their dirty clothes by light/medium/dark load but you can get them to throw all their dirty ones in the dirty bin and you can stuff all their clean ones in the clean bin. Threaten to break knuckles if a clean one ends up in the dirty bin. I have heard too many women complain that their kids sort through the clean stuff, wad it up in a mess and when forced to clean their rooms, toss it in the dirty clothes for Mama to wash again. Bull pucky.

When a child reaches the age of twelve, and can run the most sophisticated electronic in your home and text on their blackberry blindfolded as they do their homework, they can be taught how to wash their own clothes. Yes.....you can delegate that. Believe me they learn when they run out of clothing. Even husbands can learn. If you let them do their own, you don't have to worry about a pair of indigo jeans going in with your white cotton lawn dress. If they have pink underwear and grey socks, it's their problem. And when peer pressure gets bad enough, they'll clean up their act. (And their clothes)

Yes, find a good all-purpose detergent and it can be used on all your laundry, save maybe very delicate hand washables.

I loved Calliope's post!!

What I did was put in a laundry chute and a cabinet with a basket system. Every day I unload the chute and sort the clothes in the appropriate basket. When the basket is full the load needs to be washed. So you are basically washing at least one load a day.

So I would suggest that you get some baskets that approximate the load amount of clothing you can put in your washer. When the basket is full just pick it up and load the washer. No more of picking up every item, again, off the floor. Your laundry area will look neater and more pleasing to the eye which will be more "calming" to your demeanor. Also, I would hang everything that you can. The only thing I didn't hang were socks and boxer shorts. All their underwear t-shirts were always hung. They're not as apt to paw through the piles and toss clean clothes on the floor. Depending on their age you could even buy rolling clothes racks for each person. That way they have the option of either packing the items up to their rooms, or go to the basement every day.
When you get to the point that you are going to buy a new washer, get one with delay start. That way you can basically load at bed, then toss in the dryer when you get up. Or whenever you decide you will be around to unload the dryer. Don't waste time and energy re-tumbling clothes.

Laundry is a never ending chore. Come up with a game plan as to how you will tackle the problem every day. Obviously the age of your children will determine how you will approach the problem. And pick one day as "your" day. No laundry, etc., so you can have at least a few hours of ME time.

Hear your pain Five girls panties and socks everywhere. spent countless hours sorting size foding and matching until I started this system. I got stakable bins one for each child. I just threw all their panties and sock in their bins. They had to go get them each day, eventually they got tired of this and started matching and putting them away themselves. You would be surprised how much extra time you have when you do not have matching and folding socks as a chore. An added bonus: They never ran out of socks oe undies. For some reason my girls "lost" these items as soon as they hit their room.saved me countless hours looking for socks before the school bus came.

My mother used to tell us that the washing machine runs only one day a week. If we miss having our dirty clothes in the laundry room bin by then, we'll have to wait another week.

She did deliver the washed clothes to our beds for us to put away.

Later on she said we could do our own laundry. Ha! My sister was the worst. She's wash one blouse at a time, or one pair of jeans at a time. It wasn't long before our father started to complain about the water bill. Back to only one day a week washing.

What good ideas.
It's just DH and me but even so laundry management is a bear, as we seem to stack up dirty clothes like crazy. I don't like DH to "help" with the laundry because no matter how much he's doing, he brings it all into the laundry room at once and then I don't know what is clean and what is dirty...
-I only bring into the laundry room what I'm doing at the time.
-I also got him all one kind of white sock, and all one kind of black dress sock.
-I use liquid Tide (original scent, not the kind with "Clorox") for everything except silk dresses. I use cheap shampoo for those.
-We have three rolling plastic hampers in the closet (purchased at The Container Store or even Target/Walmart): one for towels, one for whites, one for colors. Dress shirts just go on the floor. I have several extra of these that remain stacked until the full ones are rolled into the laundry room, then the empty replaces it (otherwise the clothes start to collect on the floor.)
-Like someone else said, everything is hung except sox and undies. Those "Joy Mangano" hangers are really nice for not taking up too much room, and things don't slip off them. I stick to one color of them so it seems more serene in the closet.

My big problem is that I don't fold things up promptly and get bins of laundry waiting to be folded! I have to do better on that.

I found that moving from a large laundry room in the lower level of my old house, to a laundry closet on the 2nd floor of this one, helped tremendously with my laundry disorganization. Laundry is kept in each person's bedroom or bath and is easily collected when I decide to toss in a load. I fold it as it comes out of the dryer, using the machines as stacking surfaces, and put it in bedrooms directly. I do this because I know that if I get lazy and toss it into a basket it will stay there forEVER.

I agree that a kid who can figure out a smart phone or hook up the family entertainment system without a manual can learn to run the washer.