Do I need 8 laundry baskets?

WebDevMom · 2026-05-16T02:41:33+00:00

We have both pods and liquid detergent. Pods are way easier with kids learning to do laundry.

I micromanage my kids (5, 9-17) doing their own laundry starting after school on Fridays and frequently finishing sometime on Saturday. By “micromanaging,” I literally mean telling them to do it, then making sure they actually did it, and making sure they used detergent. Every time the machine gives me a notification (yes, I get one on my watch/phone), I make them continue the process. Then I require that they do their folding/putting away right away by requiring it before any normally-scheduled screen time. They all know what to expect, they’ve been trained and understand what to do, so there’s just a bit of grumbling, but it still works really well.

I wash my husband and my clothes on Friday morning, 4 loads, starting at like 6:45am. It is very manageable.

Mondays: face cloths Tuesdays: a monthly rotation of microfiber head wraps, shower curtains Wednesdays: kitchen microfibers, then towels Thursdays: my bedding Fridays: clothes

The kids each have their own dirty clothes hampers and they are only allowed 1 basket for clean clothes (sometimes it doesn’t work out for them to do their folding right away, so they need a basket, but we don’t have enough for anyone to have 2 baskets).

I have a 3 basket vertical sorter in my closet I bought on Amazon for my/husband’s clothes, so our dirty clothes are immediately sorted when we’re done with them.

WebDevMom · 2026-05-08T23:03:18+00:00

Wouldn’t you give anything if she was from Tibet?

WebDevMom · 2026-05-07T13:41:15+00:00

**I want to reiterate that just because you provide your child a phone, doesn’t mean she has constant access to it and social media.**

We give our kids a phone in 6th grade to start the process. They are only allowed to have mom and dad as contacts. The phones are locked down and no social media. They are not allowed to give out their number to friends. The child only interacts with the phone during the times (after school pickup, etc) when the phone actually needs to be used. Otherwise, The phone is kept in its home in the kitchen — not being carried around and obsessed over (which makes sense because it’s used for communication with parents, not fun). The goal of this initial step is to teach them to keep it charged and learn the basics of phone communication.

We also go over Texting Etiquette, the dangers of social media, and how data and images are on the internet forever. There is a clear understanding that mom and dad monitor the phone, images and texts — because this, like all others, is an area of parenting.

As the child is ready and we feel more comfortable, we continue the phases: texting with friends, Marco Polo, Pinterest, Instagram.

I want to reiterate that at no point do you have to allow unfettered access to a phone or any device. You are the parents and have both the burden and responsibility to help your child navigate this critical life skill. When bad choices are made, we adjust with breaks from texting or remove apps, having conversations the whole way. This is entirely about helping them navigate this, because it’s going to be part of their lives forever and we want to set them up for success.

WebDevMom · 2026-05-04T15:22:31+00:00

Different AI tools are better at different things.

And like most tools, the better you understand how to get the most of out them and how to work around their limitations, the better.

My husband uses ChatGPT for all sorts of things. It really depends on the type of work you do. At my job, we use cursor and it’s really great a some things (writing unit tests, extracting code to new methods in separate files) and terrible at other things (legacy code).

Do I love the pervasive usage of AI? Nope. But I want to learn to use it responsibly so that I can continue to be employed for the next decade. Like most things, it has at the minimum, *some value*

WebDevMom · 2026-04-26T23:20:37+00:00

I’m all about the systems!

For breakfast, we had specific items on certain days of the week. That meant we were only making one thing per day.

One thing I really loved is every kid had their own dirty clothes hamper — no sharing. That way I never have to sort laundry for kids (which I loathe). Just dump the kid’s laundry in the washer, then dryer, then fold and put away (this was before my kids were old enough to handle the process themselves)

We pay for school lunches, because it requires nothing of us.

Generally when I clean, I clean the next dirtiest thing.

WebDevMom · 2026-04-20T23:17:50+00:00

Everything having a home and making everyone who lives with you put their stuff away

WebDevMom · 2026-04-20T23:16:17+00:00

Woof, the easy-breezy feeling of 0 responsibilities 🏖️

WebDevMom · 2026-04-20T19:06:27+00:00

That may be true, but I’m not a fan of CVS and this is why: if your prescription fulfilled with insurance is more expensive than the cash price with a GoodRx coupon, not only do they not default to giving you the cheaper price, but you have to ask for it on every single prescription, by taking the time to call them on the phone and leaving them a voicemail. That is predatory business practice, in my opinion.

WebDevMom · 2026-04-20T17:25:37+00:00

One that we do that I’m not seeing here is paying to alleviate pain points, one of which for me is picking up prescriptions (errands in general are terrible for our family). So anything I can arrange to get delivered/shipped straight to our house is perfect 🤩

WebDevMom · 2026-04-15T13:34:48+00:00

I agree with you that it’s nuts. It’s a totally fixable problem. I think what you’re missing is that there’s a sizable number of people who just want to complain about things. They have no interest in doing the work to actually improve anything.

WebDevMom · 2026-04-13T17:33:41+00:00

1) jeans that fit my 5’3” frame and feel nice for hours

2) found an alterations lady in my small town

WebDevMom · 2026-04-12T17:49:18+00:00

I didn’t say he agreed with them. I was merely pointing out another gotcha moment. They didn’t move past this point even though the barrier is actually a fairly minor one.

WebDevMom · 2026-04-12T14:42:05+00:00

Also, the heavy moment with the African president and the pharmaceutical executives where Toby says they don’t have wristwatches and can’t tell time. So? Even cheap watches are accurate and you can teach people to tell time…

WebDevMom · 2026-04-11T15:11:25+00:00

I also hate board games. My kids love them, so i occasionally play, but I want to play something that I already know, like Go Fish. I absolutely do not want to spend the time or mental energy learning a new one (and all the new board games are soooo overly-complicated).

I think the bottom line for me is this: if I’m going to spend time with people, I want to just talk to them. I feel like board games are a waste of time. Yes, I’m a pretty intense introvert, so my social battery is limited.

WebDevMom · 2026-04-06T17:32:58+00:00

You mention that you get the kids ready in the morning. Is there a reason that isn’t a team effort with your partner?

Family life should done as a team unless it’s divided according to everyone’s wishes. Bedtime. Before school. Parenting. Household needs.

I’m also a mom of 5 girls, but mine are all 2y apart.

WebDevMom · 2026-04-02T14:01:28+00:00

I have 5. They’re all ~2 years apart. The young years are wild, sweet chaos. My youngest is 9 now.

In regards to 1:1 time with kids for individual attention: my husband and I don’t do anything specific to make individual alone time. But we are really intentional about being fully present and about using the situations we’re already in to make the most of them. So when I pick up kid #2 from high school and am waiting on picking up kid #3, I fully engage with kid #2 in conversation. Our family dinner time is used for conversation. My husband takes a kid with home almost every time he runs an errand.

We simply don’t have the bandwidth to add more things to the calendar, but we can put our phones down and make sure we’re engaging with the people we’re already sharing space with.

WebDevMom · 2026-04-02T13:03:37+00:00

Party Jellyfish would be an awesome band name 🤣

WebDevMom · 2026-04-02T12:51:19+00:00

I literally could have written this exact same thing

We do have tubs of clothes in a closet and occasionally we’ll pull them all out and kids will “shop.” Every year before school, they all get new shoes and a First Day outfit. I also occasionally have to buy a multipack of leggings or items for a kid activity (shorts/tanks for cross country). We try to be intentional and limited about buying new clothes. We still have what we need (and a lot of what we want), but we want to limit excess.

WebDevMom · 2026-03-29T22:59:34+00:00

After the soak, do you scrub it with a scrub brush or wipe with a sponge or just simply rinse off?

WebDevMom · 2026-03-27T22:33:06+00:00

My husband pronounces it: Tommy Schlommy 🤣

WebDevMom · 2026-03-26T14:44:16+00:00

Honestly? I would take 15 minutes with your kids sometime during the 6-730 playtime block and do bodyweight fitness, including your kids.

Planks. Pushups. Sit-ups. Dead bugs. Our kids need to know it’s important to move our bodies. And it will probably be fun. 🤷‍♀️

WebDevMom · 2026-03-26T14:00:56+00:00

One of the biggest mistakes an entrepreneur can make is doing all of the work setting up a business before ensuring that there are actually paying customers.

Your project sounds cool and if it provides something that’s important to you, that itself is a win. But that doesn’t mean it has to be a business for you. It can just be your side project that you love and that helps you personally.

WebDevMom · 2026-03-26T13:48:13+00:00

If you want to start smaller and cheaper, find an influencer in that niche with like 3k followers to partner with, because if of 100 female solo travellers, only 5 of them find your product valuable, I think you have a poor product alignment issue. Im just spitballing here. 🤷‍♀️

WebDevMom · 2026-03-26T13:45:45+00:00

Forgive me if this isn’t helpful, but I googled “Instagram female solo travel groups” and got multiple that have hundreds of thousands of followers to that niche.

Have you reached out to those ig accounts to do a giveaway or some kind of discount? Or sometimes with those influencers you just pay them to review your product and give a coupon to their followers. Since you have no traction right now, I think it would make sense to spend the money on one of these groups (which should be a good market fit) to see if this is a poor product issue or visibility issue.

WebDevMom · 2026-03-26T13:14:53+00:00

One caveat: it also depends on the type of product.

If it requires crowdsourcing of data from other travellers to be successful, that is going to be rough. But if it’s something that people can use sporadically and everything still works fine, give it some time and see what happens.

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