Laundry and fun don’t often go hand in hand… do they? Well, that’s all up to you!
Make folding a
bore no more!
Here are some games that can make folding laundry fun for the whole family.
Play 20 Questions
Get your family together to fold clothes, and then start a game of 20 Questions, I Spy or Would You Rather. Start with something silly like “Would you rather fold 400 towels or do math homework for 10 hours straight?” Encourage your children to ask silly questions, too. Before you know it, laundry folding time will merge into family bonding time. What more could you ask for?
Sock ball
Ask each of your kids to bring a small bin or drawer from his or her room. Line up all the bins along one wall of the family room (with the bins touching each other) and then place a basket of clean socks by the opposite wall (or closer to the bins, if you wish). Then tell players to take turns pulling a matching pair of their own socks out of the basket, folding the socks into a ball and tossing the sock ball across the room and into a bin (players must stand by the basket when throwing). Each sock ball that lands in the bin belonging to the owner of those socks is worth two points to that player, each ball that lands in a different player’s bin is worth one point to the player owning that bin, and each ball that lands on the floor is worth no points to anybody. Once all the socks have been thrown, the person with the highest score wins (and has to put away all the socks that landed on the floor).
Teach your kids to help with housecleaning >>
Divide and conquer
Sort clean, unfolded laundry into color-coordinated piles, making sure that each pile contains roughly the same number of items. Give each family member a pile and then challenge each person to first neatly fold (emphasize neatly) all the clothes in his or her pile and then sort the pile into separate piles belonging to each family member. Whoever finishes folding and sorting first wins.
Dance while you fold
Who says folding laundry has to be done while just standing around? Have a laundry-folding dance party! Create a fun, upbeat station on Pandora and jam out with your family while you fold your clean laundry. You can even incorporate a game of Freeze Dance (Freeze Fold!) into your family folding time.
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Folding Races
Folding towels is a tedious task — until you add a challenge into the mix. Gather your family members and distribute clean towels to everyone — big ones to the adults and teens, hand towels to the big kids and washcloths to the toddlers. Give the same number of towels to each player. Then start a timer and see who can neatly fold his or her stack of towels the fastest (you can be lenient with the little ones on neatness). Whoever folds all of his or her towels first wins.
How to teach your kids to do the laundry >>
I have my little ones help me with the towel folding all the time. They actually ask me to let them help with the task now, and they do a pretty good job! Simply getting them to volunteer to help with such a task means more to me than perfectly folded towels — and the more we do it together, the better they get.
Tip:
When playing games while folding, use this time as an opportunity to talk with your kids — about their day, what’s going on in school or anything they want to talk about. Many families don’t have time for dinner around the table together every night, but small moments like the casual ones you’ll share while folding laundry can segue into great family conversation time.
More on family chore fun
Ways to make laundry fun for the family
Real moms share their tips for laundry
8 Ways to make cleaning fun for your kids
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