Color-Coded

Here's a little tip for those who do most (or all) of their laundry on Laundry Day (as described in Bootcamp for Lousy Housekeepers):
Keep four laundry baskets on hand in your laundry area: one white, one dark or brightly-colored, one red or pink, and one any-color.
Teaching your littlest helpers to do laundry becomes a simple exercise in sorting (or classifying, if they're older....hey, does this count as science?)

Simply train your child to take the laundry from the any-color basket (this is dirty laundry -- ours enters this basket from a chute) and place each item in its corresponding basket: white clothes in a white basket, red, orange or pink in a pink/red basket, and brights/darks in a bright/dark basket.
If you have a child who is old enough to wash a load of laundry himself, just enforce the home rule that a load should be started when that basket is full.
One more tip: If you don't do a load of wash daily, teach your laundry helper to hang damp or wet items on the edge of the basket. They should be dry by the next day, and can be placed inside the basket until Laundry Day. Or you could leave wet washcloths in between layers of dry clothing....if you think black mildew-dots are cute. Ask me how I know.

Have fun sorting! Now get to work!