I’m not exactly sure what the perfect age is to teach your children how to laundry, but any age with the word ‘teen’ at the end seems suitable to teach them how to treat stains and learn to decipher laundry symbols.

So why are we discussing about teaching your children how to do laundry? Because learning how to do laundry is a basic and necessary life skill. Wouldn’t you agree?

Teaching your children how to do laundry is a process that has different procedures and considerations, so it’s best to start them off young. 

How To Teach Your Children How To Laundry

Toddlers

If you have little kids, you’ll already know that it’s the age of curiosity. To them, household chores are amazing! With laundry, they help out in putting clothes into the washing machine and taking it out because they think it’s fun. Though at a young age, they may not understand what on earth is going on but this kind of practice helps them to know the actions required to do laundry.

What to teach them:  

• Matching colours: For separating loads in the future.
• To pair socks.

Primary/ Grade-schoolers:

For children aged between 4-11 years old. Now that they’re in school, they’re feeding their minds with more knowledge, so laundry is not so fascinating any more. However, it’s the best time to teach them the basics of doing laundry.

What to teach them:  

• The difference between dirty clothes and ‘wear again’ clothes: With the different activities they do in school, their clothes can get pretty filthy. Tell them what’s okay to wear again and what needs to be put into the wash!
• How to hang clothes up and fold clothes.
• How to separate clothes: This is where the matching colour skills come in. For divided hampers, tell them what colour goes into which hamper and why.

Teens:

For some, it’s tricky enough to teach teens how to be responsible, so what more when teaching them how to do laundry. It’s a chore that must be done and a household skill that they will take with them in the future- you just have to make them realise that with your bad-ass parenting skills!

What to teach them:

• How to work the laundry machine!: Show them where to put the detergent, fabric conditioner, bleach etc, how much is the right amount. What all the cycles mean.
• The care label symbols: This will be the ultimate guide in telling them the right temperature and cycle they should wash at and what to do when drying or ironing.
• Stain removal: Teach them the basics of pre-treating stains.
• How to iron

Once they know the essentials of a laundry routine, you can start to teach them some hacks!

What to remember: Always tell them the reason for doing certain procedures when doing laundry, so it will help them to understand and remember for the next time. 

Oh, and when your children get older and they have busy lifestyles which result to neglecting laundry, tell them that there are dry cleaning and laundry services that can help them out.

Here’s a basic laundry guide (preview below) for you to download which you can hang up on your wall to remind your kids of the basic steps when doing laundry.