The goal, says Elaine St. James, who wrote Simplify Your Life with Kids: A Little Treasury ($15, www.amazon.com), is to limit laundry to one load per family member per week, which would amount to a 41 percent reduction in household laundry for a family of four.

"You don't have to start humming "The Impossible Dream,' at this point, either," she says. Reducing laundry loads is simply a matter of reducing the mountains of sheets, towels, and clothes that otherwise rise toward the sky. This may require rethinking some personal aesthetics (such as compulsive sock changing), but the benefits far outweigh the inconveniences.

"The first rule you should establish is: one towel and one washcloth per person a week," says St. James. If the towels become too damp to survive, they can be tossed into the dryer for a few minutes, "which is a lot easier than doing a whole load of wash." And if you're planning to reduce everyone's use of towels, a good way to keep track is to assign a different color to each user in your family. That way, you'll be able to keep tabs on offenders who swipe a towel across a clean face and dump it directly in the hamper.

Sheets can probably be laundered every two weeks instead of every week, says St. James. It would also make things easier to buy white cotton sheets for every bed in the household. "That way, they can all be laundered together," she says.