Pajamas are not to be worn outside of the tent. There's no reason to get them grungy, too.
One exception to this: You can wear your pajamas outside the tent if they double as your clothes for the day. For example, if you are a baby and your clever mom figures out that a footed sleeper, coupled with a brimmed hat, protects 95% of your body from bug bites and sunburns without chemicals.
You know the clean clothes you put on today will be just as dirty as yesterday's clothes in five minutes, so here's a tip: just pretend you woke up five minutes earlier and put on yesterday's clothes!
All the kids' clothes are going to get stained anyhow, so don't bother packing anything nice. Anytime you can't get a stain out of something, just stick it in the "save for camping" box (which you may occasionally dig into on "don't feel like doing laundry" days). Now you can let your kids (or your husband, or yourself) crawl in the dirt without worrying about all the scrubbing and pre-treating you'll have to do when you get home. This is also a great opportunity to pack ugly clothes that you have received as gifts from relatives. This comes with an added bonus, because you will probably take lots of pictures on your camping trip, which you can then send to said relatives, who will be touched that you appreciate their gift so much. "Look, Aunt Ellen, we're wearing the matching puppy tank tops you crocheted for us!" We love them so much, we only wear them on special occasions when no one we know is around.
Doing it yourself to save money isn't always economical. Before you try to darn those socks, do a little math. Figure out how much money you will be saving, and how much time it will take you. Calculate an hourly rate, then ask yourself, "If this was my job, would I be willing to work for these wages?"
Some examples from my own life* (yours will be different, these are just examples):
Cloth diapering: Money saved: about $14 per week. Time spent: about 2 hours per week. Hourly rate: $7. Worth it? For me, yep.
Baking my own bread: Money saved: about $3 per loaf. Time spent: about 2 hours for 2 loaves. Hourly rate: $3. Worth it? For me, nope.
Making my own chicken broth: Money saved: about $2 per can. Time spent: about 10 minutes for the equivalent of 3 cans (using leftover bones that cost me nothing). Hourly rate: $36. Worth it? Heck yeah!
Share some of your own calculations in the comments, I'd love to hear them!
*Time estimates don't include waiting times, like waiting for bread to rise or soup to boil, because you can do something else during that time. Value estimates don't include non-monetary values, like how much better my broth is than the canned stuff or how much you enjoy kneading bread, but you can factor that in during the "Worth it?" stage.
Buy good dish soap and use it liberally. When you break down the price per day, it's really not very expensive, and it makes dish washing much quicker and easier.
Added bonus: The more bubbles there are on the surface of the water, the less you have to look at the mess that lies beneath.
Don't put your dirty dishes in the sink. Yes, you read that right, I said "don't". Unless you are one of those awesome people who does the dishes immediately after every meal, dirty dishes in the sink are just going to be in the way. When the sink is full of dishes, you can't wash just one cereal bowl so you can eat breakfast. You can't get to the garbage disposal, so apple peels just lay around getting moldy, stinking, and attracting flies. You can't get the Brita under the tap to refill it, so you leave it empty in the fridge. Dishes that were only slightly dirty end up getting gross and sludgey from sitting inside pots that were left to soak. Metal things end up leaving rust circles on the bottom of the sink.
So please, at least when you come to visit me, don't put your dirty dishes in the sink. Stack them on the counter beside the sink; I'll get to them eventually.
Clean your bathtub naked. That way, when you're done, you can just take a shower (which does the double duty of getting you clean and rinsing the tub), and you don't have to do any extra grimy laundry.
Keep a couple of those $1 TV dinners in the freezer. When you don't feel like cooking dinner, take one out, look at it, remember how much it sucks, and suddenly find that you have enough energy to make spaghetti after all. Or, you can make the TV dinners, if your taste buds need a reminder. Either way, your family gets something for dinner, and it's cheaper than ordering pizza.
Let your kids eat spaghetti naked. It's easier to get sauce out of skin than clothes.
Make friends with other crappy housewives. Their houses will make you feel better about your own, and you won't have to clean up first if they are coming over.
BUT...
Also make friends with non-crappy housewives. Their houses will remind you that it is humanly possible to keep a clean house, and stop you from getting any more complacent than you already are. Besides, inviting them over once in a while will motivate you to tidy up a bit.
Less work now often means more work later, but it also means less work now. It's not later yet, why should later get a vote?
Everyone knows that you can save yourself a lot of scrubbing by soaking food-encrusted dishes in warm water. (If you didn't know that, congratulations, you get two tips today!) But what about food-encrusted surfaces that don't fit in your sink, like countertops, griddles, and kitchen floors? Are you doomed to scrub them? Never! Just soak a tea towel in warm water and drape it over the crusty surface. Let it sit for 10 minutes, then wipe up the gunk. If there are any globs of gunk that don't wipe up easily, use a hard plastic spatula (the pancake flipping kind) to scrape them up.
I don't mind vacuuming - compared to other household tasks, anyhow. What I hate is clearing all the clutter out of the way so that the vacuum cleaner can actually reach the carpet. That's why I keep a snow shovel handy year-round.
Use the shovel to shove everything into a big pile, right next to the toy box. (A broom works, too, if you have hardwood floors.) Then, sit down next to the pile with a laundry basket and trash bag, and sort the pile from there. 90% of the pile is either toys, trash, or laundry, and the rest of the pile is small enough to scoop up and put in one of your many "deal with it later" spots, like the bottom step or the kitchen table. Now you can vacuum, quick, before company gets there!
