…to not understand where all the washing in my house comes from??

When you write about your own outfits. I wear the same jumper, hoodie and sometimes jeans for a week and just change my undies and have a clean top every couple of days. So for my 5 items you are doing double. I shower every day and don’t work down a coal mine so it’s fine.

Family of 5 here as well. I'd say equivalent of one load day plus towels and bedding.

Wouldn't manage without the tumble dryer.

I don’t know if it’s normal but it’s exactly the same in my family of 5, so I feel your pain.

How big is your washing machine? Based on what you describe that sounds like way more loads than is necessary, so I wonder if your machine is quite small?

I went through a phase of rationalising my washing to understand how much I did e.g. In an average week per person I think it should be 7 lots of pants and socks, 4 tops, 2 trousers/skirts, 1 pyjamas, 1 sports kit etc

And then there is bedding and towels.

Work out how many machine loads you expect that to be.

I have the same issue, house of 4 males and me.
I sniff test (not anything teenage or underwear!) and if it is not stinky it gets folded nicely and put in the pile of clean stuff.
Been doing this for years and nobody has noticed
My DH likes to put stuff in the wash even if only work for a short time. I refuse to wash so much stuff!

The three of us do about five loads a week not including any special technical sports stuff or wool.
I guess that’s equivalent to 8 or 9 for you which sounds like what you do.
have you got big beds and bath towels. I remember my mum refusing to let us have really big bath towels as they wouldn’t all fit in one load. And there’s a big difference between single and double beds and king size which didn’t used to be so common but are now.

We are a family of 6, and we do at least 2 loads a day. The younger children get messy or wet (can go through 3-4 outfits a day easily) and also I've always washed towels after each use which my husband discovered from a random conversation at work that lots of people don't do that. Probably am washing too often but people just dump things in the laundry pile I guess!

I bet there are a lot of clean clothes going straight onto the floor and then straight back through the wash, if your kids are anything like mine!

To lower it even further , we try to rewear jumpers and trousers if they aren't grubby at least a couple of times before they are washed . It is amazing how much it cuts down on washing because they are the bulky things which take up lots of space. It also means that the clothes wear out slightly slower because the machine isn't smashing them about as often.
With this I can get away with about 7 loads a week. With a family of 5

I think you should dig through it next time you put a load on and see if it's disproportionately one person's laundry - is someone chucking stuff in after 5 minutes / not putting clean stuff away so it gets muddled up and all chucked in to wash / something like that.

I do about 5 loads a week for a family of 3. (dark, light, colours, dirty work gear, linen)

@LoafofSellotape way more work once kids are bigger! Small kids -small clothes .
We are a family of 5 too and totally relate to what you are saying @Newbie887 . It’s actually a big part of my housework , I actually have to set aside a few hours at the weekend to do it as it builds up during the week and I’m working. It’s v tiring ..

You do less than me and I've a family of 5

I agree that it sounds like there are too many clothes in your home. Can you do a declutter as you wash? Throw away anything that is old, tatty, stained or too small. Pare back the kids wardrobes so they only have the things they like and wear regularly. Then you will be able to notice whether one child is constantly changing outfits and dumping clean clothes into the washbag instead of hanging them back up to rewear, or whatever is happening now.

I find that laundry grows proportionate to how much clothes you have. When I lived alone, I could get away with one load per week. I have exactly the number of sets of pants and socks to get me through 8 days and I wear the same outfit from two, sometimes three days + pjs and a separate load of bedding and towels.
My now ex partner has enough clothes to wear two outfits per day. The wardrobes are full to the brim with his crap and he keeps buying more. Once I empty the basket, it is full again by lunchtime the next day because he may have unpacked an old suitcase and got three bath towels out of the cupboard at the same time and now I don't know which one is clean(er) and there will always be a couple of pairs of socks at the bottom of the wardrobe which hasn't made it to the laundry pile a month ago... I absolutely hate it!

I do a wash a day for 3 adults so that sounds perfectly normal. It's never ending especially with small kids.