To want MIL to stop doing our laundry?

This happened to me too. As time went on I regretted minding and now she is no longer here I feel bad ever minding about little things! But my answer would be to hide some of the more intimate washing. Or maybe just leave the kids washing for her!

I would not want her doing my laundry, sorry everyone who thinks she is being nice. She is, but nope, my pants are my pants. I would just say you are so kind but please do not do the laundry, you are so helpful looking after little one.

Where do you live? Please feel free to send her over. I can’t get to the bottom of my basket ever 🤣🤣

I get it

This!

Nevermind finding it intrusive, is no one else particular about how they like different items washed? I have lots of precious wool items that have incredibly specific requirements, and then I'll have really dirty stuff I want washed hot. I have different types of detergent I like to use for different things. I have preferences about what needs to go in a mesh bag based on the specifics of my washing machine and what it likes to swallow! I think it's not great to do someone else's washing without knowing what settings and detergent they like to use and how they like to divide their loads. Eg some people throw everything in together, some separate by colour, some by texture. It's very personal and depends on the machine too.

Send her here after please

Just organise a load ready to put on, job's a good un! How nice of her, does she hang it out/dry it as well?

I would feel a bit awkward too (I admit to being a bit uptight, very private, and easily embarrassed) but I wouldn’t tell my MIL or ask her not to help with the laundry- I’d just make sure there was nothing in the basket I could feel embarrassed about.

I was once on a campsite in France and put some washing in the dryer in the laundry room. When I came back to collect it, I’d obviously been gone too long. A German man had arrived wanting to use the machine so took my stuff out, which he kindly folded. When I walked into the room, he was FOLDING MY PANTS. I was mortified and couldn’t get out of there quick enough, but I concluded that Europeans are probably a lot more chilled out than I am about a stranger seeing/handling their pants.

I’ve been through this issue. Almost exactly.
so it’s your house and you shouldn’t be expected to hide things in your laundry basket.
your husband sounds like mine. He still won’t speak to his mother about this. But we kind of dance around it with her.
these are two things I have tried but ultimately they didn’t work for other reasons:
1)only doing the kids’s washing
2)only doing a washing left at the washing machine.
you are not unreasonable. Lots of us don’t want our in laws washing our delicates.
I got through to my husband a bit more when I told him every time I see an outfit of mine she washed I think of her now. I can’t wear it. So it is effectively ruined.

Uncomfortable? Was she heavy on the starch??

Don't be ridiculous! It's not controlling to not want your MIL doing your laundry. Would you feel the same if it was OP's FIL that was going through OP's dirty underwear.

Meh. Wouldn’t bother me. She’s had a family, brought up her own kids. Period blood, skiddy underwear etc… she’ll have seen it all. She probably left the bedroom outfit because she wasn’t sure how to wash and didn’t want to ruin it.

I hate things like this. My MIL once came over to feed the dogs for us and started poking around - ‘cleaned’ my downstairs loo ‘for me’ - when it was already clean and then complained that my washing machine smells (it did, but I’d been running a cleaning product through it and needed to do the second cycle - wasn’t expecting her to be in there).

There was no hiding my irritation. She hasn’t done it since. I’m not ungrateful for things that help me and we’ve discussed, but as you say it feels invasive and to me it seemed like nitpicking.

Nope, definitely wouldn't want my MIL rifling through my dirty underwear 😬

However she hates it and someone doing something you don't want, don't need and hate them doing while rifling through your underwear is not helping. At all.

So DH needs to stop being rude to OP and tell his mother to quit it.

I'd get a washing bag for delicates to put your underwear in and keep it seperate in your room out of her view to wash yourself and let her crack on with the washing.

It may be well-intentioned, it might be intrusive. I think if you've asked her to stop and she hasn't, then that's a boundary not being respected.

Get over yourself. Accept any help that is offered. You’ve got an unpaid home help - don’t knock it.

I think she should have offered first and not presumed it was helpful , but really don't let a kind gesture of help sour your relationship, especially if you need her help and it's free help. Just have two washing baskets. Let her do one ( the big one,) and you do the little one with your undies etc separately.

Yes - the MIL context is irrelevant and allows everyone to drone out the 'can't do right for doing wrong, she sounds like an angel, send her my way, wish my mother in law wasn't utterly dead so she could do this for me'.

OP didn't say MIL is an interfering old trout, she didn't say she dislikes her, she didn't even say she thought there was any malign intent here.

She would prefer to do the laundry herself (and her husband would also prefer she does it herself, which is another matter).

She is allowed to have that preference, and to wonder how to go about expressing it without hurting anyone's feelings.

Simple please don't do any washing. Thank you thsts easy enough to understand mother in law title is irrelevant here.

Let her do the washing - you would be mad not to. If there is anything you specifically don’t want her to see or wash then keep it elsewhere. She’s trying to help.

My MIL tried to do some of our laundry when we stayed with her for a couple of weeks during house renovations. She put everything in at the same temperature - 40 degrees and my DH's designer polo shirts shrunk!! So he very quickly told her not to do it!

Just make sure your laundry basket is empty on a Tuesday when she comes then she can't do any. Don't see what it would be sat in the basket in the first place if there was enough for a liad