I’ve had fucking enough of laundry.

[Fatmamslim]

I hate it I hate it I hate it.

there are four of us in the house.

We work full time and there never seems to be enough time to keep on top. We live out of clean folded baskets.

do you have a working system to stop it feeling like an endless avalanche of shite

I have 4 adult 'children' living at home (well one is on & off at uni, but spends a lot of time here as uni is local). Plus a shaggy dirty pawed dog. Clothes washing is the least of the chores TBH. Most every day I do a load. Whenever possible it all goes outside to dry. Otherwise it's on a clothes drier or some rads in winter. I have an electric drier but I only use it a couple of times a year.

Now someone tell me how to stop sinks from getting dirty again within hours? Or ovens ? Or loos? Really grim in a house with four males???!

Hate to tell you this but the only thing that worked for me was time. About 25 years of it until everyone flew the nest.

I now seem stuck in a rut of no clean clothes as it takes a good few days to build up enough darks, lights and colours to justify putting the machine on.

I just don't understand this stress over laundry.

What's the actual issue? That you don't have time to do it? That you don't have means to dry it? That you cba to put it away?

Unless you are never, ever home you have time to do it. Stick it in the machine on a 1 hour wash.

I can def see why drying could be an issue if you don't have a dryer or sufficient indoor space for airers or aren't home during the day to put it on the line. Can you get a dryer? Can go in garage or shed or spare room?

I hate putting it away but it really takes minutes. Dump the dry stuff on your bed, sort by person, take to correct room and put away.

I do 2x dark, 1x light, 1x white plus a towel and a bedding each week. Just do it as soon as there is a load full. Nearly everything goes on 40 degree 1hr wash with fastest spin and then most things go in the dryer, then straight out and sorted on my bed which means they have to be put away before I go to bed.

I'm not particularly organised but it never gets unmanageable.

What other people said, wear stuff moe than once. Difficult for uniforms, if you're in an office etc. Pants and socks obviously washed after one use

I used to find it could get easily overwhelming. Family of 4 too, plus dog. Each morning everyone's laundry bags get emptied into the laundry room, straight into 4 colour coded baskets. As soon as one is full it goes into the machine, then onto the line (or drier and Sheila Maid if it's wet). I then fold them as I take them off so they don't get creased (so only formal shirts and trousers including school uniform get ironed by DH). Then everyone puts away their clean laundry. It hardly takes any time but the key is to keep on top of it and do it every day.

Family of 4 - It only works if I do 1 load of washing every day - put it on when I get in from work then while it's going then I clean 1 thing ( bathroom or kitchen for eg) and cook dinner and clear off the load from the rack from 2 nights ago ( v important to have 2 large drying racks!) and then hang out that nights laundry - then everyone has a pile of laundry ( I only iron my own btw) to put away as I do not put away anyone else's clothes - the 2 racks are a game changer as there's always a dry rack to clear off each night - we are v lucky to have a laundry room though...

@GreyBlackBay for me, it's time, more for putting it away than anything else.

During the week, we both work 8-6 (approx and varies depending on pick ups and drop offs), in the morning need to get the kids off to breakfast club, evenings put the kids to bed, cook and eat our own dinner, takes us to about 8:30pm and by then I want to do one of: sit and chat to DH, read a book, watch an episode of TV before bed.

Weekends we can normally catch up on some putting away but if we have a busy weekend, say going to a wedding or something, we fall behind and there's not much time to catch up again. And ofc there are other chores too.

Oh and I agree on not washing stuff for the sake of it but my kids come home with visible stains on their uniform daily

Hate it. Have three kids that do a million different sports. But here are some of the things I do.

I pretty much use the dryer all year around. Hanging stuff out is too time consuming. I have multiple baskets set out as I unload the dryer. I put things into each persons basket.
Sometimes the baskets end up being lived out of. If I am putting clothes out for the next day I try and do it from the baskets first.

I have a separate basket for ironing. When the ironing basket gets full I send it out. Usually about once every three weeks in the summer but a lot less in the winter.

As others have said chipping away is the only way. I try and force myself to put a load away before I put another load on.

Mainly dark clothes and anyone over 15 takes care of their own laundry 'to prepare for university'.

That sounds amazing!

Okay I’ve calmed down and read the replies 😂

three things:

unfortunately we do have a genuine need for a lot of washing- two competitive sports, a smelly teen, a physical job and my job gets me grubby very quickly too, often a outfit change in a 12 hr shift.

abso-fucking-loutley atleast 1 kid needs to be helping out more. Dh does his fair share.

and yes to the person who said RE storage. No we really need more strange and I suspect this plays a mental blockage too.

here’s my new approach:

4 new baskets, everyone has their own. No longer mixing loads. I have also bought us each a towel set, colour coded to us and I am going to do everyone’s laundry once per week on a set day.

an extra day for all the other bullshit like bedding etc

it can go in washing machine, straight in tumble dryer and then go back into respective rooms where I don’t really give a fuck what happens thereafter. It’s clean and I’ve done my bit.

I like your style op. Your my kinda girl.

I will join you as soon as I’ve recovered from this pain in the arse post major surgery nightmare.

Good luck!

Well done OP hope your plan works for you

If I'm going out at the weekend I just nominate another day for the washing

And I use the tumble dryer a lot. It costs more but I can always make more money I can never make more time.

Getting rid of my husband sorted out my laundry problem, now I only do laundry once a week.

This woman is an inspiration with her free easy diy woodworking plans.
One of her most popular pieces is this laundry folding station with a basket for everybody. If a basket’s missing you know who to chase up and if they haven’t taken it yet your space isn’t too cluttered.
There’s even a version with a hanging rail…
Want it!

Well I'd go further cos as a teen i knew how to put the washing in and use the machine, take it out and hang it for drying. Maybe its time they start doing their own washing after all they will need to know for uni etc.

I still do my young adult DC still living at home. It’s far easier doing it all together.

They do know how though.

5 very tall adult sized (3 teens but massively tall) people in this house.
Heated airer
Use the line line outside all the time.
Check it's actually needing a clean (1 in 4 big items don't need a clean, maybe a spot wash)
Get the other 12 year olds to do it themselves

OP I could’ve written your post, family of 4 here too and it’s the relentlessness of it that gets me 😭 an endless pushback of shitty clothes to sort!

I actually like doing the laundry, hanging it out to dry, the smell of the detergent etc, even folding in to each person’s clothes pile once it’s dry is quite therapeutic. But I find it so stressful putting it away, it’s because we have too many clothes and a tiny bedroom, just one basket full will make the room so cramped it’s depressing. It takes time putting it away in all the right places because the wardrobes are bursting.

I need to get rid of so many clothes but going through them takes forever. I do wonder if laundry has become such a massive chore since the whole ‘fast fashion,’ thing took off, we accumulate clothes far more frequently than people did even 30-40 years ago!

Finally packed the laundry monster off to Uni this weekend! I’m hoping my laundry hating days are over 🤞

I coped with heated airer and another big airer in the spare room next to the radiator. Tumble dry towels and bedding. One load everyday. 8 kg washing machine. A husband who became obsessed with hanging the laundry on the airers in a certain way so left him to it but it was always me who had to load the machine as for some reason the laundry basket only ever appeared to me.

I'm the same! It's constant! I try and do some every day but bed linen day always foxes me.

I dry outside as long as the ground is dry.

I used to use a pick up laundry in the winter for towels and bed linen and that used to be such a relief but it's expensive. I'm going to have to get a dryer this winter.

Sums up how I was brought up also. Trying to teach my dc that jumpers don’t need washing all the time.