How many school polo shirts per year?

[Slightyamusedandsilly]

How many school polo shirts do you buy for your child, ready for the next school year?

We’ve just done the first year of reception and he has 3 polo shirts.

At my son’s school depending on the term they spend between 1 and 3 days in pe kit anyway. I think it was only the first term where they had 4 days a week in normal uniform and we would usually have time to wash one or the tops of one of them would be clean enough to re wear.

If they haven’t got dinner or pen down them he wears them more than once.

6 (2 packs) and 3 plain white for pe. And the usually get another 3 polos around Easter. DC will have either out grown them or they get marked etc

Exactly what I do. There's always a unused one until after photos are done. I wash whites twice a week but recently I'm thinking it's possibly cheaper long term to buy more and wash them once a week. My son has SEN and goes to a specail school and now I have started working I haven't been on the ball and he went into school in PE yesterday. Dad gets him ready and dh isn't proactive enough to put a wash on if his uniform runs out.

About 10 but I don’t get them all out at once, save some for when they’re stained beyond repair, or an emergency haven’t had time to do the white wash

Depends on how many they wear each week.

For my one in primary school, I use 3 each week, but could get away with 2 if I really needed. They wear PE kit 2 days a week.

For my secondary one, 5 shirts a week. She needs a fresh one every day.

I only wash whites once a week though. Our previous primary school gloriously (!!) had blue polo shirts instead of the standard white ones. This was fantastic! It meant I only needed two because I wash pretty much every day and they could go in to the normal wash instead of waiting for the Sunday special whites wash.

5 but if in a pack of 3 then 6.
Used to have three but the headache of doing two white washes a week and making sure they were ironed got too much.

I usually get a pack of 5 plain white ones each school year and then also grab a couple of green school branded ones from the second hand rail. All DS’s outgrown ones go on the rail if still in good enough condition - he’s been coming home extremely grubby this year so not sure the white ones are salvageable! I keep one new polo and one new sweatshirt back for school photo in November and then those go into general circulation for him too.

5 - one spare as 1 day is PE and they go in in their kit.
However, over the course of the year it’s probably more like a thousand.

Three as I wash approx 4x a week.

6 as they came in packs of 2 or 3. I work so no time for a mid-week wash and I prefer to wait and wash pure whites all together Friday evenings.

In autumn they wear their cardigans/jumpers anyway so it's not that stains are all on show. And DD wore pinafores so more protection against stains.

For PE she had plain white T-shirts.

6: 3 logo ones and 3 cheap plain ones. DC have to change at school for PE now so I send them in the cheaper plain stuff on those days as that's when it's most likely to go missing get nicked.

I work FT and wash all the uniform in one go on Friday night or Saturday morning so am happy to spend a bit more to have a full week's worth (with a spare). Their school polos aren't white so are a bit more forgiving in terms of marks/stains.

I think I'm an overbuyer then. We have around 20 for a year. Because they get old and stained and I like DC looking tidy (despite being a scruff by nature).

I thought maybe I was on the normal side, but clearly not. 😂

I do this. Buy them from Aldi when they're in now and then gradually dole them out, throughout the year.

Id say 5, one for each day and replaced at least termly. More often if your child is a minger.
They are a horrible fabric and attract all stains, are a nightmare to keep white- i only wash whites together.
You can see the state of some kids by the end of the year that should have been replaced ages before.

Possibly a bit wasteful but when supermarkets do them at £1.50 or so each in a multi pack , I buy a pack a couple of
times a year , usually when there’s 20% off uniform and chuck/ donate the older ones

At least 6 polo shirts, 6 jumpers/sweatshirts, 6 skirts/trousers, clean on every day, the non iron last well and still look new at the end of the year.

Mine had proper shirts. Pale blue not white. M&S used to sell in packs of two. They started with 4 in reception, a teeny bit big. In year 1 I bought two more and so it went on. Six max at any one time.

I agree the fabric of cheap tat polos is horrible. I agree many of the polo shirts sold as school uniform get mucky and tatty quickly.

But... I don't place a high priority on my kids looking like I buy school uniform polos multiple times a year - adding three lots of five polos to landfill every year of primary school doesn't sit well with me. My kid wears stained tops until they don't fit, or until they're falling apart after multiple repairs. Other parents are welcome to judge if they want to and, genuinely, if they are spending time and energy judging then I hope it brings them joy - they're unlikely to be people I'd have much interest in befriending if this is important to them.

When a polo eventually fails to pass the 'too small' or 'beyond economical repair' tests, it becomes a cleaning cloth.

We had 5 polos and 2 pe shirts. That’s plenty. I don’t replace for stains for my son because they literally get stained every single day. Try and keep one back for picture day, church, assembly etc.

I get 8, which is a new one everyday for two weeks, minus the days they wear pe kit. My DD's polo's are the only white cloths we own, and even two weeks worth is only a half load. Supermarket polo's are very cheap, so I save more in energy only doing a white wash every other week then I spen on the 4 extra polo's.

If you leave the shirts on the line for a few days all the stains come out eventually. I only wash whites with whites so they look clean enough. Much prefer dd red and ds old school green polo's. I'd much rather spend a few extra quid on a branded school top if it's not white.

Can you return some OP? This really does seem excessive. You could do no washing for a month and have enough shirts.

We do use about this many in a year. DC gets them quite mucky and they also get yellowed with sun screen.

It was white shirts when mine were at school, they had about four each but I staggered the buying and always bought slightly big so I wasn’t buying a full set each year.

BHS and M&S both did school shirts which went from machine->drier->hanger with no ironing. The machine was running every day so four per child was more than enough. I suspect they lasted a lot better than the polo shirts.

3 for secondary and five for primary.