to ask who thought white was a good school shirt colour?

[Twiceover]

My DDs have only been in school since September and already their white polo shirts are a sorry mess of stains. Surely a darker colour would be more practical for small children to wear daily? Am tempted to bin the lot and start again. It is of course possible that my DDs are particularly messy/clumsy and everyone else's white shirts are immaculate...

YANBU
I used to be forever renewing damn white polo shirts when DC's were small, they very soon become grey and stained, thankfully they didnt have logo'd shirts so were relatively cheap in Asda etc
Funnily enough DD now works in health care and wears a white tunic! Back to square one and thank goodness for vanish

The same idiot, who thought pale blue sweatshirts and white socks should be worn by reception girls.

Why not just bin them then? They're only about a quid each.

unilever obviously.

No you are right.

Someone just said to me they wondered why so many babygros / vests are white or a pale colour because they get so many stains. Why not have black?

Don't know, but they don't work at DS's school where they can have black, red or white polo shirts. So I at least have some which don't show up paint stains on the collar. How do you get paint on your collar?

it is ridiculous. Washing machines and powders don't seem to keep whites white, I guess less bleach in them these days.

I buy new polo shirts for dd usually once a term, I found the best ones are from sainsburys, a pack of three on hangers with a pocket on £6 springs to mind. The packs in aplastic bag are too wide for dd and look silly.

White school shirts when they are at senior school are terrible too.

The dd's school blouses are now green and white stripes. a little better at hiding anything than plain white, but ds2 still in plain white shirts, even worse now at the stage of deodorants and sweat!

White shirts great - you can bleach them. Coloured polo shirts, otoh, are a nightmare to get clean.

DD's school insist that you buy either - a gold cardi or a gold jumper - both have to have the school logo on. Felt tip pen does not come out of either. Said cardi/jumpers are £11/13 each. It costs me upward of £50 per school year on these alone

YANBU

Bane of my life.

Then high school with the inky cuffs and deodorant stains!

Both my DCs have to wear white shirts for school, I always use the vanish 'whites' powder in the machine when washing them which helps and they always go in the wash after one wear. They seem to be easier to get stains out of that polo shirts though as you can scrub them whereas it ruins the material if you scrub polo shirts.

At DS1s infant school it was pale blue polo shirts, eventually I switched to pale blue short sleeved shirts as they lasted better on a hotter wash.

I often wonder that if they changed the colour of the school shirts, then what the impact would be on the environment. As someone above says, once you can no longer (using detergents, etc not great for the env) get them white, then you chuck them and buy more.

I'd love a Mumsnet campaign to stop the nonsense and persuade primary schools to come up with a more practical colour. That way, shirts can be handed down/sold on and save us all money and landfill.

My DNs have red polo shirts, seems a lot more practical. Navy would seem quite sensible too. Then I'd only have to do one school uniform wash instead of a dark one and a whites one. I know it's not important in the scheme of things, it's just irritating.

The secondary school I went to changed the uniform from plain white shirt/tie/v-neck jumper to burgundy polo shirts/no tie/blazers. Looks so much smarter on the kids and I bet it's almost an absolute breeze to keep clean. My mum hates that they waited till her kids had moved on before doing that.

the dd's old school you can wear red polo shirts in yr6 until then its white, hence the termly change over, so that they weren't grey!

Has anyone got any tips for getting orange foundation stains out of the collars of white cotton shirts? Other than banning the foundation, which is "like so not going to happen".

I don't know who's bright idea is was but I'd like a word with them, along with the utter bellend who thought that White would be an excellent colour for junior cricket kits. DS does his own but they never come out as nice without using a scrubbing brush!

Oh YANBU it really gets on my tits.

Yes, they're cheap, but I don't want to spend fivers here there and everywhere, and even if they escape the stains, they go grey.

Stupid and crap.

I actually use spray bleach on cricket whites now something they come up lovely and white
lollilou try washing up liquid scrubbed onto the collars before washing,

The same idiot who decided it would be a good idea to have white rugby shorts and socks. White, honestly?!

Navy would be great! Would hide the pen marks well.

I hate that we don't have any other white clothes, so even if I wait a whole week, five polo shirts and vests for a 5 yr old mean the washing machine has to be run at a half load. That usually means I have to do another normal load the same day.

Cost of shirts
Costs of extra washing machine loads and impact on environment
Cost of extra detergent and impact on environment
Cost of new shirts when old ones get grey/stained and landfill of old ones

Times that by every child, every school (and rugby socks and cricket gear) and I reckon it would be a major shock!

Grey, navy or red seem a good idea and I reckon they'd look neater and nicer as would look cleaner.

This is why pretend business dress for school children is so ridiculous. Funnily enough, being at primary school is really very little like being in an office all day. The clothes should be practical and comfortable above all else.

We had red blouses at secondary school. You could tell the girls from the less well off families as their blouses tended to be pink as they were washed repeatedly and used from child to child in the same family.

A white shirt going grey is a pain but coloured ones also have their issues.

DD starts primary in September, and the school states girls must wear skirts/pinafores and boys must wear trousers, are they allowed to do that?

The white polo shirts at £1/2 each don't annoy me as much as the regulation sweatshirts with school logo on at £11 a pop. The former can be bleached and sweatshirts over the top conceal any marks, but the teachers insist on letting FS/ KS1 pupils use little whiteboards and markers and I can't get the damn marker pen off the overpriced sweatshirts