... to wonder what possessed DH to top up a dark load with my white underwear?

[Wibblypiglikesbananas]

Exactly that really, DH decides to wash his gym kit, all dark colours, and then has a rummage for stuff to make up a load to go in. We have a three basket washing sorter, divided into whites/colours/darks and he chooses the whites to make up a full load. Why oh why? The man is Oxbridge educated, generally not an idiot, but wouldn't you think something, somewhere along the line, would have told him this was a bad idea?

Ah well, I'm going to use his credit card and replace everything that he's just ruined. Just like last time - no, dear reader, this isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened. Under the vague guise of being 'helpful', the last washing incident involved a number of hand wash only Calvin Klein bras being given a thorough beating by our top loading, clothes destroying American washer (I'm not in the UK).

The sheer waste makes me so angry though - as well as knowing it's me who has to source a replacement for one of DD's favourite t-shirts that is also now a rather odd colour...

shall I send ds round. he is good at sorting washing. dd too. they are better than their father who ruined several of dd's outfits by doing the same thing. not his stuff mind.

Can we send him to the naughty corner with my aunt who was babysitting for DS and decided to be helpful by putting on a load of towels? Including my brand new white fluffy guest towels. With a bright towel.

We used to call a mixed watch a "batchelor wash" in our house, until DH underwent extensive re-training re washing sorting. Nowadays he isn't allowed to touch my washing and does all his own any old how. It was the only way forward. I couldn't take the rows any longer!

HOW can you have 10 different wash loads? How is that even possible? Admittedly my machine has a crazy number of different settings. I use three of them max (Occasional hot wash to get rid of smells etc, cottons 40 and delicates 30, that's it).

at "stealing from him" - is that how you view married people spending their money, ifail? Weird.

Wibbly - this is why DH isn't let near the laundry. He has no concept, and doesn't care about ruining clothes. Different scenario but I bought him a lovely Fred Perry t-shirt back from the UK as his present (he's a big tennis fan/player) and he wore it to clean the swimming pool, getting it covered in bleach. He also wore his "commemorative" t-shirt from our honeymoon to chop down one of the monstera plants in our yard, getting it covered in the sap, which stains dark brown and is utterly unremovable. :(
His lack of attention and care is why I keep him away from the clothes - it's not worth the angst. He would/could wash his own clothes and I wouldn't care but it's easier for me to do all of them and make up the wash loads, rather than him bunging all his in together.

Thumb - I am rapidly coming to the same conclusion. Though the feminist in me is screaming no So... frustrating, isn't it?

I'd have to leave him.

DP is not allowed near the washing machine in our house for many similar reasons. I accept I may have control issues but what could possibly make anyone think chucking underwear and tea towels in the same wash is acceptable?

So terribly frustrating, what on Earth was his Mother thinking.

What on earth is wrong with putting underwear and tea towels in the same wash?! The items are being washed, is this not sort of the point?!

Yeah, and wtf bothers with 'hand wash only fucking bras' anyway ffs.
LOW

The OP is bothered more about a DDs T shirt than a *number of hand wash bras.
Now...I bought a fairly cheap bra from M&S last week, it was £16, a 'number' of them would be £32 at the very least.
Fuck the T' shirt, I would be naffed off at my bras being ruined if I even gave a damn
Unless the T shirt was more than £32 of course.
LOW

My dh is laundry blind too. You can quite clearly tell which clothes he's washed and which ones I have. The ones he's washed are a dingey grey colour. The ones I've washed are as they should be.

And it's not just new clothes where the colours run either.

Also how is spending money in a marriage stealing? This section is a parody of itself sometimes!

OP, YANBU. LTB

I don't separate but that's not the issue here.

Ops DP doesn't care about her stuff.

That's passive aggressive in my book.

So frustrating. DP does separate whites, or at least tries, but I don't think he quite understands why. Mind you this is the man who doesn't understand the difference between white and cream paint. It's all white isn't it?

Another one who never separates the washing. I have survived til 34 and not yet experienced any problems.

DH doesn't do this. He's got a 3rd in Media Studies from Luton University and reads the Daily Mail.

Guess I'm just lucky.

My DH has no further education but can work out his whites from his darks.

He irons too.

Last weekend I triumphantly came home from Ikea wielding, among other things, colour sorted laundry baskets (just darks and whites).

DH was very dismissive 'I don't see the need' 'why do we need to sort washing' until I reminded him of the time he washed all of our whites (including his work shirts) with an old, falling apart virgin airlines flight sock he refuses to part with. He was rather unimpressed with his new baby pink dress shirt...

I don't have this issue because I don't have white clothing. It's just too much hassle.

Outer clothing I'm always paranoid that I'm going to stain it and unless you have loads of it, you always have to do a special wash with hardly anything in it. I have nude bras for wearing under light coloured clothing and most other underwear is black anyway. Just another little thing that makes life simpler.

My dh put those yellow fluffy dusters in with a white wash....nothing apart from the duster was retrievable.

That was when dd was a baby, she's 12 now.

Last week, he put younger dd's yellow school polo in a dark wash with a pair of black jeans being washed for the first time.

He doesn't change and neither would I want to change him, I just wish a dose of common sense would come over him at times!

I actually quite enjoy sorting clothes out. I do a whites, light and dark wash. My husband wears lots of dark polo shirts and socks which always seem to run. He sometimes sorts well, but will then forget about the pair of dark socks he chucked directly into the washing machine.

It doesn't waste water or electricity to do 10 different washes. Instead of doing 10 multicoloured washes, mixing delicates with non delicates, you sort it into 10 different piles. You do the same amount of washing, but your clothes last longer.

Surely if you don't separate all your whites come out grey??

I don't want my bras and white clothes to come out grey. If I did then I wouldn't have bought them white in the first place.

Genuinely baffled at people who don't separate.

But then I'm a laundry fanatic. 2 or 3 loads a day here and I tumble it all as I hate hanging it outside and then bringing it all in again. Dh is banned from using the washing machine. The only time he's ever used it is after I had a c section with our youngest ds and even then I supervised him loading it so I knew what was going in.

yup. All but one of my white bras are a lovely shade of mucky grey because of my husband doing this.

When I bought my latest white bra, I waved it in front of his face and told him to leave it alone and that if he so much as touched it while loading the washing, I would not be responsible for my actions.

It remains white, so far at least.

I don't want underwear that looks a hundred years old and like it's filthy to boot.

My whites hae never come out grey. Never. Not even in with jeans. I don't know what my machine/detergent does differently.

Hae= Have.