DH and Laundry Accident

[TerribleCustomerCervix]

I feel very silly for being so upset about this.

DH pulls his weight round the house, but can be really careless and a bit of a Half a Job Bob at times.

I was emptying the dryer and found my favourite item of clothing in a crinkly ball amongst all the kids stuff.

A dusky pink pair of Lucy and Yak cord dungarees- I fucking love them. They make me feel cool and fashionable and I just feel great in them.

I tried them on once I’d managed to uncrinkle them and it was like trying to step into a condom. They’re out of stock so I can’t replace them.

I’m so (unreasonably?) upset at DH. He’s in a senior management position, smart and capable but somehow won’t or can’t follow washing instructions? He’s very apologetic but I’m fucking RAGING. I know it’s just “stuff” but it’s even the fact that the little 1950s housewife in the back of my brain is saying “Ah sure, at least he’s trying to help.”

RIP dungarees

As someone who’s done this with my own stuff, you both have my sympathy. Have you tried rewashing them and stretching them into shape when they’re damp? This saved a pair of my linen trousers that met this fate.

Just make him buy you a new pair, they seem to be available on the L&Y site in Grape.

I sympathise OP, but also have to admit that I have shrunk some of DP's clothes in the dryer before.

Do most people really check every label?!

It sounds like he feels bad for it and I'm sure your upset has taught him a lesson to be more careful in the future.

*rage at

I would say that your DH sucks, but last month I spring clean washed my living room curtains and they are now noticeably shorter than they used to be...

I hope the unshrinking works. I'd use warm water too, and top up. I used cold water to shrink many a pair of jeans back in the day.

I know my DH and he would have done the same - before I made him aware, in very uncertain terms, that being capable of reading labels on clothes doesn't come with ovaries ownership.
Now he mostly asks or knows already and is proficient at doing the laundry. We both work from home so we share the chores.

As PP have said, there are ways to avoid these problems.

--Everyone washes their own clothes, that way you only have yourself to blame if something of yours is ruined.

--Have a special basket for anything that needs extra care/can't be tumble-dried.

--One person does all the laundry. This should be the person who cares the most, probably the person who has the most "special care" laundry.

Unless someone consistently ruins clothing through carelessness, even after you've explained to them what went wrong and what they should've done, it's just one of those things. Some people are more accident prone than others. Some people unintentionally kill nice clothes.

@SoupDragon

Anything not obviously “bog standard” stays out of the drier. Simple.

What's obviously not bog standard about corduroy dungarees?

Anything not bog standard stays out of the laundry basket IMO.

I would not consider any trousers other than joggers to be obviously dryer-friendly. That includes jeans, which are IME very prone to shrinking. Same with any top that is not a t shirt or sweatshirt.

Good lord, who has enough spare time to waste reading the labels on every item of clothing before washing and drying it?

Shovel clothes into the washer until no more fit, arbitrary slosh of powder in the drawer, wash on 'mixed fabrics', shovel into dryer, push go. If something doesn't survive the process then it clearly wasn't strong enough to survive in the wild.

And a separate laundry basket is for delicates that need special WASHING. It should be second nature to look at each item again before transferring to the drier.

Yanbu, on the rare occasions dh puts a wash on or transfers to tumble drier then pretty much everytime something gets ruined and generally its always something precious of mine, rant away

It seems like it was a genuine mistake- I never check washing labels, everything goes in the wash together on a 40° cycle and nothing has perished yet.

I never check care labels so it wouldn't occur to me to analyse every item, unless it is a particularly delicate/expensive item, and I just don't buy dry clean only clothing.

@melj1213

It seems like it was a genuine mistake- I never check washing labels, everything goes in the wash together on a 40° cycle and nothing has perished yet.

I never check care labels so it wouldn't occur to me to analyse every item, unless it is a particularly delicate/expensive item, and I just don't buy dry clean only clothing.

But washing incorrectly ruins things much less frequently than tumble drying them when they are not meant to be tumble dried. It’s a different decision-making process.

Dh was doing the laundry (for once). I warned him that his t shirt & boxers would shrink if he tumble dried them. He thought he knew better. Out came a crop top and hot pants more suited to the cheeky girls than a middle aged man. 😁

Why are people so proud of “never checking labels”? It’s hardly complicated. In any event you usually only need to do it once, when you buy the item. My Mum taught me always to check, so that I didn’t end up buying lots of stupid dry-clean only stuff.

Lucy and Yak are known for shrinking. Its a thing unfortunately. I ruined my own by laundering them in a completely normal way

As far as I'm concerned anything in the washbasket will go on the standard wash. if you want anything washing differently then you put it separately.
In 25 years of washing, I've dyed things less than half a dozen times and never shrunk anything.

Dsis' whites all end up the same colour of non-descript brown as she manages to dye it regularly.

Otoh dh once shrank one of the dc's waterbottles in the dishwasher. It was rather cute once it was shrunk, but fairly useless as a bottle that held enough water to take out.

I know I’d doesn’t help but my now DH did this to a leather and wool Joseph dress I had left out to take to dry cleaners about 7years ago and I still haven’t forgiven him

@SoupDragon

If something can't be washed like everything else, it shouldn't be in the laundry basket. It needs to be separated.

Yep! I can't be doing with reading labels everytime. If it's in the basket it goes in with everything else.

Sorry for your loss OP. If you think he’s now learned his lesson I would just forgive him now and move on.

Can you look on eBay for the dungarees? I once replaced a lost favourite T-shirt that way

Jeans (and actually any trousers other than my cheap Sainsbury's yoga trousers are only tumble dried for the sole purpose of shrinking them a little if I've shrink/they've stretched. Annoyingly the shrinking seems to only last until just after lunchtime at which point I spend the rest of the day hooking them up, unless I managed to remember to use a belt...

I agree, "delicates" don't belong in the washing basket.

When you run the laundry at 6am before going to work, who can be arsed to read through labels then?

Telling OP that in their house everything in the basket gets washed in a standard setting is irrelevant to OP because in OP's house, care labels are (or should be) read.

I have never done DH's washing and he has never done mine mainly because he would need a degree to understand my system but that's not relevant as the default in OP's house is they share the laundry task.

I think it's all contextual. I had a slick system of darks, reds, whites and linen/towels/hot wash that only required one basket, as I had eyes, with the occasional 'I'm not sure, I think I'd better handwash this' in case of colour loss or getting torn up in the machine with things like jeans.

I had an ex who only did washing when he thought that I had bought something a bit too flattering or, in the case of my brand new pure wool blanket, I had refused to give it to him when he asked to take it home because it was lovely and soft and expensive. He was an arse.

DP, however, when ordered to just leave everything of mine alone as I was sick of things being shrunk or turned grey, was so bothered that he decided he needed to look past his clothes, which for some reason, never ever seem to shrink, and learn more about this washing lark, as he'd discovered that women's clothes and soft furnishings costing more than a fiver weren't as forgiving as everything he had ever owned.

He introduced a multiple washbasket system for 'Bung it in', 'Don't mix your colours' and 'Be bloody careful' and will always double check with me if he sees something new appearing in there or he's not 100% certain if it should be washed above 20C or tumbled. I'm not saying it's a perfect system, as that would be tempting fate, but I do actually have socks that aren't a size to double up as ear bonnets for cats at the moment.

Sorry, huge RIP to your beloved dungarees but I did laugh out loud at your "trying to step into a condom" comment

I've once managed to reverse a tumble dryer shrinking episode by re-washing and stretching the shitttttt out of it while it was still wet! Maybe worth a shot before chucking them out?

1)Women learn to do housework.
2)Society doesn’t value housework.
3)Therefore anyone can do housework.
4)But men can’t without being taught.