Husband can't return the right kids clothing to right child when putting washing away

[IncessantNameChanger]

We have 4 kids. 18, 14, 10 and 8.

14 year old and 18 are the same size so ok maybe that's OK to get mixed up. But...

10 years old clothes go to the 14 year old who has SEN so he will happily wear 10-11 trousers that are 6 inches to short as he can get them on ( all the kids are very thin, except the 10 year old)

20 year old gets his sisters clothes that are unisex but she is tiny so some things are age 6.

Ten year old gets everyone's clothes.

8 year old only gets her things.

I get that I buy all the clothes so I know who everything belongs to, but dh sees the kids wearing these things, they have age labels, the kids are 4 years apart except the youngest.

Do I really need to use a dot system on the labels to help him? ( one dot for eldest, 2 dots for 2nd child etc)

Occasionally he gives me or him the 18 year olds clothes. Ds18 is eight stone, 5,8 with a 28" waist. Neiyher me and dh could dream of fitting into his clothes.

Is this just him?

They're all old enough to do their own laundry.

Have you tried teaching the younger ones how to so it?

I wash all our clothes by person rather than by load. Each have their own basket. It makes putting away so much easier.

We have four children and laundry got a million times easier when we did laundry baskets in each bedroom and single-basket washes

• one basket comes downstairs
• one bedrooms worth of clothes into washer
• transfer to drier
• folded and piled back into laundry basket to return to bedroom it came from

Only works when you have a big family so are doing lots of loads per week anyway.

Honestly, the faults some people find to complain about!

They can all get their own clothes.

If he's lost his cargo pants for months, common sense would tell him that they had likely been mixed up with his brother's clothes. It happens.

If this is something that bothers you so much, perhaps you should sort the clothes out.

Oh, and the clothes sharing in our house is made more difficult by the fact that DH and eldest 3 are all the same size and frequently pool clothing, especially sports wear.

I've got a clothes rail in my utility room. We hang most things up on hangers on this rail and then everyone comes and takes what is theirs up to their room!

Mark them with a sharpie. Get your kids more involved in identifying and sorting their own clothing and judging whether it fits (might be a slow learning curve but it's a good life skill). If your dh otherwise pulls his weight then just accept that this is a blind spot for him.

I agree.

Surely there are other chores that you can offload onto him and you sort the laundry out how you want it sorted out?

I'd rather play to strengths, minimise arguments and time wasted searching for stuff.

Just give him some other chores.

Goodness some people don't half make washing clothes difficult. DH puts most of the washing away, very occasionally he will get a bit confused with sizes Vs ages, but everything ends up in the right room. We wash all clothes together, five people doing their washing separately is weird.

That’s genius!

Lol I could have written this. My husband always gets us mixed up I can't find anything . Me and my 2 daughters all the same size. I told him to stop putting it away, nit with the stress

It sounds like your whole household relies on you to do every little thing for them.

Your children need to learn to take responsibility for themselves, albeit with some extra support if they need it.

Both you and DH need to be able to say to the 14 year old "those trousers are too short, find some that fit" or "this is where the clean pants will be if there are none in your drawer".

Your H needs to start behaving like an adult and a parent and use a bit of common sense.

My DCs clothes are largely name-taped.
DH still gets it wrong.
Put away their own clothes now.

I’d just do it yourself and get him to do something else he can’t bugger up!

Slightly off topic,but I had to store single bedding and double bedding in different parts of the house because DH would get angry and confused trying to choose correct size sheets etc from a shelf. Just double these days but he still struggles getting fitted sheets on the right way round.......

But differentiate between a whitworth and metric thread size? No problem!

I think his brain just switches off where fabric is concerned.

Not just you my oh will mix mine and my daughter's clothes up. I'm a size 16 and their clothes are size 6,8 or 10. Luckily they mainly do their own washing now.

Another 6 person household here - with 4 boys with a 5.5 year age gap - and after frequent whinging at me for giving them the wrong clothes I have made some rules-

• everyone has their own pattern/colour of sock or accepts there are communal socks ie black school socks

• everyone has their own brand/colour/pattern of pants.

• school shirts and PE kit is washed and dried and put in one place for people to collect their own from. If people don't collect their own in a timely fashion I will just shove a fair share in their wardrobe and don't want to hear the whinging.

• After a few school trouser mishaps, I have caved and labelled the trousers. There are SN involved and so child A would happily wear his favourite trousers even though they no longer fitted and had been given to child B.

I have threatened, many times, that they can just do their own laundry if they are going to whinge about the sorting - and have carried out the threat - so there may well be a bit of secret swapping that goes on behind my back.

That's nothing, my BIL can't even remember his kids birthdays or how old they are 🤣

We have just the one DD at home now and DH still mixes up our clothes! She's 13 and a size 10 and I'm a size 16 yet still have a load of size 10 knickers and leggings in my drawers 😂

We just do a swapping session once a week. I don't say anything to him as he does all the washing and ironing as I'm disabled and can't carry things upstairs so he's got enough on as it is without me telling him he is doing it wrong!

We have 4 females who are basically the same size in our house and DH does all the laundry. We have to collect it though or would receive a random allocation. He genuinely has no visual memory.

We have this! Only i also can't tell the difference. With two older boys and dh wearing the same size, all the underpants and socks look the same. Get the 2 older ones without special needs to do their own washing and you just do the rest.

The other day DH and I got back from a walk, our feet were wet. DH goes upstairs for a new pair of socks and I asked him to get me some, then realised after living here over 30 years, he doesn’t know where my sock drawer is. I left him to it, heard him open and close a few drawers then came down with a pair I’d not seen for ages. My DH does the ironing, which I am grateful for as he does a good job and clears all the laundry, whereas I get fed up and give up. He leaves it to me to put away because he doesn’t know who they all belong to. My DH and adult DS1 are not bothered at all by clothes and would wear the same clothes every day if they could. Adult DS2 and I love clothes and know exactly whose clothes are in the house.

My DH is the same, although we have a petite 4 year old and an average size 2 year old, so the confusion when putting washing away can be somewhat forgiven. When he dresses the 4 year old in 2 year olds clothes though I have less patience!

You definitely don't want the dot system: that fails as soon as anything gets handed down!

I know this won't go down well with you, but since you say he does plenty of housework, I would conclude that this is just something he isn't good at, and do it yourself or sometimes ask your eldest child to do it if he's able.

Did I misread. Your 20 year old fits in age 6 clothing?

My husband has never sorted the washing I just do it. He does work away lots.