To implode about DH ruining my clothes every fucking week.

[Aplatterofpuss]

DH is an Oxbridge educated 50 year old man with a good job in computer programming.
We have been married for 10 years.
He gets the mental load stuff and does the lion’s share of the domestic stuff during the week as I’m a teacher and work longer hours.

I have taught him how to do the laundry 450 bazillion times. I have shown him. I have told him. We have hammered it out in couples therapy that it’s not an exclusively female skill-set to be able to simply wash plain whites, light colours, dark colours in batches, read the care labels on everything and basically treat all the clothes as if they’re his musical equipment.

After thrashing this out in therapy a few weeks ago and him apologising profusely and insisting he does care and is sorry, I came home last weekend to him having washed coloured items with whites rendering many of my things grey and ruined. I was angry. It was not nice.

We again, talked about it. He blamed me because he’s found some bits on the floor by the washing machine and ASSUMED that they were sorted by me so just bunged them all in together.

This Saturday, I woke up, separated ALL of the washing in to separate piles on the landing, put the dark wash on and went to leave the house. DH asked me if the laundry on the landing had been sorted by me and I said yes.

When I returned, I emptied the fucking washing machine to find lots of my white clothes ruined by the fact that he’d put blue tea towels, multicoloured teatowels and white and blue towels in with my pure white knickers and tops.

I told him I was annoyed and that he must be doing this because they’re not his belongings.
I said that he needed to pay me back for my damaged clothes and that if I decided to put his laptop in the dishwasher and insist I did care and I didn’t mean to damage it he would be furious. He said it was obviously not the same thing and was, again, very sorry.

I amso so so angry.

There are better ways to communicate than deliberately fucking up clothing.
Or you know, he could just leave her. As ever, you dont need a reason to leave a relationship.

And all of you absolute mingers washing whites with anything. Your whites are greyish and look disgusting.

MN is sometimes very strange about laundry.

Simple, just do your own washing.

My DH is excellent at doing jobs around the house. He is not lazy in the slightest, but washing delicate items etc is a complete no no which I have learned over the years. They just don't get it.

Most men don't go near a washing machine, so think about changing your attitude and be realistic and just do your special items yourself.

@CaribouCarafe

It's not about being a mum or boss, it's about working as a team and playing to each others strengths Absolutely agree with you. Now, bearing in mind that she doesn’t ask him to do her washing and he just does it, and that she does all of the housework at weekends and school holidays, and all of the little incidental stuff that take five minutes by themselves, but are actually never ending, what more would you say the OP could be doing? And how, exactly, is her DH playing to his strengths? He has a job in computer software; is programming a washing machine not something that would be a strong point for him?

But equally I'm not going to spite wash the windows just to upset him so if that is what OP's husband is doing then that's a total lack of respect And there’s the crux of the OP’s thread! It is exactly the same as if you were insisting on repeatedly the windows with wire scourers and paint, despite being told again and again that you are ruining the windows. All the OP is asking is why he is doing it and is she being unreasonable to be pissed about it. Would your DH be unreasonable to be pissed about you continuing to fuck up the windows?

Glad to hear that he's agreed to buy you some new white garments to replace the damaged ones.

It sounds like one of the problems is that he keeps washing things at very high temperatures - we never split our laundry into different colours - nothing ever runs, not even the towels - most of the time we wash at 30-40 degrees though.

Would it be worth picking an idiot-proof, lower-temp, cycle and making that the standard one for him to use, and putting a reminder sticker on the machine ("use this one")?

If I were you, and owned lots of pure white clothing that I cared about (I don't), I think I'd instal a special private laundry basket in a secret hidden place, and put those loads on myself. He can still empty the machine and hang them up to dry etc (the bulk of the work) without damaging them.

The most simple answer is you wash your clothes, he washes his.

Alternatively, start buying black pants.

Or, in the interest of accuracy rather than just plucking some shit out of thin air, pretend to be a man working 14 hours a day, doing all the housework at weekends and school holidays and all of the mental load while she works fewer hours and does sod all outside of Mon-Fri. Say she’s repeatedly ruining your things, despite you not asking her to clean them, and that she won’t stop doing, despite you discussing it in counselling. You know, like the OP has said.

Please point out what I said that was plucked out of the air? It's all in her OP. Before she began changing her story in between angry rants about Trump.

Pretty sure if a man posted on here that he had spent £50 on a single pair of white pants he'd be laughed off the site.

Called weaponised incompetence.

It’s a fairly light hearted ban.

I’m fairly happy to just Chuck it all in but of course will do separate lights and dark items. He however separates sports stuff among other things and does different temperatures depending on what is going in. he will wash certain items/materials together or separately. He will also do some items using washing powder and other items using a liquid. Some items will have additional antibacterial liquid too, but some items not.

when I lived alone I would throw my delicates in with my other stuff but he has purchased laundry bags and does a special delicates wash which I think also includes wool (but I’m not 100% about this). A specific large bag for doing the animal laundry has also joined the party over the years.

with the dishwasher, again it’s about me not being as specific as him. So certain items need to be positions in certain places etc. but neither of us get annoyed with the other. It’s just that he likes it a certain way, and I’m not bothered so it works well for us that he is in charge of this. Including him noticing when towels, bedding and dish cloths and animal bedding gets washed.

This thread has really touched a nerve with you hasn't it.

Are you the OP posting under another name?

@Aplatterofpuss I do separate whites and colours but the main thing that ever goes wrong is if a sneaky item stays in the drum. It’s easy to think it is empty when it isn’t; maybe that’s what is happening here. Also, just because it keeps happening doesn’t mean he’s doing it on purpose. Some jobs don’t suit some people, nothing to do with their sex. My Mum was always turning white stuff pink for example!

You’re really hung up on how much she spends on her underwear aren’t you? Is it resentment that you can’t do that anymore?

Please would you explain to me what the price has to do with anything the OP has talked about? I can’t imagine that anyone who doesn’t truly dislike women would be saying that whether the OP’s scenario is ok or not depending on how much her belongings cost, so I must be missing something.

I suspect he also does a whole load of tasks that OP hasn't mentioned, as it's her thread so obviously would be oriented towards her perspective. I also didn't suggest OP picks up anything additional to her own laundry, I suggested he picks up other chores that she's doing (assuming they're actual necessities not just things OP likes to do, e.g. social life...).

I'm a programmer too, doesn't mean I'm great at laundry so don't really get the point.

As for cleaning the windows with paint and scourers, that would he wilful vandalism. It's not really on par with checking a tea towel into a whites wash... the proportion of men malevolently fucking up the laundry is much lower than the ones who think clean is good enough and can't see the issue with greyer whites.

If it has got to the point where OP genuinely thinks her husband is vandalising her clothes purely to upset her, then I don't think the marriage is salvageable.

It massively has. I don’t like misogyny. I think women have it hard enough without experiencing it from other women.

And no, I think the OP is more than capable of telling you what she thinks under her own username. Feel free to report any of my posts to MN though, if you like? I expect that name changing to support your own argument would be rule breaking somewhere along the line, so they can confirm that I’m not her (and I don’t actually have a washing machine!)

I could if I wanted to. I choose to spend my money elsewhere. I just think it might make ops life a lot easier if she didn't own things so expensive that they were going to cause such an emotional meltdown if they got ruined. It just seems like practical common sense to me. Why buy things that create so much extra work if you are already working 14 hour days.

OP I think you're getting a hard time here. I hear you loud & clear as we have thus issue too, right down to assuming stuff left near the basket (if full) was sorted.
And adding things into already sorted piles & washing things on a too hot cycle etc etc etc

My dh is also a 50 yr old highly educated, and generally very equal contributor to the household chores.

We've had rows about it as its predominantly my stuff that gets ruined 😒

And yes, my good white underwear has come out grey when he's thrown it into wash with random mixed colours & black socks etc & washed them at 60 etc

I, too, have threatened to charge him the cost of replacing things. I work in a professional role & have a work wardrobe with several silk shirts / dresses, wool, linen etc so attention to labels is required.

We've now agreed that he needs to leave the laundry alone. I look after it. If he needs to wash something for himself he only does his own stuff & doesn't randomly bung my stuff in too to fill the load etc

But that's rare as i have a good system & get through the loads quickly

He does other jobs instead & it's working better for us now.

@CaribouCarafe I’m going to have one last try, then I’m off out.

I suggested he picks up other chores that she's doing (assuming they're actual necessities not just things OP likes to do, e.g. social life...) She’s doing a 14 hour day during the week. It’s all on him. She does it at the weekend and holidays. Is she not supposed to have clean clothes during the week?

I'm a programmer too, doesn't mean I'm great at laundry so don't really get the point. The point is that his job requires he use his brain and presumably that he’s pressing the right buttons on a machine at the right time in order to get it to do what he wants it to do. You’d think that he’d be able to transfer those skills to programming a washing machine and that it would be a job that plays to his strengths. And if you can’t tell the difference between white and navy, I don’t know what to tell you.

As for cleaning the windows with paint and scourers, that would he wilful vandalism. It's not really on par with checking a tea towel into a whites wash... the proportion of men malevolently fucking up the laundry is much lower than the ones who think clean is good enough and can't see the issue with greyer whites At this point, him fucking up her clothes is wilful vandalism. How many times does he need to be told and shown before he understands that she wants her stuff done a certain way and if he can’t or won’t do it that way, then he should leave her bloody things alone?

If it has got to the point where OP genuinely thinks her husband is vandalising her clothes purely to upset her, then I don't think the marriage is salvageable Which is the exact question the OP was asking.

But that wasn't was said in the initial post. It changed to that about 3 pages in. That could be because OP was reluctant to reveal at first how bad things are but it could also be because she didn't like the answers she was getting. There are a lot of inconsistencies in her posts.

I'm not as invested as to go to the extreme of reporting your posts, but your upset didn't go unnoticed.

Each to their own on opinions though, I don't believe this is an act of misogyny, more like incompetence at this task. As OP only pulled him up on this particular chore. Not that he hadn't hoovered, polished the surfaces, mopped the floors correctly and all the other domestic chores we assume (doing the lion's share) he is seemingly doing without fault.

I usually route for a woman in most instances. Yes, I agree we get a raw deal a lot of the time. But there are some instances where I think we are making more stress for ourselves by having to prove a point.

🤦🏼‍♀️

Can someone please explain to me why so many women are falling all over themselves to defend a man who repeatedly fucks up a domestic task and appears to do so deliberately? Is it because the OP is clearly intelligent and holding her own? And that threatens the inadequacy within these posters?

Men really don’t need you guys to defend them. 😂

This thread is just insane.

I know, this thread is so bonkers.

No, I can assure you intelligence is totally unrelated to laundry. Honestly, my husband is one of the smartest and most intelligent people I know and even if his life depends on this he won't be able to handle the washing machine. :) some people just suck at some household tasks ... we have therefore split the chores. I hate taking out the bins so he does that and I do the laundry for example. We all have strengths and weaknesses🤣