AIBU to expect DH to replace my ruined jumper(s)

[PILinOz]

I love the feel and look of cashmere and wool jumpers but cannot justify paying full price. Instead I scour TK Maxx and Vinted for bargains.
Over the past few years I have managed to find and buy myself a few lovely pieces at a heavy discount. My lovely mother-in-law also bought me a lovely cashmere jumper last Christmas.

My husband has managed to ruin all of them by just shoving them in with the regular laundry. They’ve all shrunk and felted. Each time his reaction to this has been to go “Oops, my bad, sorry” and kind of shrug his shoulders and that was the end of it.

A couple of weeks ago I found a lovely, BNWT wool/cashmere blend jumper on Vinted for £20. The original price tag was £125. I wore it and put it in the laundry basket. A few days later DH announces he’s going to do some laundry. I warn him that a few of my newly purchased work items are in there and not to touch them please. Later on he comes to tell me that he’s really sorry but he’s only gone and completely ruined my new cashmere jumper. He apologises profusely. I tell him I’m really upset. This is the about the 4th time he’s done this and I specifically told him not to touch my stuff. More apologising. He seems genuinely sorry for once

Later on I find him scrolling the internet to find a replacement. Of course he can’t find the exact same one as it came from Vinted and isn’t current season, but he finds something similar by the same brand and offers to buy it. It costs £165

Here is where I may be unreasonable. We earn roughly the same and pool all our finances into our joint account. I cannot justify using £165 of family money for a jumper. That just seems wild to me. I tell him this and he gets annoyed. I try to explain that spending £165 of our money to rectify his mistake isn’t fair. That I spend my time and effort to find these items and only purchase them at a price we can realistically afford. He thinks that I should just go out and buy new replacement jumpers at full price as we have the money. As far as he is concerned he has offered a solution which I am rejecting so that’s the end of it.

I brought it up again yesterday and said again that I think it’s totally unfair that he’s now ruined 4 of my nice jumpers and has no intention of putting in any effort to replace them. He looked incredulous and said “What, are you really expecting me to go through the rails at TK Maxx or join Vinted to find replacements?” I said I didn’t think it was such an unreasonable request and why should the burden of finding a solution to a problem he caused by his repeated carelessness, fall to me? He told me I was massively overreacting and he’s done talking about it. AIBU? Yes: it’s just a few jumpers, get over it and move on. No: DH should use his time and effort to source suitable replacements that won’t cost the family a fortune.

Oh god, I’m so sorry this happened to you too! I hope he buys you replacements. Congrats on the weight loss- I bet you look great, even in your old pants!

🤣🤣🤣

Yea, this is it. I can never really “let go” of a task as I’m worried he’ll drop the ball and then we all have to suffer the consequences ( not just him)

He rarely has to remind me of things. Maybe around when his band practice is. The times chop and change and he doesn’t put it on the calendar so I find it hard to keep track sometimes. I would always double check though if I’m unsure before I made any other arrangements though.

He doesn't give a shit about your sweaters or how you feel about them. He also doesn't value any of the household chores you've given him and he keeps fucking up.

Fundamentally, he doesn't value them or what you do about them. He would happily live in a less perfect house/let kids suffer etc.

He can plan and be meticulous about shit he cares.

You can 1) accept your fate and live with the unfairness of it all or 2) divorce. Many women find themselves in the same situation (hence all the incessant chat about "mental load" currently). There is option 3) murder, a bit extreme but at least someone else is sorting dinner and laundry in prison 🤣

We have separate laundry baskets but I also never put cashmere sweaters into my own basket because in the past I’ve accidentally washed them with everything else and shrunk them.

I’m an intelligent capable woman, but I make mistakes with things like laundry often enough that I’ve learnt to put preventative methods in place.

I guess I think of it as setting myself up to succeed.

It’s annoying but I think after the first 2 times of him doing this, I would probably have bought my own personal washing basket that he isn’t allowed to touch or wash & then do these items yourself x

Divorce over a washing incident…… blimey that’s an interesting choice!

Because OP is the one whose clothes need special care, not his.

Yes, we live our life with four different laundry baskets… if things aren’t sorted before washing my husband would also throw it all in together. (Delicates, regular (line dry), regular (tumble dry), hot wash (tumble dry))

My DH used to shrink, dye things and generally ruin clothes all the time.
Like you OP, I go through all the washing to put like with like!

Finally I sat down with DH and told him that just because he pretended to be incompetent with the washing did not mean he was going to get out of doing it, or any other chore for that matter.
Now, OK, 20 years later, he is great at doing the laundry and only occasionally missed a black sock in with the whites.
Trying to explain the mental load is a different matter.....

Why did you keep on putting them in the basket after the 1st, 2nd and 3rd time he did it? Yes it’s annoying but its clear he’s just scooping up a load of stuff to wash, so keep delicates separately.

Exactly. There were 3 types of clothing: a grown man’s, a grown woman’s, and small kids’. You literally told him as he was emptying the basket to remove the grown woman’s clothes. Not a difficult task—it’s not like your DD is 19 and there is room for confusion. And for some reason, he either chose not to, or was incapable of, following this simple instruction. An instruction that a 4yo could follow. And yet he’s capable of showing due care over his expensive purchases, eg, guitars. He either doesn’t care, or did it deliberately, and this is what I’d be getting to the bottom of.

Agreed. Or even just a your own pile somewhere. I wear a lot of knitwear, and in honesty rarely wash it. Natural fibres respond well to just being hung and aired after wearing, unless visibly dirty.

And this. I have done it to my own things in the past, so I don’t put them all in together. That said, a lot of knitwear can handle a standard wash at 30 or whatever.

OP I'm with you on this. I don't think
your analogy works though...a laptop.on the floor is in the wrong place, its vulnerable to damage and even if you told someone I think that would be your fault. Washing however, was in the laundry basket. The exact place its meant to be and he has specifically asked to watch out for x...sorting laundry is a normal part of doing the job. Im not precious at all but even I do darks and lights and if I had wool or cashmere in there I'd notice it. Your dh just cant be arsed ..its not like you asked him to check and wash them separately, you literally just said leave my stuff alone. Not sure why the majority think you should be buying new baskets or whatever to compensate for his lack.of care. In a marriage, you're meant to take note of this stuff...don't add x to a meal if you know your spouse doesn't like it, don't leave shoes in the hallway where they are in the way if it irritates your partner..you're meant to care about stuff they've asked you to care about. This isn't a random stranger or even a cleaner ignoring instructions.

Is it the reason for the divorce, or the final straw in the way he treats OP? There was an article doing the rounds recently, something along the lines of, “My wife divorced me for leaving my dirty dishes out.”

It would be nothing to do with the washing incident but about the clear lack of care and consideration to OP and what is important to her. Especially considering the other things she has mentioned.

It isn't something I'd be putting up with.

I agree. OP knows what he's like, so she should make sure she keeps her cashmere clothing separate and washes them herself.

The problems in this marriage will not be solved by buying another laundry basket. The issue is not the laundry.

Separate wash baskets all the way. I got fed up doing the laundry as couldn't trust DH to do it properly and then it be a source of arguments so would end up with more of a share of housework.

I don't think men value clothes in the same way as women. I take effort to wash my clothes carefully ie clothes inside out, right amount of detergent, correct spin cycles and temperature etc. My DH just bungs his in.

Does he only do this with cashmere jumpers or is he absent-minded with other stuff?
whilst it is 100% his responsibilty to check the washing and 100% his responsibilty to listen to your warning about the cashmere, he didn’t or couldn’t and the result is he messed up.

i think you need to find the root cause as to why it happened first, and then determine next steps.

before half of MN come here and tell me that I am making excuses saying that he “couldn’t” sort the washing and he “couldn’t” listen (rather than didn’t), I wanted to check what other signs of poor executive function he shows.

severe ADHD = severe executive functioning issues = his brain never stopped to do the step of sorting the washing or the step of listening to your warning about cashmere and then putting the info in his brain to remind him. There’s more complex reason here that I can go in to if necessary.

lack of respect / rushing / worried about other things / doesn’t care = didn’t do the step of sorting the washing.

But don’t you see how you’d be equally to blame in the laptop analogy because after losing 4 laptops the same way, you need to learn that your DH either will not or can not take care of it.

You need to set delicates aside for handwashing or a delicates cycle and do them separately. There are far fewer items of clothes in this category and it’s a bit weird, in my view, to mix it all in with the main laundry just to pick it out and hope you get it all before doing a load…

In your OP though you said "I warn him that a few of my newly purchased work items are in there and not to touch them please."

I know you might have been paraphrasing obviously which is fine, but if the above is exactly what you said I can see how he might have got the wrong end of the stick. The sentence could mean "the only things of mine in there are my new work items (which I don't want you to touch), so don't wash anything of mine in there" or it could mean "there are some of my new work items in there (which I don't want you to touch), but feel free to wash anything else of mine that's in there."

And this is why I won't let my DH touch the laundry. If he did say he was going to do some laundry (which he doesn't because he knows I don't like him going near the washing machine), I would sort the clothes first and tell him which piles he can wash - and possibly even hide the delicate stuff. Men are hopeless at laundry, even those who have lived on their own for years. They can't wash women's clothes.

Jesus wept! What a load of absolute bollocks. Men can read labels. Some just don't care enough to bother. That's not the same thing.