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.

I hear you.

I hide anything that i definitely don't want to be washed along with all of the dark colours. And, while i am EXTREMELY grateful for a dh that does the laundry, my dh has quite a devil may care approach to chucking stuff in together.

Thanks for this- I accept that maybe I am (or was rather- I am cashmere-less now thanks to DH) washing too often. With this particular jumper, I had worn it travelling for a work trip and was feeing a bit sweaty and grubby so wanted it cleaned. If I do buy more, I will wash them way less often.

Me! It really doesn’t take long at all! Im familiar with all our clothes so it takes a couple of minutes at most.

So he doesn’t do laundry that often but has managed to ruin all four of your cashmere jumpers? That has to be deliberate. Not good enough from him.

I’m one who sorts the washing into different piles/loads before I do it. Everything gets put into the basket and then I sort and separate it when I do the washing. Every item passes through my hands and gets allocated to its appropriate pile. I can’t imagine just grabbing an armful of clothes and shoving them into the washing machine.

Agreed. Lots of infantilising going on here. I wonder how many of these partners need this much hand-holding at work?

as this seems to be an ongoing issue I’m surprised you haven’t already got a separate laundry basket for your special items which only

you wash / manage. Might be a bit of a faff but it protect your special items and remove the tension between you and DH about the washing. Only you will know what your household budget is and whether spending £165 on a replacement is appropriate / affordable

People who sort into different baskets are still doing all of that, just at a different point in the process.

They may as well ask who has the time to check all that stuff when you take it off and need to find the right basket to put it in!?

I do have separate baskets, but I don't pretend they get sorted magically. Just before going in a basket rather than after.

There's no need to get upset, it's just laundry.

For most people you surely mean 'won't' or 'don't', because they have chosen to have a different system or don't care for whatever reason.

OP just needs to work that out with her DH, but I think given she warned him she should get herself a nice new jumper first. Wonder if he'll be able to stick to a new laundry system...

I think you are going to have to use separate laundry baskets to keep him away from your stuff in future. Hopefully that means more washing for him.

Me!! But I only wash things when they are dirty which means not alot . . .

He isn’t going to be able to track down the same bargains because he doesn’t know your criteria as well. Second hand isn’t as easy to search. If you want to take that approach you need to do it yourself.

He offered to let family finances go toward retail price and that is fair.

more importantly, this is your fault, not his. Delicate items do not belong in the regular hamper. The person doing laundry should never have to do more than tip the laundry into the machine. If you have special items, keep them in a separate basket.

I'll make you laugh op. I lectured the DH on a John Lewis silk bedspread. He took great delight in showing me the polyester label!

I do this too! I thought everyone did. (Well, apart from your DH, OP.) What are other people doing???

OP, I can see it’s annoying, especially as it’s the FOURTH (!) time, but personally I think the fact your DH looked for and found a replacement, albeit at a much higher price, means he was willing to make up for this particular mistake (though would clearly still owe you for the other three occasions!); the fact that you vetoed it is down to you, really…

Ah, I have plenty of knitwear that gets washed in a normal wash, as well as nicer wool/cashmere items that don’t. I have two similar looking items that get washed totally different and I need to pause to identify which is which, there’s no way that I’d notice which was which while moving from the laundry basket to the washing machine and absolutely no way DH would even realise there were two different jumpers with different washing instructions.

We have 4 sections in our laundry basket, whites, darks, colours and towels, and I have a separate basket for period underwear, and just keep delicates piled separately until there’s enough for wash.

Much quicker to sort on the way into the basket and then just bung the already prepped loads into the washing machine.

The person doing laundry should never have to do more than tip the laundry into the machine.

@Ponderingwindow How do you figure that? So who scrubs or soaks the items that need it, or puts bras into bra bags, or makes sure that children haven’t left tissues in pockets?

I’m sticking with my sorting into piles system. It works. No shrunken woollens here.

Me, partner and daughter all do our own washing for this reason - and we’ve all ruined our own jumpers at one point or another 😭

I feel your pain. My partner did the cold water/conditioner/stretching with pegs trick and it almost worked on my beloved Finisterre jumper after an accidental tumble dry.

So when is he buying you replacement pink knickers? Congrats on the weight loss!

I suspect if you leave him to buy it he will come home with the cheapest most mismatched basket possible because it was cheap. You will have a go at him because it isnt in keeping with the decor of the room and it will be non returnable. And he won't know what's wrong because matching a laundry hamper to room decor is unimportant to him.

He has demonstrated he's incapable of treating your delicate clothing properly, no matter how important it is to you, and you can't change that. You can only change what you do, and the separate hamper for delicates is a very good course of action.

Personally I don't let my DH loose on laundry and he is always terrified of getting it wrong. If he does it, it's only after I've sorted it and I leave instructions eg to put a load on at 30deg, cottons, half load.

Good luck!

This.
And keep them away from him.

You should have learnt from the first couple of times and not put them in the laundry basket but washed them your self so sorry no sympathy from me

Agreed. I have a small basket for my own things that need handwashing.
If it happened once I'd take steps to make sure it never happened again.

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.

my ex used to ruin my things all the time despite having requested him several times to be careful with certain things. He had a speciality of walking on the newly vacuumed carpets with muddy outdoor boots and shoes and 'accidentally' treading on small plants in the garden that I had been babying until they got bigger.
I gradually realised that he was doing this on purpose, It's a form of abuse so please be careful. He knows what he's doing.

Ahh no - you hang them and they air and the sweaty smell disappears. It’s one of the joys of cashmere.

He should first of all get that second laundry basket he suggested.

Does he have a separate personal spends to replace the jumper from? If so he can use that. If not, yes he should be putting in the effort to buy the items at a reasonable cost.

No he shouldn’t and they have joint finances, it’s as much her fault, if not more, for shoving them in the laundry basket.