Tips for controlling the never ending tide of washing please!

[theplumfairy]

I have a DH who is a builder so has one set of 'dirty' clothes for that, one set of clothes for exercising (he's an avid kidckboxer) and one set of clean clothes and can quite easily wear all three sets in one day. I have a DS age 2 who obviously gets through lots of clothes and then there's me.

I seem to be constantly battling a tide of washing, usually its when it gets to the clean and dry stage that there's a bottle neck and it sits in a heap in our spare room.

Anyone got any tips for keeping on top of it? We want to have another child soon and I'm worried I'm going to drown in a sea of clothes! Plus our spare room will be occupied then!

A clean washing basket each - instead of the enormous pile of random clothes on the bed, there's a basket for everyone with their clean unironed clothes folded up in it. Clean clothes can be extracted at will and ironed if really necessary!

ok i dont follow my own advice very often but i'll give you a breakdown of what i try to do.

wear everything until it is actually dirty, spot wash any dirty marks rather than throwing the whole thing in the machine.

hang stuff in the bathroom overnight with the window open to air them, this works amazingly well at getting rid of smells, even light BO smells disappear after a day and my stuff smells like it has been washed and line dried.

agree with a separate basket for each person so that it's their responsibility to put their own stuff away (could your husband start helping out with actually doing his own washing as he seems to create a fair amount for 1 person)

ironing doesn't happen in this house. everything is folded straight out of machine and put away. if something needs ironed you do it when you need to wear it. but folding straight away seems to keep all my stuff wrinkle free.

buy clothing that is easy to dry. i love all my dcs feecly pjs and jumpers. they are so light they dry in half an hour.

towels get used for about a week in my house. we are all clean when we get out of the bath and each have our own towel. towels are hung over the banister to dry till next use. i shower daily but the dcs are bathed every other day unless they get particularly dirty.

dcs wear pjs for as long as possible (usually get 3 sleeps out of them) before washing although ds2 is toilet training so at the minute so i abit more washing.

i also would wear pjs for 2/3 nights as i shower right before bed so i am clean getting into them.

There are two adults and five children in my house so we have a lot of laundry.

We do at least two loads a day, in the morning I gather everything, throw In machine, tumble dry, fold straight from tumble drier and put away at the end of the day. Sometimes I do more than one load in the morning, depends how much there is.

After baths and PJs are on I also do a load, including any towels, bath mats etc. Same as above, I wash on 40, all in together, all tumble dried next morning and folded to be put away.

Bedding is washed separately at 60, but again washed, tumble dried, folded and put away same day.

My system is as follows:

Everyone has two plastic boxes with their initial on the front - one for darks and one for whites.

Every morning everybody has to bring their boxes down with the laundry separated into the two categories and place them on a rack I have in the utility room. This means it is both easy to see who hasn't brought down their washing and then I can put loads on very easily too.

School trousers can last a week if they are treated carefully unless the boys have been playing football and therefore it s mainly socks/boxers/shirts so not too bad.

No ironing done here as have bought those non-iron shirts for school and everything else gets either tumble dried and hung up or shaken very well and put on clothes hanger/out on the line.

If it's hard seperating (cause it's mainly colours and a few whites and therefore is hard to ever get a full white load) then one of my friends swears by Colour Catcher sheets. I have enough of both to warrant separate loads but if you don't then they may cut down the number of loads.

Oh and we bought a machine with an 8 kg drum.

And I still sort the washing for me, DS6 and DS7 cause they are 3 and 2 months so I think it would be a bit unfair to make them do it.

Just have plenty of everything for a full week. Underwear, changes of gym kit etc. Then you don't need to wash until you have a complete load. I only do 2 washings a week a dark and a light.

Try to do a wash every day if you can so that it doesn't turn in to a mountain (much easier in the summer when it dries quicker)
when your dc is at school get 5 lots of everything then wash the whole lot every friday night so you don't have to do uniform washes during the week (you tend to find that the jumper/cardigan and skirt/trousers will be dark as will socks so they all go in one wash, then shirts and under wear go in another)
I have to be honest when my dd was little she only ever wore pink or white, so her washing was only ever 2 loads per week.
Once the winter is over get some vacuum bags and put away bulky coats/knitwear - I find I am much more likely to put the washing away if I don't have a battle to find space in the wardrobe.
When you wash things like pol shirts dry them on a hanger then they can go straight in the wardrobe when dry.

do you have a tumble drier OP? if not, for srying space on wet days hang clothes on hangers from curtain rails, door frames, banister, hotpress, shower rail, radiator drying racks, clothes horse. whatever suits your house. i hate having clothes hanging from the windows and door frames but when my TD broke i had no choice.

Separate clean washing baskets here also.
Cuts your responsibility in half, easily..

I am the same with the bottleneck of clean stuff. And the multiple sets of clothes. I haven't got the answers but I do find some things help.

I recently downloaded an app with a checklist for household chores which is guilt-inducing and fun :)

The DC have their own laundry bin which is full every second or third day. I don't separate their clothes out - they're multi-coloured and usually covered in tomato soup stains anyway!

DH works 3 or 4 days at a time so I save his stuff and do it at the end of a block of shifts (it's all dark anyway).

Other things like my work clothes and general stray bits get done together.

This usually works out at a wash a day. DC's beds get done every other week. I also keep towels for a week. If I can get it out on the line before work that's me happy, folded into a basket and to the airing cupboard that night, then it just needs put away. Wherever possible I fold it immediately once it's dry, whether in the tumbler or on the line, because unfolded clean laundry is soul destroying.

Putting it away is the hard bit but my number one winning tip is to sort it into folded piles on my bed so I can't go to bed without putting it away. Life is much better since I adopted this policy

Wow what brilliant advice. Hadn't even occurred to me to have more than one washing basket, will definitely do that.

Love the idea of DH doing his own washing but he does his fair share in other ways so I let him off with it.

I do have a tumble dryer but banned the use of it since we had a sky high electricity bill last year. Now I hang everything on rails off the radiator. Anyone got an opinion on the cost of using tumble dryers?? Am Is the cost as much as I assume?

An 8kg washing machine is on my wish list!

Tumble drier is very expensive to run IMO.

Coat hangers on the line is the way to go for shirts. During the winter, have you thought about a ceiling airer? Stops all the washing being in your eyeline 24/7, less depressing (and more efficient).

Have a think about where your dirt and stains actually come from and attack the source. Consider more large aprons/large bibs/napkins/overalls/pinafores, whatever, so that you just wash a small bib instead of a whole toddler outfit, or an apron/housecoat instead of your shirt. Also second the advice above about hanging stuff up/spot washing instead of automatically chucking into the wash pile.

yy to TD being energy eaters. i am being very naughty and lazy at the minute and have used it everyday for the past few weeks, drying 1/2 loads a day and my electricity usage has gone up from £15 to £30 a week!! i'm banning it very soon (once i get caught up on my back log).

Yes I should do more spot cleaning but I am a sucker for that lovely clean washing smell.

I am way to stingy to spend so much on electric. Much as I hate having washing hanging all over the place...

Too stingy...

I think controlling the source is a really good tip. DS refusing to wear a bib while eating yoghurt is a major source. No amount of spot cleaning could sort that out but maybe I should get an overall or something for him that is less like a babies bib.

there are some really cute plastic bibs that cover their arms on ebay and suchlike. if he got to pick a few of his favourite characters and make it a real novelty for him to wear them do you think he would come round? or another idea is to have specific t-shirt that's maybe a bit big that you just put on over his top at meal times. as it isn't really a bib he might not object to that.

and keep using the same top until it really needs washed (that was the important bit i left out )

I do about 2-3 loads of washing every day.

I wash clothes, then put straight onto hangers and then just hook the hangers over the line to dry. I do this with all clothing items except underwear.

If I can't hang the stuff outside because of the weather, I just put it onto a rail in the bedroom or onto the clothes airer in the dining room (over the winter). It dries over night.

Once the washing is dry, I just take it upstairs and hang it in the wardrobes. I don't do piles of ironing. Everything just goes straight into the wardrobe on the hangers, even pjs.

The evening before, I take out what we need for the next day and iron it.

In some ways it helps to make us all wear clothes more than once. We've even been known to wear clothes which are definitely dirty (not disgusting) because we're staying in all day and have no expected visitors.

In other ways it just complicates the entire washing system - dh leaves the part-worn clothes in random places so I find them and don't know whether they are for wearing again or if he just can't remember to put them IN the washing bag. I leave clothes ready to be worn again and he gets new clothes out anyway. So then it just all adds up and irritates me immensely.

I think whatever way you choose to cut down on quantity, having a good system is the way ahead! I'm still looking for one that works for us. Sigh.

Useful though while I try to work it all out are a dehumidifier (much cheaper than a tumbledrier) and a new washing machine that takes 8kg and has a 1600 spin. Only had it for 2 days and it is going to seriously change my life.

at 8kg and a 1600 spin.

I can hardly get anything in mine. I do load after load I keep hoping it will die, but it's a Zanussi, so I don't think it will

i love my 8kg machine (also 1600 spin) i can get a double duvet in it or 2 singles at the same time which is great as my dcs are forever vomitting or wetting the bed or spilling something on theirs.

When I was at uni I was doing a lot of sport and getting through a lot of exercise clothes. They were the main washing problem - you can choose how often you wash other stuff, but sweaty sports gear HAS to be worn once and washed ASAP.

Tbh I made no effort at all to fold it and put it away. I had a big log basket in my room to store it in, and all the clean exercise gear went straight out of the tumble dryer and piled back in the log basket together, to be rummaged through when I needed stuff.

I think if your 2 heaps of unavoidable frequent washing are your DH's work clothes and exercise clothes, i'd treat them much the same way - have a separate hamper for his exercise gear so it's all pre-sorted into a single wash, bung it all in together once a week (and if it needs doing more than once a week he needs to buy more stuff). Have one drawer just for his exercise gear and shovel it straight out of the tumble dryer into the drawer. Ditto the work wear. Separate hamper, separate drawer. Then the rest of it you can take a view what things you wear more than once and how often you wash the towels etc.

Good tip. I have bought two extra washing baskets and might spend tomorrow sorting drawers! Ooh the thrilling life I lead.