How many loads of washing a week family of 4

[KimGa]

We’re a family of 4. I’d like to reduce water and electricity usage when it comes to the washing machine but I can’t seem to do less than 6 full loads of washing per week.

Husband and son both play football twice a week. Son and daughter both swim once a week. I change the 3 beds in full once a week and all the towels once a week.

I also have a feeling that come winter I do more like 7-8 loads when there’s school jumpers/cardigans/tights etc too and coats getting covered in mud at football not just shorts and T-shirts.

If you do less, what’s your secret? Maybe I shouldn’t wash duvet covers every week, but that’s the only thing I can think of.

We are family of 4. Adult DS does 3 loads a week 1 bedding, 1 light and towels and 1 darks. Occasionally he will ask if I have any towels or tea towels I can add to make his a full wash. I do 5 loads for DH, me and foster son. Two bedding loads, 1 towels/tea towels, 1 light and 1 dark. Dfosterson plays cricket 2 or 3 times a week, swims twice a week and runs so lots of sweaty sports clothing to wash as well as training kits. I have 9 k drum size. I can't do less unless we only change bedding every 2 weeks and I don't want to do that as we have cats and dogs.

At least 14 loads a week. We are a big household. I can’t think of anyways of cutting it down.

We are a family of 6 and I do soooo many loads- I haven’t counted but we definitely need to reduce the amount of clothing we have as I’m permanently surrounded by clean and dirty piles of laundry!

@BrutusMcDogface
there are 8 of us and it’s relentless

3 bedding,
1 Towels etc
2 dark
I pink
I white
1 colours
Plus a couple of wild cards most weeks, pet beds, sofa and bed throws, some underwear or other clothing that can't go in with one of the loads I'm doing already, curtains and duvets at change of seasons, sleeping bags when we come back from a camping trip, coats before we put them into storage fir the summer etc.

I do 10 loads every week. Often 12.

I plan to reduce it by giving up wearing any colours that aren't dark, white or pink and changing beds every 10 days instead of weekly.

It seems a little excessive to split out to have just one wash for white clothes and one for pink clothes and then dark and coloured clothes on top of that. Anything wrong with splitting into just light and dark clothes?

Presumably your concern is not to stain clothes but the amount of washing you do, you will wear them down much faster anyway than if your family just did less washing overall. Wear clothes more than once, especially in colder months where the clothes are heavier and take up more room in the washing machine.

Beds definitely don't need changing weekly or even once every 10 days.

Excessive washing is a ft job in itself.

2-3 mid week, 2-3 weekend (split into light and dark). Plus 1 bedding and 1 towels every fortnight. Had a chat with DC about only putting clothes for wash that are dirty. But same as PP mostly they leave them on the floor and I never know. But definitely going to look to reducing loads

Thank you @blueshoes I would love to reduce the amount of washing so do.

Our white load isn't quite a full load, but all the others are, so not separating the colours wouldn't result in any fewer loads really, would it? I'm not even sure my plan of wearing fewer colours will help. I'll just end up doing another dark load a week probably.

I do try and stretch things out but we are a grubby active family so most of what I wash is sweaty or stained, or chucked in because I have to do that wash now anyway. I have recently banned my husband from cooking in a white shirt because I'm having a hell of a time getting a greasy yellow curry stain out of his favourite one.

I will experiment with the beds, but our bed does usually actively smell at the two week mark. I wouldn't want to go beyond that.

I've done a bit better in the school holidays, more colours, fewer whites, but that just leaves the white festering for two weeks until there's enough to put in a wash.

You're right, I'm scared of turning my husbands white shirts and the children's school shirts and underwear an unpleasant dingy colour.

on holiday recently we tried doing one wash a day, start to finish, as recommended by the organised mum method. We still had a backlog! I’m thinking to keep on top of it we’d have to do two loads a day from start to finish 🤔 (oh, and stop wearing clothes!😉)

@verdantverdure it does not appear that you have much choice with having so many loads if you have an active grubby family, lol. The size of the people count - when the dcs were little, it was a breeze. Then when my son because adult-sized and started doing sports, it wasn't so easy.

There must be a better way to manage laundry for so many people. It is too much for one person to be a laundry slave to the family and not time or energy saving to have each person do their own. How do boarding schools or armies do it?

I'm seriously considering getting my husband a pinny @blueshoes