How often to launder bed-linen and towels?

[DanniPops]

I need your advice, fellow mothers. Like many of you, I find myself strangely responsible for a whole family's worth of washing each week, we have 2 girls of 1 and 3. DH diverts from the question of him doing his fair share by complaining that I make my life difficult by washing bed-linen and towels too much. My current regime is towels and bathmat washed once a week, and bed-linen just once a month . (Luckily little exciting happens in the marital bed). What do you think? Minging? Unnecessary? I need to know what is normal. What do you do?

I really didn't realise that some people wash their towels after just one use

Ours are used until they seem a bit stinky or if the laundy fairy hasn't followed DH around to stop them being left in piles around our room

Once a week without fail unless contaminated with puke or snot!

I wash my towel twice weekly, leave dp to decide when he wants his washed (not so often)

sheets I aim for weekly but tbh unless hot weather is often more like fortnightly

ds's less often - he doesn't seem to sweat or do anything mucky while in bed!

Change face cloths every other day, hand towels 3/5 days bath towels weekly. Sheets with action weekly. Kids 3/4 weeks they're usually clean and pj'd for bed, aren't they?

Beds every other week and towels roughly the same. I change hand towels more often.

DH has a dust allergy so I really should wash our bed linen every week at 60 degrees. I can't be arsed.

adult bed linen once a week

child bed linen maybe once a month

towels, flannels, bathmat maybe once a fortnight

towels and bedlinen once a week.
spare bed changed in between each guest.
If I could and it were environmentally sound I would have a clean bed every night... I LOve it!

I wash towels and our bedsheets weekly. Kids bedsheets when I remember. The reason for the sheets - a) there is nothing quite like the sensation of getting into a bed with clean sheets and b) DH has allergic rhinitis, which causes him to snore like a hammer drill, and one of his allergies is dust mites. I can tell when it's time to get washing - the snoring wakes me up more often in a night. It's a choice between washing sheets or killing him in the night.

How different we are do you think that we have inherited our mothers standards of bed/towel changing? My mum would kill me if she thought I hadn't changed the sheets for 6 weeks (why would this bother me, I don't know, but she would go on and on about it). I change them weekly now, I love the feeling of clean ironed sheets (another mum thing, I would not naturally do this, but she banged on about it and now I love it too).

Towels mine after every use, I just use a little hand towel, DH weekly. I don't wash my bath robe for aagges though, so rest of habit are prob pointless!

Sheets and pillow cases weekly, duvet cover every fortnight. Towels weekly. All washed at 60 degrees.

Towels - 2 or 3 times a week, i like fresh crispy towels and no fabric conditioner on them.

bed linen - every other week (we always shower before bed)

18 mo DS gets his sheet changed every other week, unless he has wiped snot / sick on it sooner.

And I haven't used an iron in 4 years.

At least weekly. Face cloths and bath mats daily, hand towels every couple of days.

weekly for beds, towels the same.

weekly, yuck think of all the dead skin cells clinging to your sheets, not to mention the minging dust mites! they all go into the wash once a week!

Oh Hassled I have sent my DH to a different bed until he goes to the doctor about his snoring/dust allergy. Once he has been I will contemplate letting him back in my (oops, our) bed and will attempt to wash the bedding more often.

Mostly weekly, although towels tend to get chucked into the wash every day.

I couldn't imagine using towels that werent clean.

Whats the point of having a bath if your gonna use a drty towel to dry on?

I think its true, I've definatly inherited my mothers cleaning habits - she washed towels after every use and boiled the bedstuff once a week

ThingOne - the bedding does make a difference, but I also hoover/dust our bedroom a lot more than I ever used to. You have all my sympathies - little worse than listening to someone snoring at 4 in the morning. If it is a dust allergy, you have to keep on top of things but little things like clean bedding really do help.

Well, we (well he) needs to lay a new floor in our bedroom before it can be cleaned (we have recently moved house) and we (well me) then need to order a new bed and a new mattress. Then I will start the new laundry regime. But I still think he should see the GP as he is 44 and hasn't seen anybody about his allergy for about thirty years! I think things may have moved on a tad .

Well I change bedlined weekly, bath towels get used twice and all other towels ie hand, dish etc get changed every day.

What a fascinating thread!!

I do my hand towels every week, my bath towels when i think of it... and my bed sheets about once a month depending on whether dp is around to do that inside out shaky thing to put a duvet cover on (see that thread last week).

dd and ds are both allergic to dust mites so their bedding is supposed to be washed at 60 degrees at least once a week. I do our bed about twice a month.

Towels - about twice a week or when they start to whiff.

I wash all bed clothes once a week without fail, you sweating on night in them, so think tht quite important.
I had a discussion with a friend who never seems to wash anything! (bloke) he asked why i wash towels after each use as my body should be clean when I use them anyway, but like someone else said, loose skin, body hair etc. I use kitchen roll to dry hands for bacteria reasons so don't use hand towels. T-towels, I use 2 per day.

Good point janmoomoo about the environmental impact - washing your towels every day and at 60 degrees????

Towels and bedding once a week at 30 degrees - if anything bedding should be done more often than towels because you spend hours rubbing your dirty skin cells against those sheets instead of a few minutes of rubbing clean skin with towels!!!

Change the hand towel in the bathroom probably every three days, it doesn't take long to get covered in toothpaste, makeup, snot (!) etc.

Bath towels once a week (DH has his own, I share with DS)

Bedding once a fortnight.