my washing pile is awful, how do you all manage

[sheepgomeep]

10 loads of washing done today,

Another 15 to go tomorrow.

Seriously I'm not bragging, I'm v ashamed, its become a nightmare, my house is very cluttered.

There are 5 of us , baby no 4 is due in may and I've got to get sorted,

I do wash every day, the kids do have clean clothes to put on, they are not tramps.

Has anyone ever managed to turn thier house round and changed thier ways?

Please help, i'm so down about it all

Hmm, well we are a family of five and I would say I do 10 loads a week. All family are under orders not to put anything in the laundry basket unless it is actually dirty. Underpants and socks are changed every day of course, but I expect them to get two or three wears out of anything else. Children all have school uniform and don't normally change out of it after school - I check polo shirts in the evening and they normally last two days. Towels and sheets - each person has their own towel, changed weekly - sheets changed weekly but duvet covers onlhy fortnightly. I stick a load on first thing - hang it on radiators to dry and stick another load on - ususally manage to get two loads done a day, but some days only one.
I think there are two key issues here for you - one is to clear the backlog,the other is to set up a realistic laundry schedule.
How old are your children? Can they help at all? Make it a family project to get the laundry sorted before the baby comes and then just try and keep on top of it.
Look at what you are washing and see if you are being over-zealous?
Get children to help with sorting clothes and putting them away?

.were a family of 5 and i do 1 or 2 washes a day to keep on top of it.at the moment theyres loads(which to me loads is about 5 washes waiting to go in!not 15!!!) as blardy electric but usually i just try to do it as it goes in basket.
no idea how you do that much!?
maybe im dirty?

do you put one thing in at a time?
how big is your washing machine?
how huge is your electric bill?

just cant work out how youve that much?

sometimes i leave mine for a cuple of weeks then do a big wash over weekend. thats the only way i can see using the washing machine that much with 5 people in the house.

just takes one load in the morning and then maybe 2 daily sat & sun.

in fact my son (16) is in shit street at the moment and part of his punishemnt was to do the washing, and he got through it all in a day - that was a rubbish punishment!

Thank you all for replying, you are right it is ridiculous. My mum was horrified when I admitted to her how bad things were.

A lot of you have said that I must be washing clean stuff along with dirty and I think that must be true as sometimes the piles of diry and clean are so huge they tend to get mixed up.

It's the same with towels and jeans too, I will quite happily wear jeans 2 or 3 days on the trot or reuse a towel a few times but my kids won't and I think that my ex partner has told them that its dirty not to have clean every day, his gf was shocked when I sent them in jeans that had seen two days wear.

My wardrobes in my bedroom are falling apart and have drawers missing so clean stuff goes on the floor... to get mixed with dirty stuff that has overflowed from the bins.. so it's all one big vicious circle isn't it.

No I don't put one thing in a t a time, its full loads all the way but the drum is quite small though

Custardo I might try the washing punishment on my 10 year old ds, he loves ironing though.. strange boy.

I don't wash things like shirts or trousers unless they smell or have a stain. People need to learn to hang things back up, or have them over a chair for next day.

Another tip is separate really dirty things from mildly grubby - and put mildly grubby (ie: children's school shirts, pinafores) on express wash with not much washing powder)so you are just freshening them (30 mins on my washer)

Tell your DCs that it is bad for the planet to wash things after one wear if they are not dirty!

Send them to your Ex in clean top to bottom to avoid issues but keep on top of your routine of clean undies and socks every day and re-wear other stuff.

Be really careful about how and when you put clean stuff away as it sounds soul-destroying to think that you are washing clean stuff!

I have lots of washing & would say put all the clean things away before doing any more. I stack all the dry clothes in piles for each person & then allocate every few days. I do two loads a day and if I keep up with this then everything is ok.

to get on top of it you really need to get it all done - do you have a launderette that you could take the lot to and get it all washed and most of it dry?
if you can do that and try to get it put away as best you can.
if you can get on top of it now try to get into the habit of doing a wash every day. with things like school uniform make sure you are washing all their uniforms at the same time, not one today then another one tomorrow.
for not very dirty stuff use the quick wash

Yes - do the uniforms altogether. I do this every friday evening or saturday morning. Their cardis can't go in the dryer so need a day to dry. I do all clothes on 30 which is the quick wash & they come out fine. I do towels & bedding on 60 which takes 90mins.

Get the DCs to put their own clothes away, if this is one of the problems - my 6-yo knows that is the ironing has been done, then she has to take her clean pile of clothes upstairs and put it away.

Second what everyone else says - jeans can be worn at least 2 days (unless stained), as can school uniform etc. I only change underwear everyday (for myself as well as the DDs), everything gets assessed at bedtime for reusability the next day.

TheFirstLady has it sussed - that's more or less my schedule (though I can be a bit lax over getting the beds changed )

There are 5 of us too and I nearly drowned under the piles of laundry so I've regulated the operation. We each have our own laundry bag for dirty and a tub for clean, so I empty out the bags when I'm doing a wash, sort colours and then when things are dry I sort them straight into the individual's tub and put the laundry bag back on top so people know which is theirs. It dosen't magically put stuff back in drawers but if you are looking for something you at least know where to start and the clean and dirty stay apart, and off the floor, and there is something quite cheering about brightly coloured tubs of clean clothes!

Surely if it's possible to have 25 loads of washing to do, you have too many clothes! (even for 5 of you)

OK there are only 3 of us but if I got everything we regularly use in a pile it wouldn't amount to more than a few loads. Have a declutter and sort-out and get some stuff to Oxfam? (I know that takes time but then so does all that washing)

FFS about your ex and his gf - that's hardly helping is it. Yes use the green argument as that tends to appeal to kids. Jeans can go several days as long as they're not actually dirty with mud/spills etc.

We are 5 too - including one sn who sicks on the bed and poos everywhere regularly and I DO NOT have nearly as much as you!

As above posters say, only wash if it really needs it - so, clean underwear and socks every day, tops if they are stained or smelly (depends on kids age - dribbly toddlers and sweaty teenagers need clean tops) and trousers and jumpers should last several days.

Towels once a week, bedding as often as it needs - ie before it gets smelly, which for the sn dc is often, for the others, not quite so bad at the mo but worse in the summer when they run about outside with bare feet.

I put a wash on every night on eco7 then extras in the day sometimes to catch up.

Try getting 2 laundry baskets - one for darks, one for lights. Then get the household to automatically sort their own washing.

Clean dry stuff HAS to be put away immediately.

LOL at Riven, revelling in her own low standards

We are only four and I do more than most of you. My small drum is contributary, but are under threes messier, or do I need to kick myself up the bum?
(There could be hjope for the future....)

Yeh but under threes have much smaller clothes that do not take up much washer -room!!

Hah!

i dont get this

FOR FCUKS SAKE put in machine adn turn on

Sniff. Bubble burst meltedmarsbars.
I do that bradsplit, On and on and on again.
Two washes a day, sometimes three. They are in cloth, but that's only one wash a day.

Dear Santa, for Xmas I would like.....

It is madness to change towels every day -- don't do it! Take a stand, as that is totally absurd & I can't see how anyone could keep up with it.

I think if I were you I would invest in some cheap storage tubs or baskets, or at the very least try to repair your wardrobes in a makeshift fashion to deal with the background storage issues. Seems like organization is part of the problem. Get your DCs to help you in any way they can for their ages.

We just got a dryer for the first time and it has made a massive diff -- I know not feasible for everyone, we soldiered on for years without, but I got the sack and had some redundancy money so used that. If there is any chance that you can get a cheap one, or even make occasional use of a nearby laundromat to dry towels/sheets, I would do that too.