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

I find guests are the killer - extra towels / sheets / pillowcases / duvet cases every weekend.
I do have a white-linen-only policy which makes sorting easier though.

but it does ound lik eyou have too mnay clothes

similar to riven - wash about every 2 days, but sometimes a catch up at the weekend. Not usually more than 5 washes a week

Adult jeans really don't need washed after 2 wears unless they're stained surely?

Those of you doing 2 washes a day - how do you dry it all. Your electric bills must be a nightmare if you tumble dry it all

missorinoco, under-threes are worse - I rarely get something reusable from DD3 who's 18 months, as she insists on feeding herself these days - a recipe for disaster as far as her clothes go! It does get better.....

I don't get this either. Only 3 here, but we get away with a wash a day, sometimes less, and that includes all the towels and sheets. DS wears clean clothes almost every day too, and I often have to change his sheets every day too.

Sort yout storage out, and put your clean stuff away properly, otherwise you'll forever be in this vicious cycle.

Once you've got on top of it, do a load every single day.

I have a family of 6, and the baby is in cloth nappies. I do 3 loads a day, lights, darks and nappies and the bedding on a sunday.

I had a huge backlog and was snowed under and it was getting me down so my new year resolution was to keep on top of the washing.

Now my routine is to fold the washing as soon as it comes from the tumbler and put it in piles on my bed, everyone has their own pile, as the day goes on everytime the tumbler stops i sort and fold and put it on the corresponding pile, then 5 minutes before bed we all go upstairs and everyone puts their own piles away. DD3 is 2 and has started to help put her knickers and vests away, i do dd4's. I don't bother ironing it all as as soon as it comes from the tumbler it is crease free anyway.

It takes perhaps 3/4's of an hour a day but has dramatically changed y life as before i was so depressed how untidy upstairs looked with washing everywhere, now it is more organised i feel more organised too.HTH.

We are a family of five (DS1 is 3, nearly 4 and DTs are just 2).

I always put the washing on the minute I get up (usually before making my coffee and giving children their milk). It's usually a dark wash with the majority of the clothes passing for darks!

I run everything on quick wash (so takes 45 mins instead of nearly 2 hours!) unless it is really badly muddy etc.

I try to hang up first lot of washing before we leave the house in the morning for nursery run or wherever we are going.

I normally then do a second wash later in the day which is a light wash / white wash / pink wash.

On Saturdays I do the children's bedsheets / covers.

On Sundays I do our bedsheets / covers.

On Mondays all of my children go to nursery ALL DAY so it is my cleaning day (except when on MN) and I make sure there is not a single solitary thing left in laundry basket. I normally wash towels etc on a Monday but children's towels don't get washed every week as they only get used 3 or 4 times.

All my three are still in nappies at night though, so no wet sheets to wash as extras. Also none are at school yet so no school uniforms which I think must help.

I tend to put dry washing away as I go along, just checking it often and as soon as something is dry it gets shoved away to make way for next thing.

I do not own an iron...

We are 5 and to be honest I do find that I am washing at least one wash a day.
I change all bedding on a weekend. Towels once a week. Uniforms get put straight into the washer as soon as the girls get in on a Friday.
PJ/nighties get changed after every shower, which they only have 2-3 times a week as they have ecxema and too much washing dries them out.
I do make DD1 change her school shirt at least twice a week as I worry about her getting a bit whiffy (she is 10).
I also take clothes out of the girls wash bin every day if I think they dont need washing.
Ds being 15 months old can sometimes go through 2 sets of clothes a day but then they are only little.
Ps I wear my jeans for at least 4 days as I prefer the way they fit when a bit baggier.

Bascically you need to get on top of the washing to start with and then make sure it is put away. Every time clean washing is placed back into the DC room they should put it into the correct place themselves.

Wow - that is a huge amount of washing.

We are a family of 3; play loads of sports (me and DH), at pre-prep doing lots of messy stuff (DD), have guests almost every weekend.

We do:

1 load towels a week
2 loads bedlinen a week (1 ours, one guests)
1 loads whites/lights clothes only
1 loads darks/coloured clothes only
1 load sports kit only

Which means every morning a load gets put on before we go to work, and is hung out that evening (delayed start to washing machine so no smells developing in drum).

And after the fresh load is hung out, the dry stuff is put immediately away. Any stuff that needs ironing (which isn't bedlinen in my book!) gets put into the ironing basket (folded so as not to get more creases in), and the ironing is done one or two evenings a week depending on how much stuff there is.

So laundry takes maximum half hour a day in my house, and we are nearly always on top of it.

If I leave it a day or two, then chaos ensues....

I have to say, I quite like staying on top of it - it appeals to my sense of order.

I HATE ironing though (DDs stuff is OK, but I actively chose stuff to wear that requires minimal ironing, and send some stuff to the drycleaners instead)

wow thanks for all your replies

To those of you that said I must have too many clothes.. well I've just counted all my towels.. I've got 36 , thats just not normal is it I haven't bought them all, my mum gave me a load last year because she had too many.. arggghhhh

you have all given me food for thought, I am washing too much and I do have too many clothes, I've done 3 loads already this morning. I do have a drier and its constantly on its a piddly little drier though.

Definately get rid of some things if you haven't got room to store them. Also, you and your family can only wear so much at once! Yes, 36 towels is rather a lot!!!

I had a towel sort through a few months ago as my airing cupboard contents
kept toppling onto me whenever I opened the door. I got rid of loads of grotty old ones by passing them onto my local vets. They were very grateful and said they'd get lots of use out of them to line sick animals beds etc.

my washing machine packed in yesterday terrible burning smell from it (scared the crap out of me) i think it died from sheer exhaustion and weve only had it 2 years its never off 4 of us 1 sn i wash towels every day and uniform gym stuff etc

5 of us and i think 2/3 loads a day would keep me on top of it.

sadly as i'm lazy busy i often only get 1 wash a day done or none so we have piles of laundry waiting to be done.

dd is the biggest problem, she gets her clothes filthy every single day... the rest of us can all rewear, even the BLW baby! but not her.

she also wets the bed so i have to do bedclothes almost daily and tonnes of pyjamas

I have to agree with those who say you must have too much stuff. There are 6 of us and I can keep up with a wash per day for the school uniforms/toddler's clothes/DH's shirt/underwear etc which goes on the line or clothes horse (I do have a dryer but try not to use it too much).
Its madness to wash towels every day, I just add one to a wash if the machine's not full or do an extra load. Bedding I try to do all in one day with an early start and a wash cycle of 75mins I can usually do it and get it back on the beds.
I iron pretty much everything and hang it for each child as I do it so I can just carry the hangers straight to the wardrobes.
Maybe to catch up you could sort out what you can leave for now (all the towels?) and concentrate on what you absolutely need then do one load of what's been put aside when you can but make sure you keep up with what's current so you never get any further behind isywim
Good luck

There are 4 of us, and I usually do 2 loads a day about 5 days a week. That will be one load of darks & one load of whites. Bedding done as needed (when wet!), towels when there's a space in a white load.

DS1 wears school uniform, and doesn't change after school. If it's clean it gets reworn (except polo shirt). DS2 wears own clothes to pre-school, but usually wears the same top to bed unless he has a bath. DH changes his shirt daily, but I only wash his trousers at the w/e (which can be 1 pair or 5 depending on what he's been doing).

I have one big airer. After the wash is finished what can go in the tumble drier gets put in there, and the rest goes on the airer. Then after the second load is finished, I do the same and put the drier on. I fold whenever the drier finishes, and the stuff on the airer (next to a radiator) is dry by the time the washing is finished the next day.

I think doing it daily is the key. And perhaps a bigger tumbledrier? Especially with DC4 on the way.

I also have washing bins wherever clothes get taken off - so one in the kitchen for downstairs, one in the bathroom, and one in my bedroom.

Nothing wrong with 30+ towels - I have more than that probably. But I don't let them build up. The most we'll have in use at once is 7 - two for me, two for DH, one each for DSs and one hand towel in the downstairs loo.

Another vote for the 'I don't understand the big deal' here, I'm afraid - though that's horribly annoying for you, of course I say get a bigger machine with a large capacity (ditto tumnble-dryer) and one with a short cycle. My shortest cycle takes just uhnder 2 hours but my mum's can wash in 25 minutes! Are you washing things of the same colour? Otherwsise I just can't understand how there is so much. I do one load of whites, 1 load of darks and 1 load of mixed stuf. And if I have any of those colour-catches sheets I do all the darks & lights together, except the whites. We are 4 and I wash 2 or 3 loads every other day. Tumble-drying is expensive, yes, but it's not as bad as you think - I can't remember exactly what but I worked it out once and it was something like £200 a year? Whatever it is was I thought that was a small price to pay for my sanity! I never dry on the line outside, takes far too long - in the winter anything that can't go in the dryer goes on the radiators and is dry within an hour. I also regularly put washing on in the evening then set the tumble-dryer going overnight so it's done when I wake up the next morning.

Could you pay someone to deal with the backlog for you - drop ít off and pick it up so you can start afresh?

And 36 towels? My heavens, woman

Careful leaving your tumble drier on overnight - ours went pop the other day and something melted. If we weren't there when it happened it could have started a fire.

there are 6 of us...baby number 5 due may. I had an extra worktop put along my back wall of my kitchen, housing 6 large flexi tubs. I plod through the washing throughout the day, probably 5 days a week at least. about 3-4 loads a day.

I don't even know what an iron is, except for if anyone needs shirts/ if we are going 'out'. Everything goes straight from the tumbler, folded and put into buckets or hung up.

I have a tumbler with an anticrease function on as well, so if I don't get to fold it straight away, it tumbles over a couple of times after so long.

A clothes airer for anything that can't be tumble dried.

Uniform gets changed for a monday and a thursday morning.

My 2 girls share a bath towel, and my 2 boys share a bath towel (til they are older anyway), all towels changed twice a week after kids wednesday and sunday bath nights, so we have about 8 towels a week to wash.

Beds are changed on rotation, at least 2 beds at a time, once a week.

When the baby comes I will be back to washing the nappies as well.

bodenbabe I wish i could afford to buy a bigger washing machine, tumbledrier AND pay someone to deal with the back log but it's just not feasible with me only working part time and dp unemployed.

I do my washing on a 40 minute cycle but its drying space I struggle with the most. I have the tumble drier on all the time, 3 huge airers and radiators draped with the washing.

I just can't wait until the warmer weather when I can get all the washing on the line (got a big garden with 3 big lines) and get it dried within a couple of hours all at once.

I rarely iron too, but ds has started doing bits and pieces for me

gosh I can understand why you want to get on top of it. A backlog of 3 or 4 loads is enough to stress me out! I do one load a day normally, sometimes 2. But there are only 3 of us. As you say, look on the positive, a few more weeks and you can have everything out blowing in the wind... I love the smell of outdoor dryed clothes, now I could start a whole other thread on that!
Keep with it and make it a goal to have it all sorted by time baby arrives. Good luck.

Gosh - we do 3 loads a week for three of us, plus an extra load if we have guests at the weekend. I HATE sorting laundry. Grubby activities (gardening, painting etc) are done in special grubby clothes, which are put away in special grubby drawers and re-used until I decide they are too grubby for human use. Beds and towels are changed when I think they need it. But the kitchen cloths and tea towels get washed every time I put a wash on. I don't think the house or family are noticeably unclean

p.s. that was not intended to be smug grubby, but to agree with you that your DCs demands for constant clean clothes are unreasonable, costly, harassing to their mother, and environmentally wasteful

Another family of 5.

I stick a wash on most mornings before leaving for work.

Overnight nappy from dd2, quite often atm wet bedding & pyjamas from dd1, & anything else robust enough to withstand a 60 wash. If no wet bedding, I just bung a dark wash on at 30 & soak dd2's nappy.

When I get home I collect clean, dry stuff from radiators & drying racks & put away, then drape wet stuff from the morning to dry. If there's a backlog I then put another wash on, but if I can I leave clothes that no-one actually needs till the weekend to avoid running short on drying space.

We don't have a tumble dryer.

I find the whole process fairly painless & a good excuse not to do the washing up ('sorry dh, I'm folding pyjamas').

I'd 1) get a bigger capacity machine if possible. LG do an 11kg one.....lovely!
2) When you sort through the washing fold up any jeans/jumpers that are not grubby and put them in a neat pile in their rooms. No need to wash these kinds of things if they are not needing to be washed.
3) change towels with the bedsheets, once a week. Any more is ridiculous.

I have an actual clothes mountain in my futilty room at the moment as I am behind with my washing.

I just climbed up it to reach a shelf