Stupidity of white polo shirt for infant school children

[Newbie887]

Been up since 5am despite it being a Sunday and am already on 2nd load of panic washing before Monday morning.

This has sparked intense fury at all my kids uniform consisting of a white polo shirt, despite them all being in infant school still. Who on Earth thought it was a good idea to force 4-7 year olds to wear pure white on a daily basis?? All their shirts bought in Sept are completely trashed and stained. Wouldn’t it be more logical to make the uniform a navy or bottle green shirt?? And is a white shirt standard in most primary schools or is there’s an anomaly??

the school they were at before had light yellow shirts so no better. In fact almost worse as they went discoloured really easily.

refuse to replace shirts as they still fit and we are only in January. School will have to put up with looking at my trampy kids instead. Hopefully they will smell that they are in fact clean 😂

Bleach is your friend

I love summer because drying on the line in sunlight makes all the shirts bright white again! I use 'glowhite' sachets in with the school shirts. Hang outside after for whatever sunlight is available. If things are badly stained I leave them outside until the sun and rain has done its job, then re-wash.

Our school gives an option of white or light blue. I actually prefer the white ones because they look a lot neater, I but agree they are a pain to keep clean. For each child I would suggest you have at least 5 so that you don't have to wash midweek. Also tomato and pepper stains disappear magically in the sun. Any other stains you could dab with washing up liquid before putting in the machine, which helps to get them out.

Exactly!!! White is the best colour to keep clean!!

Napisan is your friend!

For reception age kids, I wouldn't/wasn't bothered about stains too much. Clean - not fresh food stains, and whatever washed out,but grass and sharpie etc could stay.

Don't they shrink a lot at 60? I thought the max they can be washed at was 40.

My daughters school seemed to do painting every day at one stage. And they didn’t use overalls ever.

I distinctly remember using overalls (sometimes a man’s shirt on backwards) to protect school uniforms when I was small. But nope, now. Nope paint everywhere!

@TheFairyCaravan it's mainly food stains, ketchup, curry and more recently they added salsa dip to the mix.

After having 3ds with white polo shirts I gave up on stains!

I bought cheap ones, washed as normal with stain remover if I remembered, hung outside if dry and gave a quick iron if they looked very creased.

I only put them in the 'rag bin' if the stains were really bad.

Life is too short!

I don’t care as long as the school don’t expect them to remain stain free. I don’t care if my children have stained school clothes

Why are you up at 5am

Young children get mucky no matter what colour they wear.

Buy cheap supermarket polo shirts and shirts. No point spending loads on them.

You'd send your child in a random colour polo? No one does that do they? Poor child

My DC's primary had light colour polos, as long as they were washed I never cared about marks on them, life's way too short

Yep! The uniform at my 2 primary aged children's school is white shirts. They're the bane of my Sundays. They're always dirty looking after one wear so they need one for each day.

Agree 100% the school I used to work in had deep purple ones and although they had there badge on so we're more expensive it was a excellent idea

I always stocked to buying the cheap ones from Asda, Tesco etc and replaced a couple of times a year

DD wears white polos - I keep one out of normal rotation so that's the one to wear on photo day! I don't really care about the state of her tops - they've got a few stains but they're not dirty. I soak them with some supermarket own vanish knock off if they look a bit grimey but life is too short to worry if a 5yo is wearing a t-shirt with pen on it.

We have the choice between white and light blue. White is infinitely easier to deal with - bleach and sunshine.

Stains on coloured tops are an absolute PITA to deal with

Hopefully the school are reasonable as our school.

Stained clothes are not a problem as long as they are clean and children dont appear to be neglected etc

Its also why the nursery used to insist we dont send children in wearing their 'best' outfits. They know children will get a bit mucky at times and its fine.

I'd prefer white to yellow - at least you can bleach white and yellow has a horrid tendency to pick up colour from other clothes so has to go in its own wash.

Need to be dark or white, no pale colours please!

The Asda polos have some kind of stay white treatment and it actually seems to work! Super cheap too.

The ones with the school logo though seem to grab and hold onto any small stain!

For tomato based stains, leave it on a window ledge, doesn't need to be sunny just daylight, might take a few days this time of year though.

And for whiteboard marker I read that soaking it in milk works, although I've not tried it yet.

i see people say this all the time. I can only assume you have a purpose built laundry room with a sink just for this purpose. And love doing intricate domestic jobs.

Never mind I don't even know what soak in bleach means. Neat bleach? In the washing machine? in a bowl? A sink?

I once tried to do this, I had to find a bowl big enough, it was a huge hassle. Far more trouble than just throwing stuff in the washing machine.

My kids wear white polos but they almost always wear the school jumper/cardigan/pe top on top of it so they don't really get majorly stained.

Other white things get stained though.

My kids had to wear white polos too - I soon stopped caring too much, as long as they were actually washed. As a teacher myself, we have far too many things to do than police (or even notice) the cleanliness of their shirts.

I notice clothes that are too small or smell and shoes they can't run in, other than that, I don't notice unless they are wearing non school uniform.

Funny story. When one of mine was in reception they intentionally daubed paint onto another child's shirt. The mother was clearly irate as the teacher handed me the shirt and asked me to wash it.

Looking back, I should have refused, but I was embarrassed by my child's behaviour, so I did. When I examined the shirt, the amount of fresh paint was an insignificant proportion of the total number of stains on the shirt. I easily got rid of the paint, but could do nothing about the old felt pen, washed in stains at all.

Afterwards I wondered if the mother was embarrassed when she got the shirt back and realised how badly stained it had already been.

it really isn't difficult. Kitchen sink, bleach, water, dump shirts in. Leave till they look better, rinse and wash. As a bonus, I f you have a stupid white sink it bleaches that too at the same time 😂

You don't need a laundry and there's nothing intricate about it!

Mine had white polo shirts at primary. They were cheap, readily available and bleachable. I didn't worry about pen and paint stains that wouldn't come
out though. The shirts were clean despite the pen/paint marks.

My son wears white polo shirts and bleach tablets are my friend.

White is by far the most common colour for polos, the other main option being light blue. I suppose the reason is supermarkets can only stock limited colour options, so had to decide and went for white. I agree navy or red would be better default colours.
When mine were at primary they started off with gold polos, but many bought different shades of yellow without the logo. Then it went to navy or gold, then navy or light blue, then just light blue with some in year 6 wearing white as well.

Is your DC not wearing a jumper over his shirts?

2 if mine never did but they were definitely the minority.