Last week, after I posted my Minimalist Wardrobe vlog, a number of you asked how many loads of laundry we do at our house each week.
Gulp.
Do I have to admit that in public? Because methinks we probably do more than average. {Update: After reading the comments, you all are making me feel so much more normal. Thank you! :)}
I wish I could tell you that I have perfected the laundry system and we do two loads per week for our family of five. But alas, that would be very far from the truth.
In fact, most weeks we do an average of seven loads. This includes bedding and towels and spill rags and the like (which usually comprise at least two whole loads per week). But it still sounds pretty pathetic that we somehow produce a whopping five whole loads of clothing which need to be washed between the five of us each week.
I really do try to encourage the children to wear and re-wear stuff. But in reality, they are children. Which means they spill things, get into peanut butter, dig in the dirt, experiment in the kitchen… and get their clothes awfully dirty. And I still haven’t gotten over my perfectionist tendencies enough to allow them to wear mud-caked clothes all day, so it’s not uncommon that they go through more than one outfit each day.
How many loads of laundry does your family do? Do you have any tips or suggestions for how to reduce the dirty laundry output in order to save time, energy and wear on our clothes? I’d love to hear!
Hmm, when all the kids were home (6) we had about 4-5 loads a day, now their gone except one, and now we do 2 loads apx a day, unless I am washing sheets for two beds.
Laundry usage was getting completely out of control at my house. I have two older boys who work full time jobs now, and they could not resist throwing a load in EVERY NIGHT when coming home from work! And then I did everything else, like the sheets, towels, everybody else’s clothes, it got ugly on my energy bill. After much pleading, cajoling, discussion and so on, I put my foot down, and shut down the washer and dryer, and started to go the laundry mat. My energy bill dropped like a lead balloon!! The boys take their stuff to the laundry mat, and now they’re used to it. It is worth it. I spend about $12 a week, I’m done in an hour and a half, and most of all, I love the lower utility bill!!!
I have an apartment size washer/dryer stacked unit which takes forever to dry clothes so I do towels/undies every day and darks every other day, then whites about once a week, so about 11-12 loads a week. I rotate sheets, one week my sheets, the next week the boys sheets. Luckily the boys are in twin size beds so their sheets get washed & dried together, unless the 4 yo wets the bed and I have to wash the mattress pad. I tried only doing laundry once a week but it took all day or all weekend because my dryer is so “slow”. And I found out that the power cost spikes at 10am so all laundry has to be done before 10am or after 6pm when it goes back down. That alone has cut our electric bill by $15-$20 a month.
I just bought a new washer and dryer; Whirlpool Cabrios,(these are top loaders and have a lot of room in them) so before we had these we would have about 9 loads of laundry a week, now that we have these we have cut down to 4 -5 loads a week.
What used to equal 3 loads now equals 1 load of laundry for the 5 of us.
In one load I can get a water proof mattress pad, 2 queen size sheet sets and 6 pillow cases.
I bought 2 sheet sets that are the same, so each week I take the sheets of our bed and put them in the washer and then put the other clean set on our bed. My husband has Asthma so we have to keep our bedding really clean. Doing our sheets this way helps a lot because it’s less wear on them.
As far as our laundry goes now, we can combine certain loads to make one full load. I have also found using the measurement that the washer states and not what the detergent bottle says makes our clothes smell better.
Also to keep your washer smelling good all the time it helps to run an Afresh though it once a month; you can buy these at Walmart or Target, you get 3 of them in the bag; lasting 3 months and they run about $7.00 a bag.
For a family of 3, we do 2 loads a week, including cloth diapers: lights and darks.
I guess we aren’t very “green” I do 3-4 loads a day so GULP………21-28 loads a week 🙂
I probably do 8-9 for clothing, and 2 towel loads… thats for 6 of us. All my husbands work clothes go to the dry cleaners (I attempted to do them myself, but he was totally unimpressed)…I don’t wash sheets every week (hope I didn’t gross everyone out:) I figure since we all bathe before we go to bed they should be pretty clean for a while!
Wellllllll. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that you think 7 is too much. For our family of 5, we do about 14 loads a week. That’s 2 a day. Granted, my son raises poultry and comes home with chicken manure or chicken guts on him. Also, my husband works a 2nd job as a part-time EMT so he has a uniform. Still.
As a household of two, with one on the way I typically do an average of three loads a week; five if bedding is include.
I am a family of 1 adult, 6 kids, and 2-3 home daycare kids (varies daily). We do 2 loads per day, just about every day, 3 if we also have to wash bedding and towels.
No real tips here … just get to those stains quickly.
I love the bounce dryer bars, it keeps the kids from either putting in too many sheets or forgetting altogther. Before getting the dryer bars I cut the sheets in half (would go through the whole stack in moments with an electric carving knife) and would only use one half per load. Worked great.
I make my own laundry soap, supplementing with store bought when I find a GREAT deal. For soap I mixed equal parts Borax and washing soda, then grated in some bar laundry soap. We use about a tbsp. per load and use the same stuff in the dishwasher when we run out of detergent.
I pretty much do a load a day – so around 6-7 loads a week for 4 of us (2 adults and 2 preschoolers). About a month ago our dryer quit working on us, so I’ve resorted to hanging everything until we can either fix it or get a new one. Sure makes me appreciate the women of the days!!! 😉 I’m just grateful that half of our basement is unfinished (the part where the W/D is, whew!) so we just ran a clothesline in there so I could hang stuff – it still gets tricky when you have several towels or bedding to hang! That’s my only one real gripe… I don’t mind hanging clothes since they easily go on hangers, but the bedding is just so big!
And like lots of people, we use our towels for around a week as well. I figure we are clean when we get out of the shower… so how dirty can they really get! We always hang ours as stretched out as possible (no folding in half before hanging) so it air dries nicely. It works well for us because we have four long towel racks (one for each of us!) in our bathroom – so each rack easily fits a regular size bath towel over the rod without folding.
We are a family of 5 and I do 6 to 8 loads every week. The girls clothes get washed on Tues (2 loads), the hubs and mine on Wed (2-3 loads) and towels and sheets on Thur (2-3 loads). We reuse towels but only for about 3 days. And I change sheets every Thur b/c I love clean sheets! Breaking down the washing to certain things on specific days really cut down on the time it takes and everyone knowing what will be available.
Our household of 2 adults does at least 4 loads a week. Every week I do a load for lights, darks, towels & jeans, and sheets. I do delicates, blankets, and pillows as needed. I like to wash sheets every week and bath towels generally last a week but I might switch out early for various reasons.
There are 3 of us, and I do a load or two every other day. We use our towels for a week, and I also do not always wash our sheets every week. Unfortunately I don’t NEED to wash them every week!
I probably do 4-5 loads of laundry per week for my husband, newborn son, and I. So I think you are doing great!
I’m sure I could find ways to create less laundry, but everyone in my family is happy and healthy and the system that we have works for us. I need to do laundry more often because we live in an apartment and don’t have storage space for a lot of clothes, towels, etc.
I do about 7 loads a week for 2 adults, a 3 year old and a 15 month old. If my kids get dirty I change them and we don’t rewear clothes. I have nothing against rewearing clothes, it just seems like after wearing something for a day (and having kids pulling at you constantly) it gets a bit stretched out and needs to be washed to fit right again.
We are a family of 6 with a ferret and a dog! Our laundry is always over loaded! We do around 7~10 loads a week! My washer just broke and we are saving up for the one we want. I have been going to my mothers house to get my laundry done or the Laundry matt! It is a pain, but we would rather save up the money then charge the washer on a credit card !!!!!
I do somewhere between 14 and 16 loads a week. We have 7 of us and 3 are boys 4yrs and under. We have a lot of mud and dirt. I have at least 2 loads a day with clothes and towels. I must confess we only use towerls once. I live in a very humid climate and mildew happens fast. Using the towel again grosses me out too. I’m weird I know:)
I am with you…towels in my family …used once!
17 loads per week – if no one gets sick. We have four kids (ages 4-10 months), plus my husband and I. Our system is wear what we have until we run out, then fold what’s hiding in the laundry room. 🙂 Not great by any means, BUT (now that I’m pregnant with #5) clutter is a HUGE stressor at the moment, and I can’t handle remnants of loads around the house, and due to working part-time to pay off debt, don’t always have chunks of time to devote to folding (& more importantly putting away!) 5 loads of laundry!
I’ve got a family of 5 . . . all males besides me. They get dirty dirty dirty on the farm. Pig pen clothes . . . just can’t bear to have them re-wear them. Plus, towels, rugs, bedding (several loads of this per week since my boys are not dry through the night and almost ALWAYS leak.) I’m just up to my ears in laundry all the time. I need to stop writing now to go get caught up. And it’s 1 in the morning. sigh.
For my family of five I end up doing close to 10 loads. I usually do laundry twice a week. One day I do darks, colors, whites. Another day I do towels, bedding (several loads), darks, colors, whites. Sometimes I need to throw in more, but that’s about our average. We’ll see how many more loads we have to do once child #4 gets here in January. =)
18! Cloth diapers!
Cloth napkins, wipes, rags, sheets, exercise clothes, etc…
For a family of 5 (three under 5).
@Amy F 🙂, PS – I can’t sleep on dirty sheets- its terrible!
For the 5 of us-two adults and 3 girls ages 13, 10, 5-I was 2-3 loads of laundry 4-5 days a week. So that’s around 8-15 loads including sheets and blankets. I recently cleaned out my shoebox of a laundry room so that I can fold each load as it comes out of the dryer. Before doing this, I was folding clothes 2-4 hours per week and we were constantly running out of washcloths, socks, and sometimes towels! I purchased several laundry baskets from the Dollar Tree. My girls each get a basket for their folded clean clothes. My older girls also hang up their own clothes (I put them one hangers). My secret is to keep up with laundry by washing, drying and folding 2-3 loads per day. My laundry no longer accumulates on our laundry room floor (making it messy) and we no longer run out of socks, washcloths and towels.
When I had just 2 little ones, I could do laundry 1x per week! Wow! Those were the days. Now, we do a huge load on Monday (usually somewhere around 5-6 loads), then 1-2 each day the rest of the week, except Sunday.
2 months ago we had a family of 5 living with us for a few weeks and the washer and dryer never did stop the entire time they were here!
WOW!! No wonder I’m so tired! We do around 25 loads of laundry a week at our house for 6 people. That is only washing sheets about 1-2 times a month and reusing bath towels all week. I think our biggest downfall is sports–my 17-year-old has at least one full load a day just himself and two loads on days after football games (and others). All workout clothes are required by the school to be washed every day due to the incidence of MRSA and other things. My two middle kids also have practice clothes, sports uniforms, towels, etc. plus band clothes. And my little guy is just plain dirty! And their dad wears (hard) work clothes, golf clothes, lounging around the house clothes (I try to get him to rewear them). I have nice work clothes and at home clothes and I always try to rewear my tops twice and pants three times, but still…I feel like I am being buried by laundry! Count your blessings if you are doing less than 10 loads a week!
I have me and 3 kids 7years 5 years and 6 months … i try and so 3 loadd every other day just to make sure I’m not going to over load myself… I found out if I wait and do a lot at once I never end up putting half of it away…. and I end up hating it… I hate that I have to do laundry every other day but I feel good about how my kids and I look… but my mother yelled at me for doing laundry like this !!! I totally understand where your coming from !!! I just hope I’m doing ok
We actually do on average about 2 loads a week for 2 adults and 2 young kids. Some weeks it’s 1 load, sometimes it’s 3.
We do a lot of rewearing clothes (well, the adults do anyway), and don’t change sheets and towels that often unless they need it. It doesn’t seem to cause any problems and our house is fairly clean.
I like to minimize the frequency of washing not only to save time/money, but because clothes last longer – washing and drying really does seem to wear them out.
We do probably 5 to 7 loads of laundry. In part, this is because we do a “light” dress clothes and a “dark” dress clothes load about every other week, in addition to the standard laundry.
I follow FlyLady’s advice and do “one load a day to keep chaos away”. I find that it is easier for me to keep on top of things this way. We are a family of two adults and two children (a toddler and a 7 month old)….and we *CLOTH DIAPER* so that adds an extra load of laundry every other day…so I probably average about 10 loads of laundry per week. The diapers have to be washed once on cold with no soap, once on hot with soap, and an extra cold rinse. On Thursdays I wash all bedding, and on Friday I wash all of my husband’s work clothes in addition to our usual load of the day.
WOW!!! This is my biggest weakness. I do 14 loads of laundry per week. One load every morning and one load every evening. Anyway, we have two adults, 3 one year old triplets, and 2 nine year olds. Hence, we have a ton of laundry!
There’s 2 of us now – my husband and myself. I generally always do one dark load and one white load each week. I alternate a third load between towels and sheets (we change sheets and towels once per week but have extra). So I’d say I mostly just do 3 loads a week.
When I was single, I did 3-4 loads every 3 weeks for myself. I despise laundry and have plenty of clothes (plus I rewear A LOT), so I would just put it off! When we got married, my husband was like, “Um, I only have enough underwear for one week…I think you need to do laundry every week!”
My husband is a pastor and dresses nice everyday, but he even rewears his dress shirts and pants (and I didn’t train him to do that-he already did that before we met!). I basically wear the same two casual pairs of pants to work all week (in a school).
Of course, sometimes, like now, I just do laundry when we reach desperate times. 🙂 Our basement flooded 2 weeks ago and the dryer doesn’t work now, so I only wash what’s absolutely necessary (and when it’s nice out – so they can air dry!)!!
I don’t have a family, but I do have a dog who sometimes seems to use more towels than I do.
However, I think some of you maybe able to relate to this:
I have a strict work dress code that mandates what color and texture of pants I can wear and I have to wear a logo shirt or polo. I only have about 6 days worth of clothing. Once a week I will wash only work clothing… all other clothes (things I wear socially, to clean in, or pj’s) gets washed every 2-3 weeks. This encourages me to wear all my (non-work) clothing instead of the same old pair of jeans and same old top every day. It saves wear and tear on clothing.
I promise we are not dirty or smelly people, but somehow we (two adults and one 2 yr old) figured out only doing 3 loads of laundry EVERY OTHER week. In our building, it costs 3.25 to wash and dry a load (and it is a huge pain to haul our stuff in and out of the doors and stairs with a toddler following behind and finding a time when the other residents aren’t using the one washer and one dryer), so we only wash what is really dirty. I hang dry a lot back in our apartment too. I also usually have to hand wash a mini-load once/twice a week in the sink when my daughter has accidents. Although I will loosen up a bit about laundry once we move in a year or so, I am glad I have learned to be frugal in our laundry usage. I really like only worrying about the laundry once in a while, rather than once a day!
in our house, our family ( me my husband and our little girl) we do 4 loads a week (light dark towls and one special load for our little one) i still have not been able to bring my self to wash her stuff with ours and its that much easier to put away , but we wash our bedding one evey 2 weeks.
but we live with our in laws who do their own laundry (2 ppl) and they do about 6 loads a week ( idk how they have more clothes then me we do)
i also work at a nusing home doing laundry on the weekends( they have some one there evey day) and on the weekends i do 10 loads OR MORE a day. and they do bout 16 a day durring the week. thats all the personal clothes, towles, bedding kitchen rags, wachclothes, underwear, and house keeping. so that makes
@krystal, thats for 60 ppl.
I have a family 5 (2 adults, teen boy and two elementary girls) and do at least 3 loads of laundry daily. My son and I re-use my bath towel for a whole week but everyone else uses a new one for each shower. We do sheets every week or so. So we have about 18 loads a week. We try not to do laundry on Sunday if we can help it. We also may have an extra load or two of sheets as my youngest has bladder issues. I used to think we did a normal amkount of laundry, but after reading all the comments I wonder.
I do over 10 loads of laundry a week for a family of 4 but that is because I am super picky about laundry and smells etc. Also, teenage girls change clothes more often then toddlers 🙂
Wow. It’s just me and my son, and I only do 1-2 loads of laundry a week. Usually one for clothes, and one for bedding, towels etc. I don’t run the laundry unless it’s full, and I don’t separate darks /whites.
7 sounds completely reasonable for 5 of you! We try to rewear not-too-dirty items but our family of 7 easily does 12 loads per week. Bedding alone is 3 loads, and that’s if no one wet the bed and needs their mattress cover or comforter washed. Then we have towels, “dog towels” (or old towels, used for spills or cleaning), and at least one load per day of clothing.
I do 3-4 loads of laundry every TWO weeks for myself, my hubby and our 16 month old daughter. I guess I’m crazy from reading everyone’s comments. I do a load of whites, two loads of darks, and a load of towels. Once a month I change sheets and will have that extra load of laundry. I do the smell test on all my laundry. If it smells musty or smells otherwise then I wash it.
Wow… All of that laundry must take a lot of time! I’m a single woman living in a condo with a (bright, clean, never busy) laundry room full of professional sized washers/dryers. I do three loads of laundry – whites, darks, sheets/towels – simultaneously once a month, and can finish washing and drying in 75 minutes. Buying enough underwear for a month was a great investment (I own an average amount of clothing and don’t really get dirty, but this is a great way to make sure I’m using everything in my closet!). It wouldn’t be so cost effective for people with growing kids, but seeing your responses has definitely made me appreciate how easy I have it!
It’s a bit different at my house….when my kids were in 3rd grade, I taught them to do their own laundry. I know….what a crazy concept. Their wives will thank me one day.
They each get a day. They throw their bath towel in with their clothing. (And they change their own sheets too.)So now I just do about 4 loads a week and the kids each do 2. So we do about 8 total with rags and sheets as extras.
We are a family of 3 adults, and being we have some allergies, we are forced to wash ALL the bedding more frequently. I am sure most weeks I do at least 10 loads a week (some are half loads however…I am careful not to mix colors too much, whites separately etc…so our clothes stay brighter and last longer in my opinion). However, I do wash often at night, even LATE nights…and evidently the electric company likes this (also run the dishwasher very late)…cause they have been giving us rebates of around $10 per month. I guess they think our usage is lower than other people. We have AC which is a requirement in NC…was up to at least 88 degrees today!!! But we use a large off the floor fan quite a lot, and thereby can leave the temp up a bit higher too.
Everything is relative however…our washer is a larger capacity one as is our dryer. I try to only completely dry our bedding and towels. I take the other things pretty damp and hang around the house to dry. That saves electricity too. We cannot hang outside or I would do that…allergies, bugs, many birdies, etc etc.
Here’s our weekly minimum:
I do 1 load of towels on Sunday.
Everything else on Monday in this order:
2 year old son’s clothes = 1 load
5 year old daughter’s clothes = 1 load
1 year old son’s clothes = 1 load
whites for me and my husband = 1 load
darks for me and my husband = 2 loads
7 total
and then we change sheets every week, but i wait until i have 2 sets and then wash them together. so every other week we have 8 loads.
of course, we often have extra loads at random, like cleaning car seats, baby gear, blankets, comforters, etc.
or when someone throws up/poops/pees in bed, spills something massive, etc.
oops, the dryer just stopped…gotta go!
🙂
I used to save all my laundry for one day and then my aunt pointed out how much time that consumed-why not just throw a load in every day or two? DUH! 🙂 It works well for us. Under normal circumstances I wash one load every day or two (so maybe 5-7 loads a week). Most of those loads aren’t full. BUT when potty training, that goes up to at least one load a day! We, too, use our towels for at least a week if they get hung up (my husband is terrible about hanging his up!) and I wash bedding when I think about it 😉 I don’t sort my loads anymore unless there’s some really grungy whites that need bleach. It all gets washed on cold and with the amount we have, there’s no need to sort. With a newborn coming soon, I know the number of loads will go up!
I have a family of 8 and do about 20 loads a week. One load every day is from 2 little people…sheets from sound sleepers:-)
We do an average of 21 loads a week. Seven big people, six beds, and we only wash towels once a week.
We are a family of 6, the 4 “gnomes” range in age from 6 yrs to 5 months. I do about 2-3 loads a day with diapers being every 2-3 days depending on how many we use during those 2-3 days. I hang dry the diapers if it’s sunny outside. I need to get a better schedule for clothes washing, like only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I only wash on cold water unless it towels, and the 2nd wash on diapers. i only wash bedding once a month, we bathe the gnomes daily, because they are “gnomes” and get dirty at school or just being here playing outside…. 🙂
We live in an apartment and don’t have our own washer and dryer. We also cloth diaper, which makes doing laundry a bit pricey. It’s $1 for each machine, so $2 each regular load and $3 for diapers (they need an extra cycle in the washer). Luckily my parents let me come over once a week to do laundry to help cut down on the cost. We wash 1 load of diapers everyday or every other day at our apartment and then I do 4 or 5 loads at my parents’ every week. In total, I’m doing about 10 or 11 loads of laundry every week for 2 adults and 1 child in cloth diapers.
I don’t know how you people get by on 5 -6 loads a week, lol. 🙂 I do at least one load a day, and usually two; so that’s like 14 loads a week for 2 adults and 2 kids. And somehow, I’m still not caught up.
28 loads a week average for 9 people; we have small wardrobes, do daily messy chores, exercise daily and shower daily re using towels for the most part.
Our towels smell musty if I don’t wash them every other day; we hand wash dishes, so kitchen towels are done with bleach eod, too.
I truly understand the verse that says, Where no oxen are the crib is clean but much increase is by the strength of the ox.” Having a large family is a LOT of work but we are praying for great ETERNAL impact with these wonderful children, too!
@Julie C, WOW!! that’s a lot of laundry!! We have 9 in our family too, but I only do 1-2 loads/day. I HATE laundry lying in my laundry room, so I wash what was worn each day at the end of the day and a load of towels. If I do 1-2/day I am always caught up. 28 loads….that still baffles me!!! 🙂 We do have a frontloader, so I can do large loads.
@Michelle,
Maybe if we had a large capacity washer I’d do it less often; I do laundry throughout each day as we do showers at night and will run out of warm water if we try to do dishes, laundry and showers all in the evening.
We wash around 10 loads a week depending on who is being potty trained! If I slack off and don’t wash a load for a day or so the laundry monster comes to visit. 2 adults and 4 kids sure can make a mess. I tell my friends that “a load a day keeps DCS away!”
I have a family of 5 with 3 kids ages 4 and under and I do laundry once a week – usually 3-4 loads. I alternate between whites and sheets/bedding, whites one week, sheets the next. (We have enough undergarments to last two weeks.) I can still fit all of the kids’ laundry in one load, but have been doing my baby’s laundry separately with baby detergent most weeks. We re-use towels, so they usually fit in with the dark clothing. I am not picky about what gets washed together and my clothing seems to hold up just fine…still have some tops from over ten years ago! My kids are little (4, 2, and 7 mos), but not messy for the most part, always wear bibs when they eat and rarely wear more than one outfit a day, which helps.
We have a family of eight, including my husband and I. We have a seven year old son, twin boys that are four, a three year old son and twin girls that are 10 months today! We typically do between 6 – 8 loads of laundry a week. I break the laundry up between Tuesdays and Fridays (I hate spending weekend time with the laundry and not my family). This helps me to better plan my week and not to get overwhelmed with the laundry we have. The kids wear the same pj’s for 3 nights in a row, sometimes 4 and I only wash bedding about every 2 weeks. Our family sounds a lot like Desiree’s :0)
Just a thought here- the size of washing machines very greatly! I have a compact, stacker washer/dryer, which is probably the smallest washer I’ve seen. It barely fits 4 pairs of my husband’s pants. My mom’s frontloader is quite large- three loads for me would fit in one load in her washer!
I don’t get what’s wrong with more loads of laundry-(other than, of course, using more soap and water, and the time spent doing it!) I admit that when we had to do coin laundry, I packed the clothes in so I could do less loads. At $2.25/load it was costing me $9/week just for 4 loads! But I don’t do that now that I have my own washer. I just do more loads since it’s so small! 🙂
I do about 2-3 loads a week for just me. One load is darks – mostly clothes -and the other is whites/lights – mostly towels, bed linens. The occasional 3rd load is usually throw rugs, rags and pet bedding.
For our family of 4 and home daycare I do 7 to 10 loads per week. I have to wash all the bed linens once a week (daycare regs). I usually try to do one load per day on the weekdays, and then do all the towels and linens on Saturday.
I do 5-6 loads a week for our family of 7. I’ve never been too sure why I do so much less than it seems at lot of people do. I know I’m a slacker about changing sheets, so that helps…and we do each just have one towel we reuse all week. We don’t wear pj’s, either, except for the tiny kids…older kids just wear their clothes to bed, since they tend to wear comfy cotton dresses most days, anyway. I suppose that may not work when my boys are older!! 😉
I do 5-6 loads per week. One for whites, lights, darks, work clothes and blankets and towels. We are a family of 6. Two adults and 4 kids.
It’s just the hubby and me (well, and six dogs & cats) but to keep me in a routine and to keep from getting a backlog, I do a load a day, except for most Sats & Suns. The hubby is VERY fastidious. If he wears something for even a few minutes, it must be washed so I usually have two sets of clothes for him most days (one work set, one home set). Me, I have no problem wearing something more than once (except undies of course).
We separate our clothes into more categories than most I think. I have two laundry sorters that hold three bags each and we just put the dirty clothes in the appropriate bag. That way I just grab a bag, no sorting necessary and dump it in the wash. We do a whites; blues/greens/browns; dark dress pants; jeans; reds/orange/yellows; delicates (mostly dress shirt that need to hang dry).
Some weeks not all bags will be full so on that’s when I’ll do bedsheets or towels or a quilt or a load of ‘rags’ (we use rags etc instead of paper towels for cleaning, etc).
The system works for me because I don’t have much stamina and when I tried to do it all at once clothing was getting washed but left on the dryer. This way I have no problem washing, drying and putting up an entire load each day.
This system has also made me realize we have way too much clothing and need to get rid of some since we no longer try to wear everything before trying to do a mega-wash-a-palooza.
I am on load # 8 and I have still have 2 loads of clothes and 2 loads for sheets. We are a family of 5. DH & I work out 3-4 times a week. DD1 (14) has cheer practice 5 times a week, so lots of workout clothes and towels. Puppy has 1 load for him too 🙂
I typically reserve Mondays for laundry, but I try to do a few during the middle of the week so I am no so overloaded on Monday.
We do 6 loads of laundry on average a week. Each of the 4 kids brings their laundry down on their “day” and puts it in the washing machine themselves (even the 3 year old), then takes their hamper back upstairs. By the end of the day, I try to have it folded, and again, whoever’s laundry was done that day gets the joy of taking it back to their room and putting it away (even the 3 year old). On Friday one child brings my laundry down, and on Sat. one child brings down dad’s (we do put our own laundry away!). There is a hamper next to the machines for any wet/dirty towels, soiled clothes (especially for the one still potty-training), etc. I throw whatever’s in it each day with the “person of the day”‘s laundry, and that’s how we keep ontop of that. notice we don’t sort our laundry (I find it highly over rated!!)
I do 7-8 loads a week for our family of four (two young kids). My husband works on a farm so his dirty stinky clothes are 2-3 loads of that. Luckily he rewears “at home” clothes for several days. Then another 3 for clothes, 1 for towels (we use them for a week too), and 1 or 2 for sheets/rugs since I wash any particular set about every two weeks.
We do 7 loads a week for 2 adults and 4 children-that includes sheets and towels. I wish it were less!!
I do 4-5 loads a week for our family of four – two adults and two toddlers. Darks, whites, rags (we use plenty of these with toddlers around), towels and sheets (if they get done that week). That seems to be on the low end, but I just don’t have time to constantly be doing laundry. Laundry gets done on Monday and occasionally throughout the week is my 3 year old has an accident at night. When I have a new baby though it seems that a load usually gets thrown in at least every other day, sometimes every day.
Well, I sorted my laundry into 5 loads this morning: delicates, towels/sheets, darks, lights, and whites. I am sad to admit that 5 loads is probably our average and there are only two of us. Maybe I should throw my delicates in a garment bag to save myself an extra load? Any recommendations? : )
@Bethany, I have a “delicates” bag that I just throw in with whatever color matches (light or dark). It’s technically a sweater bag, made by Tide, that I bought 1 1/2 yrs ago at Target. It was between $5-10 & so worth it! I also hang dry a lot of my shirts too so those go in there as well.
I have the kids bathe before bed so the sheets will stay clean longer and I only change sheets once a week. Since thekids are clean when they put on pajamas I have them wear pajamas 2 or 3 times before washing. Also, coats go directly on the hooks as they come in so I don’t have to wash them just because they were left on the floor.
In a 7 day time span I do about 18 loads (2 to 3 per day). We are a family of 5 adluts and teenagers, my kids all play ball. Their sports clothes often need to be ready the very next day. So by reading your comments I think that is alot!
It is me, hubby and our 6yr old daughter (family of 3) and we do 5-8 loads a week. I only do laundry one day a week and this is how I split our loads up:
Whites (that can be washed on hot)
Colors (washed on warm)
Delicates – Darks (cold wash)
Delicates – Lights (cold wash)
Towels
Once a month I do the sheets, comforter and blankets, bath rugs, etc. I also will throw the shower curtain in with the towels once a month.
So I think you doing 7 loads is actually good for having small children!
We are a family of four and I do about two loads a week. This is for clothes and linens both. I wash the kids’ carseats covers and the couch covers about once a month. My kids are young (3 and under) and tend to dirty their clothing easily throughout the day, usually beyond hope of a second wear without washing. However, summertime is the worst time of year for this, seeing as they’re sweating outside and playing in the dirt/water all day long. But unless they are caked in mud and wanting to come inside, or soaked from head to toe, they stay in the same clothes all day long. In the winter we layer, so I can get more use from a long-sleeved shirt with a small dirt spot if its worn underneath a tee. As for me, I’ll wear the same jeans and tee for 3 days straight and it doesn’t bother me. Underwear, of course, gets changed daily 🙂 DH wears an undershirt, so his work shirts see lots of wear between washes. I wash all the linens separate from the clothes, so sometimes that doesn’t get done every week if there’s not enough to make a full load. I change sheets and towels once a week for everyone in the family, and there’s always rags and such that get thrown in that load throughout the week. Lately I’ve been keeping the washer door open so I can toss in a dirty towel or whatever when it gets soiled (spills, and my toddler not making it to the toilet in time/not wiping well, are the main culprits).
Even though we have an energy-efficient washer and dryer, I don’t like to wash something unless it really needs it. I do all the housework so if I can stretch out the time between having to fold mountains of clothing, I do it!
For our family of four, I do one or two a day with none on Sunday. We use cloths in the kitchen and lots of washcloths in the bathroom and a towel under our dishrack. That makes one hot load a day (which I am switching away from after researching cold water disinfecting) and then one clothing load a day. We make our own detergent and hang out our laundry most of the time so we aren’t really using the dryer that much. I would like to cut this back more, but it seems like with two kids, one being a 16 year old, we go through alot of clothes.
I am doing laundry for 4 people. I easily do 8+ loads per week. Ideally I do 2 loads a day, but some days I dont get to it. I do at least 3 loads of towels a week. I have a teen who thinks she needs 2 towels per shower and sometimes showers more than once a day. I used to do the same thing when I was her age, so I don’t complain too much. LOL! Speaking of laundry, I need to go throw some in now.
for a family of 2 adults, one toddler, we too do about 5-6 loads but only every two weeks. We made sure to have enough underwear for that and the rest can either be reworn or we have plenty of because we strictly shop at thrift stores etc…
The loads are normally stuffed full (except the red load–after many hard lessons learned, we have a red load), but the clothes get clean and I find even with towels and sheets, I can limit it to about 6 loads.
I don’t think it’s gross to reuse a bath towel for a whole week, I was always taught to do this anyways. I don’t change my sheets very often because they don’t get dirty, maybe twice a month I will.
@Megan, n That’s exactly our schedule. Coming out of the bath/shower we’re clean, so as long as the towel is hung up so it doesn’t mildew, it’s good to go for another using, saving water/soap/energy from the power company as well as my own energy. We’re not really dirty when we go to bed, so two weeks on bedding works fine. Overall, we do 6-7 loads a week for 5 people aged teen to adult.
@Megan, Same thing here on the towels. We wash bedding more often just because we have animals that aren’t taking a shower every night!
@brookeb, Our dogs used to sleep in our bed with us so I was washing the sheets at least every week and the comforter at least every few weeks due to the dog hair. Now we have banished them from the bed and because our bed is so clean now I actually forget to change the sheets a lot. I feel bad that the dogs don;t get to sleep in the comfy bed anymore but it has really cut down on my stress level not having to constantly clean the bed linens.
Too many! I do about 12 loads each week, but keep in mind I have 3 teenagers (2 golfers & 1 dancer) plus a husband that runs! We live in Houston, Texas so it’s HOT, HOT, HOT much of the year!
we do 5-7 loads a week for two adults, a potty-training 2yo and a 9mo who spits up a lot. we do a lot more loads in the winter when we’re wearing thicker clothing than in the summer. my 2yo really enjoys running around naked so that at least saves us a lot of laundry. 🙂
I am a little ashamed to admit that we do an average of three loads per day for our family of 8 that includes 6 adult size people. At least one of the loads are towels, wash cloths and bedding. So, I guess we average about 21 loads per week. I think we average a little more because I am a germaphobe!
Wow – I guess I do a lot of laundry. For my family of 3 I probably average 10 loads a week. That includes 3 – 4 loads of diapers one load of table clothes we put under our daughter’s chair while she eats because our apartment has carpet in the dining area. I had to do an extra load this week, though, because my daughter stepped in dog poo on a walk and both my husband and I picked her up and got covered in poo before figuring out where all the poo was coming from:)
@Kristy, We had an apartment with carpeting in the dining room and we found it worked pretty well to buy a plastic carpet cover designed to go under a rolling office chair ($25 at Costco) to go under our toddler’s booster seat. Just an idea, in case you’re not totally happy washing all those tableclothes. The plastic map wipes clean really easily. However, if your baby/toddler flings food really far, this is not so effective.
@Kristy, Carpet wrap. Seriously. You can buy a big roll for $15, and throw it away when it gets messy, or wipe it down with a sponge. It’s the same stuff that you use when working on a painting project, etc. You can make it cover as big of an area as you want.
@Candace, a yard of plastic table cloth @walmart is what i use cost $3.00 found in the fabric section . can wash it with soap and water .
@Carla, One difference – carpet wrap sticks to the carpet and doesn’t get moved, crinkled, shoved to the side, etc. It’s also really durable, and chair legs don’t seem to pierce it.
Thanks to my hubby (it was his idea after he saw me kill myself and kill at least one day every week)….I wash clothes once every 2 weeks. We are a family of 6 and the normal wash load is 5-10 load depending on how much extra stuff I’m washing (sheets/towels, etc.) Time is money and money is time. Some clothes we can “rewear” – some we can’t. It really pays off to have gone out and bought enough clothes to last 2 weeks. This was a ONE TIME expense that has saved so much time and energy. (Think Walmart, Goodwill, thrift stores, grandparents! 🙂 etc.) I now have more time each week because I don’t have the burden of “we have no clothes to wear and I MUST wash.”
With a little planning, organization and thinking outside the box, life can be organized (as much as that is possible), simplified and so much more enjoyable. I owe my household sanity to my husband – I’m an “inside the box” kid of girl, he’s definitely an “oustide the box thinker” and I’m forever grateful.
I also follow the two week rule. We just needed some more underwear, socks and jeans and we easily made it through.
Our household is just me, my husband, and our 2 cats. I’m rather obsessive about laundry, so I probably have more loads than I really should. For example, I only wash jeans with other jeans. Whites have their own load, lights, darks, reds if I have enough to make a load. Sheets are separate; towels are separate. I wouldn’t DREAM of washing bras with regular clothes…
In warm months, I typically do 5-6 loads per week. It goes up a bit in winter, as our clothes are bulkier, so require more machine space. And if our sick cat pees on something, well, I do WAY more laundry. (His favorite place is the bed, so that means washing ALL bedding, including the mattress pad.)
It may not be the most eco-friendly way of dealing with our clothing, but our clothes last and last because I’m so obsessively careful with them.
@Anne Marie @ Married to the Empire,
I am the same way! I do many more smaller loads because I do not mix clothes. Sheets and underwear do not pill up as much if they are not washed with towels! Bath towels won’t smell if you don’t wash them with kitchen towels. Clothing lasts longer this way. Also, DH works outside a lot and in the South, that can mean very stinky, wet clothes. I think one day he wore 4 shirts before noon! I also wash most of our clothes separately because I have to use All Free Clear on mine and his require a stronger detergent with some fragrance…lol. I am glad we are empty nesters now or I would be doing laundry all the time.
We’re only a family of 3 and I probably do about 5 loads a week for everything. However, up until about a month ago, I was doing 10-12 loads a week because my husbands work clothes (and he works in the oil field so there is no re-wearing) had to be washed every night. Thankfully, his company now provides his uniform and has them dry cleaned to help maintain whatever they put on them that makes them flame retardant.
I do 3-4 loads per week for my family of 4. It may sound gross but we use a bath towel for a whole week and just make sure to hang it up to dry in between. I don’t wash sheets every week. My husband ALWAYS wears an undershirt, so he can wear a nice shirt several times before washing. We wear our work-out clothes several times — they are just going to stink in a few minutes anyway. All this and we don’t stink or have skin irritation. 🙂 I do laundry on one day — whites, lights, darks, towels/bedding. There is very little that we can’t live without until the next week.
@Rachel,
ditto this, but usually 4-5 loads.
@Rachel, We use our bath towels for a week too. After we use them we hang them to air dry so they don’t get musty. This was the way it was done when I was growing up so I didn’t even think people used more than one towel in a week!
@Erica @ Just Call Me Cheap, I just started limiting the number of towels I put in the bathrooms. If there isn’t a fresh towel to use, then my kids HAVE to reuse their towels. I’m hoping it also helps keep towels from piling up on their bedroom floors!
There are four of us in the house and we do between 1-2 loads every day. Between uniforms, gym clothes, towels and every day clothes our laundry basket is overflowing. My husband and son do all the laundry during the week and I will say that they don’t sort the way that I did, things tend to get thrown together (towels, jeans, t-shirts). After shrinking two of my cashmere sweater sets my husband has learned that my stuff doesn’t go in the dryer. Other than that I don’t complain to much because I’m not the one doing it =:) I do the bedding on the weekends and anything special I didn’t want them to ruin.
Most of my work clothes are dry clean only so I just use Dryel instead of taking them to the cleaners regularly. Since I have washables under the dry clean clothes they don’t need actual dry cleaning very often.
I would caution anyone who has a front end washer and is using the HE detergent about cutting back too much. Our clothes were kind of stinky for a while, we thought it was the washer itself until my husband admitted that he had cut WAY back on the detergent. It’s amazing how much nicer they smell now that he’s using the appropriate amount!
@Liz, I appreciate reading the tip about stinky clothes and not cutting back too much on detergent! I have fought with my front-loader for months and am always looking for ways to keep the stinky clothing at bay!
@Kimberly, There is something in the powdered laundry detergent that helps prevent that smell in front loaders. Those who use liquid soap should run a load or two with powdered soap each week to keep the smell away.
I do between 9-12 loads of laundry a week… that’s for 11 people, including two boys who are still learning to be dry at night, and includeds towels, rags, bedding, and of course clothes.
We have a family of three adults in our home and we typically have 4-5 loads a week. We do however try to keep laundry day on Sunday afternoons so we are not using the washer and dryer all week long and just make it one big day. I do not have small children yet so I would imagine this will change greatly when we have kids. 🙂
I do 4-5 for two people including towels and bedding. This is mostly because I have someone who wears 3X so those clothes take up a lot of room.
We have 6-7 loads of just clothing in our house (two adults, a pre-school boy, an infant girl). But, because Miss L can be the spit-up queen, she and we get changed more often that before her arrival. And let’s not even talk diaper blowouts!
Then there’s a few loads of diapers, sheets (our bed, son’s bed, guest bed where baby and I often land in the wee hours of the morning), plus towels.
I try to wash the bulk of the laundry on weekends (a habit from when I was working), but a few loads seem to spill over into the week anyway.
For my family of 7 I wash and hang at least 2 loads a day, sometimes three, five to six days a week. That doesn’t include the load of diapers about 3 times per week. I can’t remember the last time I had laundry all caught up so that usually leaves about a load or two undone at the end of the week.
I used to make my own detergent, but with our hard water my clothes were not getting very clean. I hit the jackpot this summer on detergent, though. There was a period of about 4 weeks where I was able to stock up on 32 load bottles for $1/bottle! 4 of them were Green Works! I’m still using them and have about 4-5 bottles left!
If I’m on top of laundry, I do 12+ loads for my family of 6. All 4 of my children are under 7 years old and eah one of them has habits that cause extra loads. I started doing my own laundry in 5th grade. If I had leknown what was ahead of me, I would’ve let my mother do it for a couple more years. Let’s just hope 1 or more of my kids follow in my footsteps!
Just wait until your kids are older – P.E. clothes, sports practices and jerseys – it all adds up! A total 8 loads summertime and 9 loads wintertime for our family of 4 (jeans take up a lot more space than shorts). Since we all have dust mite allergies, we have to do all the sheets and mattress pads weekly in hot water (3 of the loads are just for them).
Wow. I don’t know how everyone’s getting by with 5-7 loads a week! We have a family of 4 and I think I do at least 12-15 loads a week and we have a extra large capacity washer and dryer. I have 2 small kids who we are trying to potty train at night so that often adds extra loads as the bedding all needs to be washed at least once a week. I do bath towels twice a week. There’s virtually no re-wearing clothes in our house with 2 little ones and my husband often gets dirty at work. He races motocross too and my son plays soccer and I coach so I often have an extra load from that every week too.
Sadly, we do not have a minimalist wardrobe. I get great deals at the thrift stores so I think the kids could make it for weeks with clean clothes. I need to work on buying less clothes!
I would say we do about 10-12 loads / wk for a family of 5 (boys 5 and 6, and daughter 10), with bedding/bathroom rugs every other week. I try to do about most of it (~7 loads – 1 whites, 2 towels, 2 kids’ jeans, 1-2 kids’ tops/pjs, 1 adults darks) Friday night and Saturday morning. (I know, makes for an exciting Friday night, huh?!) Usually another load on Sunday for the weekend barn clothes. Plus, there’s usually one or two extra loads done during the week for grass-stained jeans and my husband’s and my workout clothes. My husband and I can usually re-wear work clothes several times since we both work in offices. But the amount of clothes the boys (and, ahem, tomboy) go thru probably makes up the difference!
We normally do about 3-4 loads a week and bedding every other week which makes it about 5-6. Hubby only has 4 work shirts so I end up having to do a load sometimee during the week. My 10 month old is teething and drools all over her bedding at night so that (normally added with DH’s work shirts and jeans and my underwear) gets washed twice a week. Our bedding is washed every other week because we were given two sets so each week I can strip the beds and put fresh linnens on & we just save them for the second week when K goes off to Grandma’s for the weekend (or else all of the clean clothing gets drooled, chewed, or drug around!) =] We have to bring our laundry to my parents (no washer and dryer for us yet..) so it is kind of a pain to do two days of laundry (once on Wednesday and once on Saturday) Oh well though.. =]
@Samantha, We also use our towels twice before washing them and we only have 4 towels plus one smaller one for K. If I have time I enjoy hand washing some of K’s bedding and hanging them out but only in the summer and fall when they won’t get covered in pollen or freeze on the line!
I do about 7 loads of laundry, plus an additional 2-3 for diapers.
I’d say we average about 7 loads per week (everything, including sheets, towels, etc.) for our family of 4 (we have 2 preschoolers). This summer I’d say I washed the kids’ clothes more often because they were always wet or dirty from playing outside. I re-wear my clothes a lot because I grew up in a family of 11 and we just did that. If it wasn’t dirty, wear it again. Saves on laundry and wear and tear on the clothes. My husband, on the other hand, can go through 2-3 outfits in a day, which makes my laundry pile that much higher! 🙂
I like your minimalist wardrobe, Crystal, and plan to try to implement something like that myself. I worked outside the home up until my daughter was almost 1, and I find I just don’t wear many of the clothes I have from those days. I mainly wear the same things over and over again! Thanks for sharing with us. 🙂
Ugg! This is my sore spot of all my household chores- see my post where I figured out that I average around 20-21 loads a week for a family of 4 (http://myexperimentallife.blogspot.com/2009/02/laundry-dilemma.html)!! Definitely not normal which I totally admit is due to my ocd. And I don’t have a huge wardrobe either!
None … because our budget cannot afford to buy quarters to do laundry each week since we have to pay to wash at our apartments and it is 1.50 per wash and 1.50 per dry. Even splitting time in dryer is still expensive. Used to go to half price laundry facility but it was torn down.
Bummer. now have no other resources.
Our family of 5 does about 10-12 loads each week including cloth diapers for 2. We definitely re-wear clothes when possible and have separate nice and play clothes for the kids (& for ourselves). This keeps stains on “play clothes” and I don’t spend much time trying to get stains out of nicer clothing.
Embarrassing…. for a family of five – I do a minimum of 3 loads a day, some days it more like 4-5. That’s 21-28 loads a week!! We’ve only had our new samsung washer and dryer for a year and a half and have already had to replace parts of the computer system on both!!
I do about 5 loads a week for our family of 4, with a 4 year old and 2 year old, (that usually includes 1 white load, 1 dark, 1 lights load, 1 sheets/towels and one really small “delicates” load) but fortunately for me, my husband wears a uniform so that really cuts down on his laundry! I have been thinking about having my children re-wear their pajamas-although sometimes breakfast ends up on them! I really don’t think with sheets, towels, and underwear that 5 is too many. I think if you are trying to lower the amount of laundry that you do below that, you may end up wearing dirty clothes! I suppose if you have a really high capacity washer you could lower that amount, but I really feel like if you don’t separate darks from lights then your clothes come out dingy. It is not saving money when I want to replace our clothes because they look like they have been handed down 4 0r 5 times instead of once! 🙂 One of the best tips my mom taught me is to make sure you aren’t washing clean clothes. Church dresses, or outfits that were only tried on, (or heaven forbid! clothes that were folded but not put away!) sometimes find there way back into the laundry. Being vigiliant about keeping those things out makes a difference! Also, some things, like gym clothes, I don’t wash every time I wear them. Sure, they may not be “fresh” but are they going to be after I am done? No, so I feel like every 2-3 wears is plenty!
Oh my – I do a minimum of 12 per week! I’m a three little ones (age 2, 4, and 6). We are still night-training and we have many needs to change beddng at night. We rarely change clothing during the day, but almost always need to launder after a day of cooking, digging, playing, etc. It’s a bit crazy and if I don’t fold EVERY SINGLE DAY, I get so far behind!
We do about four loads per week with two adults and a very messy toddler. You just can’t help changing then twice a day sometimes!
I have 4 girls (ages 3 yrs. – 8 yrs.), who wear uniforms to school. Each has 2 uniforms, so we wash them on Tues and Thurs. Also, my husband works outdoors, so no re-wearing clothes there. We easily do 10-12 loads a week and sometimes more since the 3 year old has the occaisional teetee accident. I do need a larger washing machine and we are working hard with the girls to put clothes that can be re-worn back up instead of the hamper! Yikes!
We are a family of 4.5 (for the purpose of this discussion- my stepson is not half a kid but he is with us half the time so half of his laundry). Me, my husband who has to wear professional clothing to work, a six week old, a two year old and my nine year old stepson. I rewear what I can when it is not covered in baby/toddler ooze, DH can usually rewear his work pants, both girls are in cloth diapers/training pants and forget rewearing their clothes and the boy likes dirt. We do reuse towels but I am usually doing at least one load a day, more if the kids’ sheets need extra washing due to accidents/illness. A good week is probably 7 loads and a bad week would be 10. If we didn’t use cloth for the little girls we could cut the laundry in half but then there are the landfill issues… Around here water is cheaper than the fees for extra garbage (we have a two bin town limit and then it is a $2 a bag fee).
This is actually making me feel better. I thought I was doing too much. About 7 loads a week for a family of four. I have two kids under three. Monday I wash our clothes and Friday linens. I find it cuts down on loads if I only do laundry a couple times a week instead of every day.
We have a family of 6 and we probably do at least 15 loads per week. I try to only do Laundry on Monday and Thursday but it seems like I always have to do at least one or two more loads in between. We are expecting our 5th baby in 9 weeks so I’m sure that the laundry loads will increase. Wish I could say that we have a more organized system to help you out but we don’t.:)
we do about 12…we are a family of 5….. my son plays football and has practice everyday so on top of school clothes he has his practice clothes. My daughter wears uniforms and luckily we have enough outfits for 5 days then her play clothes she changes into everyday. and my one yr old usually walks around in a diaper while its still warm, unless we go someplace. not to mention bedding and rags and towels. but we usually only do laundry on sundays. i have always heard that if you do a lot of laundry one day instead of a little each day it saves on energy.
I know I’m one who posed the question last week. An honestly, I don’t think your 6-7 loads sounds that bad. Our family of three does 4-5 loads per week: three of clothes and 1-2 of linens/towels. Towels are all used for two days (bath towels, hand towels and wash cloths – and I am meticulous about making sure hand towels are used only to dry clean hands, not to “wipe clean” dirty hands). Jeans, PJs and some work pants are worn twice (jeans are 3-5 times for the adults). Sheets are changed once a week, but we have 3 sets for each bed, so I only wash sheets every other week.
We also have high-capacity, high-efficiency laundry appliances. So while I can fit 16 large, thick bath towels, 7-9 hand towels, 5-7 dish towels, and 6-10 wash cloths into one load . . . I realize many washing machines can’t. It also means it takes us an entire week’s worth of whites (or darks, or delicates), to get a full load.
For an active family of 4, I do 4-5 loads twice a week, so 8-10 loads a week. I have experimented with once a week, because I know that is what most people do, but then I would have to buy more “stuff” – soccer clothes, wash cloths, “good” jeans …. so I’d rather make time to do laundry more often. And my loads are still mostly full on my schedule. I do whites, delicates, jeans (cold water, normal dry), “most clothes” (warm water, perm press dry), then usually a load of either towels or sheets. Do people doing fewer loads not have nice enough things that they bother following the care instructions on the labels?
For our family of 3 we do about 8. Lights, darks, whites, jeans, military cammies/uniforms, towels, sheets, and sometimes greasy stuff from working in the garage.
With our family of 7, I do 5+ loads 2 times a week. Sunday and Wednesday. I am picky though and I do 1 load each of lights( sometimes 2), whites, blacks, jeans and towels. If it is bedding day then well there will be at least 4 more loads. I do have a HUGE GE HE washer, front loader, which I LOVE. I don’t get the negativity against front loaders but oh well. To each his own. My washers are full up when I do lights and jeans but the others are less then half. My machine measures the load size so it doesn’t use the same amount of water for every load. I can also open my machine even if it has already started, just in case I forgot something. In my new washer one full load is comparable to 3 loads in my old washer, if that gives you an idea of how big it is. When I hang the clothes outside on the line, it takes up 3 out of 4 lines.
Laundry is an issue for me. For about 2 years our house has been in a remodeling stage and I’ve been without a laundry room so my life has changed dramatically. We are a family of 6 with 4 boys. Before I lost my laundry room I’d do laundry everyday doing 2 loads a day. Now I go to the laundry mat only twice a week which averages out to 8 loads per week. I really like the change of not doing laundry every day. My kids take better care of their clothes and know they have to last until my next trip. I never could understand how my mother of 6 children only did laundry once a week, now I know. It’s how we train our children to be. I think when I get my laundry room back, I’m still going to stick to only a couple of days a week. What freedom that will bring me!
I do 22 loads of laundry a week. There are 8 of us. I saw your 7 loads and your comments that it was a lot on the clothing thread, and I laughed! I do 2-5 loads a day (except Sundays).
I have one child who wets the bed every day, which means extra pajamas, towels (we put towel on his bed), sheets, etc.
My husband will wear the same pair of shorts (his only pair) for several days. I will wear the same skirt of pair of pants for several days as well. And, I don’t even wash sheets every week for everyone! That would add 2-3 more loads a week.
I also have the lagest capacity washer and dryer you can get.
A couple times a week I wash washloths and kitchen rags. We have lots of spills here. The mop covers go in that load as well, and we mop the floor 1-3 times a day.
I aslo throw cloth napkins and bibs (I have big bibs that cover a toddler’s whole outfit) in with a load 3 times a week.
I’d also like to add that we only use 1/4 capful of detergent, no matter how large the load is, wash only in cold water, and re-use the same dryer sheet until it’s falling apart. These little things have cut down our laundry expenses quite a bit!
We are a family of eight and do 12(sometimes more) loads per week. And, I have a large front-loader so it would translate to more if I had a regular sized washer. This includes two loads of towels, a load of rag towels and two loads of sheets. I too would love to reduce our laundry, but I think as the kids gets bigger and therefore their clothes and well, it will only go up from here! Thank goodness for free or nearly free laundry supplies!!!
Wow! I can’t believe how many loads of laundry you all do. For a family of 3 (with a 2 year old) we do 2-3 loads per week. One load colored, one whites (including towels and bedding) and one delicate – this is not every week. We re-wear all the time, especially pants, skirts or jeans. I never wash those after only wearing them once. The same goes for my 2 year old, if her clothes are not dirty, she gets to re-wear them. When we get home from work/school every day, we change into “around house clothes” and I wear apron while cooking. For us, there is no need to wash this “around house clothes” often because it doesn’t get dirty for just a few hours that we wear it daily before we put pajamas on and go to bed. I do the laundry of bedding once in 2 weeks, we take a shower every night and go clean into bed, so there is no need to wash them more often. Towels get washed once a week.
We’re a family of 8 and I do at least one load per day (that is in a large capacity washer, which probably can take 2-3 normal sized loads). We do not rewear clothes without washing them first—I just could never bring myself to do that or let the kids do that. My two littlest boys always manage to get their clothes dirty anyway.
Family of 9—- 14 loads at least. two a day.
I’m going to have to be perfectly honest and tell you I’m not exactly sure how much laundry we do. There are 3 of us, DH, DD (who will be 3), and myself. DH started doing the laundry during my pregnancy with DD because I wasn’t allowed to carry it downstairs anymore due to a high risk pregnancy. He decided that if HE did the laundry, he couldn’t complain about missing socks anymore, so he asked if I “minded” if he kept washing it…..in what universe would I “mind”, I ask you? He takes it downstairs, washes it, either hangs it on drying racks or puts it in the dryer, and brings it back upstairs. I still fold it and put it away, but I can’t complain about not having to wash it! He brings up about 3 laundry baskets FULL (almost as many clothes on top of the basket as in it) a week, so I’m going to guess 4-5 loads, depending on how many of the linens got washed that week.
It seems that I am above average! It’s just myself and my daughter, and we do 3 loads per week. I do a load of whites, a load of darks, and she does her own laundry which means 1 load of whites and darks combined, lol. She apparently doesn’t mind dingy whites. As long as she does her own, I don’t care. 🙂
Family of 4 here: 2 loads of laundry a week, and max 3 if really necessary. Kids re-use play clothes. And we use cold water. There was an article about how much detergent is really necessary and is it necessary at all. You only need 1/2 or 2/3 detergent that you’re usually using. Plus just the agitation of the water will get the clothes about 80 percent clean.
We are a family of 8 and I do WAY too much laundry. We do an average of 3 loads a day. Sometimes more, sometimes less. This is including towels and bedding. I do not change everyone’s sheets every week. I try to do 3 one week, and 3 the next. And then there is my MIL’s bed which gets changed at least 3 times per week. But if I were bedridden, I would want someone changing my sheets for me pretty often as well.
I think I might be the ‘over-washer’ we easily do at on average 14 loads a week. Dh is a plumber so his clothes are washed seperate and only worn once. Kids have uniforms which means they wear 2 sets of clothes at day plus pjs. I re-wear everyday clothes if possible and so does dh but that is not an option for kids. We was all underwear separate. And I refuse to re-use towels. There are only 4 of us but I am due in 3 weeks with baby #3 so I can only imagine adding that was to the list!!
Well, I am probaly in the minority after reading a lot of the comments…but I absolutely hate laundry, so I do it as little as possible. My husband is responsible for his own & usually ends up doing 1-2 loads per week since he only has 5 uniform work shirts & pants. As far as the kids, I usually only do their laundry every 3-4 weeks…unless we have a lot of nighttime accidents, carsick experiences, etc! I have a laundry hamper in each of their rooms that I can usually count on being about 1 load for each of them. We definately re-wear pjs unless they have stains, as well as sweatshirts & jackets in the winter. As for myself, i will sometimes wait even longer like 4-5 weeks. I do wear a different shirt to work each day, but will re-wear my dress pants if not stained, as well as casual wear, sweaters, etc. I have 3 sorters for myself, darks, whites & mixed & sort when I put them in there, so when I go to wash, I usually have 2 mixed loads, 2 dark loads & 1 white load. We too have towels with the kids names & my husband & I have different colors. This does not include our sheets, but we do those occasionally as we see fit. Obviously not everyone can make this work, but I buy up clothes for the kids at .20-$1 & I have been fortunate that my sister has given me clothes for them & myself, so we have an over abundance of clothes to last & I only have 1 day every 3-4 weeks to dread the laundry!!!!!!!
Wow, I am impressed with some of these families! We have 8 in ours and I do about 15 loads a week. Between three stinky teenage boys who play football and a number of other sports, a husband in construction, and three girls who play outside in the dirt every day, I am the only one who re-wears my clothes (other than church clothes). And I don’t wash bedding every week (is that gross?) So when I do, that means several more loads….
We do 5-7 for a family of 3. I don’t use a lot of paper products so I am always washing towels. We are also finishing up potty training so there aree still multiple toddlers clothes in our loads. Have you ever purchased drying rack? I dry a lot of towels and cotton things to save on my electic costs.
Family of 4 (husband, myself and two boys) and I do between 7-10 loads per week. During the summer that goes up to about 12-15 loads. My boys swim and during the summer I have to do the towels (they get towels at the indoor pool, free of charge, during year round team). I do my bath towels, dish clothes, etc. twice a week and that is probably why I do so many. That and uniforms for school.
Now I feel kind of gross and dirty for NOT doing as much as other people! Our apartment complex has one shared washer and dryer. My husband and I only do two loads every 10 days. And one load every 7 days for our baby’s clothes.
Wow! I feel wasteful after reading some of your posts……..We probably do about 10-12 loads of laundry for a family of four. Our washer and dryer are not a big size (only will hold about 1/2 of the hamper). I wash sheets every week. I also wash towels, rags, etc. Both my husband and I work out most mornings, plus, his work clothes, and then casual clothes. My children are 5 and 3 so they can’t rewear much right now – it’s just too dirty by the end of the day.
When our washer and dryer die, I am definitely going to get a larger capacity unit! Oh, and it would be nice to be able to dry a load of laundry in half an hour – do any of them do that? It takes an average of 70-90 minutes in my dryer and we’ve already replaced the heating element and the thermo-fuse several times.
We do an average of 10-14 a week and are a family of 5. 3 of the loads are my husband’s work clothes, 3 are kid’s school uniforms, and the rest are daily wear and towels.
We have 4 in our family (2 adults, two boys), and average 5 loads a week, including doing the sheets and towels every other week. I’d have to say we wear more and wash more in the winter than summer because of the weather of course. Also, we have solar panels installed on our house, and the days I do laundry, we are definately using waaaaaay more power, so that’s a good incentive for me to try and do fewer loads or hang the clothes to dry.
We are a family of 4 and I try to do one load a day. It usually alternates between clothes, towels, whites and bedding. I hate laundry so doing a small batch each day makes it more bearable.
Family of 4 here, all adults with FT jobs. I do about 9 per week, including bedding and towels. Do large loads, too, but men’s pants are pretty bulky, as are our towels.
I honestly don’t know…a lot. I probably did 10 yesterday alone (but that got it all done including sheets and towels and everything).
I do 4 (sometimes 5) loads for our little family of 3. Once our baby gets a little older, I’ll be able to put his things in with ours, which would cut me back (I hope) to just 3 loads/week.
I generally do 4-5 loads per week.
For our family of 7, including 5 kids 13 down to 1, we do about 5 loads a week of clothes and towels a week. 2 mini loads of clothe diapers… and then bedding when I get to it… is probably 2 loads. We do have a bigger washer… but not one of the awesome front loaders:) Since we homeschool I do have the bigger kids wear their clothes for 2 days… unless it is really bad. And I figure the towels are clean when we dry off right??? So we reuse those… 🙂
Actually, I love doing laundry, crazy I know. We try to wash it all in one day and then the 2 older boys, 13 and 11 stay up and fold it all with me after the littler ones are in bed. We have a system down and it works great. Now if I could only get it all put right into the drawers right away. I am debating on turning my large walk in closet to a semi family closet, as we are adding another baby in the Spring, lord willing, and are running out of dresser room in the bedrooms. 🙂
We do use the Duggers homemade laundry soap and I have been very happy with it… SAVES US TONS OF MONEY:)
Just my thoughts:)
Sara
My little guy (2) has been potty trained for about 6 months now, but has recently become ‘too busy’ to get to the potty on time ULGH. Cooler weather means running around in just his skivvies is no longer an option 😉 So i think i wash a load of just HIS pants, underwear and washcloths (plus his other clothes) every other day. I am really looking forward to this phase being over! LOL! I am almost afraid of the laundry pile that awaits when we go w/out overnight pull-ups!!
We have a family of 8. 5 of which are young boys who are always using their shirts for napkins. They also don’t like to put their clothes away to be worn again so they toss everything in the laundry basket. My hubby works in a diry job and always comes home stinky. My 10 months old daughter has diaper explosions at leat twice a day. The laundry is always needing to be done and we try to do it. At least 2 loads a day to keep up. So that makes about 14 a week. It includes towels which are done sometimes 2x a week.
Does anyone make their own laundry detergent? I have for about 3 years now. It cost a penny a load. go to ehow.com to find out how to make it.
We do nearly the same amount (actually a little more than you)for the same size family with children of almost the exact ages of yours. I am expecting our fourth child in the early spring so I know that will increase the number of loads. We do use our bath towels a few times and I have my daughters (3yrs/4yrs) rewear their pjs, but other than that I probably can’t give any great suggestions on reducing the number of loads. I do stretch out the laundry detergent by using less than is suggested and the clothes come out clean (we can only buy one type of laundry detergent b/c of skin allergies and excema, and it is very pricey, but I love getting samples of any kind to use for the dish towels and cleaning rags). Also, sorting laundry is part of my daughters’ chores and that helps me out a great deal, and they love doing it! They also fold the more simple items. 😉
Ha! I do 12-15 loads per week for my family of 6. I have three young boys who go through a lot of clothes, and usually they can’t rewear them due to playing in the dirt.
Wow…I am impressed with some of these ladies! When it was just my husband & I, I did about 8 loads a week for just two people! Now that we have two kids and two more sets of bedding, we do about 14 loads a week. I will admit though that I am really crazy when it comes to being clean, and I don’t have my kids re-wear any of their clothes (except and occasional sweatshirt).
I guess I’m in the minority on this one. It seemed like a lot to me! We are a family of 4 and do about 3 loads a week at the most!
Maybe my kids have too many clothes. They could probably go an entire month and still have clean clothes. This is in large part to my wonderful sister and her hand me downs!
10-12 loads per week for a family of 5 which includes 3 teenagers 2 of which wear uniforms. Also we tend to wash more towels 🙁 .Note to self “Teenagers way of hanging towels need to be addressed”, LOL. Also, my teenagers are doing their own laundry.Another note to self “Make kids do a load of towels” , that might get them to do a better job of hanging them up.
I’m a single mom of two girls. We live in an apartment without a washer/dryer, so I have to do laundry at a friend’s house on weekends. I do 2-3 loads a week. Usually only two loads.
I think I average 8-12 loads of laundry per week. I vary the load size though, and the frequency goes up in the fall and winter. When its cough and cold season in the schools I wash sheets and pillow cases and pillows twice a week. The Sweetie teaches and the kids are in the schools all day. Besides I would rather remake the beds than have all of them home for a week!
I do a load of laundry every day, whether it’s a full load or not. I don’t like being behind on laundry and I like having the same routine every day.
I have a very small wardrobe, so I like having things clean and available. If I miss even one day of laundry, I’m bound to be missing some part of an outfit I want to wear the next day.
I also hate putting away laundry, so having just one small load each day that I can put away in a couple minutes makes laundry much more bearable!
I feel really bad now – For our family of 5 (my husband, me, and 3 kids – 13, 10 and 7) I do at least 12 – 15 on average. The only advice I have is to have a good washing machine that is easy on the water.
7 is nothing!! I can’t even count how many we do! Our home is 4 adults and 2 kids under 3! When I have the kids home on the weekend they are usually in nothing but diapers! I must say we are potty training the 2 1/2 year old so she still has some accidents. She also has a full size bed so her bedding is one load alone…then the other 3 beds in the house. The baby’s crib sheet goes in with the baby clothes. Then there’s towels/washcloths, hubby and I probably have a load of darks and lights and then my mom and sister each have too. We usually throw a load on in the morning and dry it when we get home and throw in another before bed and dry in the am! It never ends!!
20 loads for 10 people.
We have a family of 3, and I do 7 to 8 loads a week. My daughter rarely can wear things twice because she’s 3. I do a bedding load, towels twice per week, and 5 to 6 clothing loads. As a mom, too, if you have a small kid, your clothes have a bigger chance of getting dirty on the first wear – not as bad now that my daughter is 3, of course. Once a month, I also wash all our blankets, mattress pads, etc. to cut down on bed allergens. My washer has a special feature that detects how much water to use, so I do know that if a load is small, I’m not wasting water.
That said, I’m certainly reading through the tips here for cutting back.
We do about 4 loads per week for a family of 4 (1 whites/ very lights, 1 medium, 1 dark, 1 sheets). Towels we usually just do with whatever needs help to make the load full (we almost never do a small load so we don’t waste water). Like if we can fit one towel in with the sheets we do, darks didn’t fill a load, they get put in there, etc. Winter can cause an extra load because obviously jeans and sweatshirts take up more room than shorts and tanks/tees. One tip that I have for the kids messes… use wipe clean bibs and aprons whenever they are going to be eating, helping cook, or doing crafts that way you are not creating more laundry during those activities. Now obviously there is no way to prevent them from getting dirty outside though I usually plan bathtime to be after outdoor playtime that way I am not changing their clothes once they come in and then again after bath.
We are a family of 4, but I do at least one load a day to wash the smelly exercise clothes of the males in our family so they can have them clean the next day. I am glad they run/exercise each day so it is worth it to me. Other than that, we probably do 4-6 loads. It depends on whether I am good about washing sheets and towels or if I skip a week or two!
I’m impressed that you don’t have more loads! We live in an apartment, so the washer and dryer we have isn’t super-big. I would say that the two of us have 3-5 loads of laundry per week. Confessions: I change the sheets and towels every two weeks; we re-wear pants/jeans at least 3-4 times; hubs re-wears work shirts once cause he feels like, with an undershirt, they don’t get too dirty; I use the same kitchen towels for 3-4 days unless I’m drying my hands after handling meat. I’m sure some people would be shocked, but if we wore new clothes every day and changed the sheets every few days, I’m sure I would be overwhelmed with laundry! I try to spread the clothes out on drying racks so that I only use the dryer for just a few minutes to fluff the clothes up, but I’m sure if I had to do more loads a week, I would stop doing that just to save time! Also, I don’t think the size of your closet affects how much laundry you do–it’s how often you change clothes that counts.
I do one load per day for my family of four. And I still can’t catch up!! Glad to know I’m not alone.
Well we are just a family of three, and we do 5 loads a week! One of bedding and or/ towels, three of clothing, and one of kitchen and cleaning rags/towels. I don’t use paper towels or napkins, so we go through a lot of cloth rags in a week!
I think this is really dependent on the dynamics of the family. A cloth diapering farm family will have far more laundry than a family with two professionals who dry clean all their clothes and use as many paper products as possible.
We are a family of 4 and we do at least 10-12 loads per week.
1) We have an old, lower capacity washer. We can’t fit 12 bath towels in our washer and expect them to come out clean.
2) I don’t do pull-ups, and my toddlers still have night time accidents. So I have a few extra loads of sheets, mattress pads and blankets a week.
3) We all shower/bathe every single day. In our humid climate, towels don’t fully dry by the next morning, so we can only use bath towels twice before they’re mildewy.
4) My husband finds it completely unacceptable for our kids or me to wear something twice before laundering. He views homemaking and homeschooling as an important endeavor and wants us to dress the part.
I do about 3 loads a week, but there are only 2 of us! I think 7 sounds about right with children!
I just recently wrote a blog about how to sanitize your washer machine, because of a statistic I read that claims that in a study they found that 25% of washer machines contain e-coli and fecal matter. Yucko!
http://livingabonafidelife.blogspot.com/2010/10/washing-machines.html
We do about 2 loads a day. So 14 a week. We have a family of six, we try and let towels dry on hooks for several uses before we wash them and not put clean clothes in the laundry. I have four daughters under the age of 7, they go through a lot of outfits and with soccer practice and games several times a week. It adds up. I also think my washer is a little smaller than some, I dream of having a high capacity pair one day!
When I was a single mom of 4 we did at least 10 loads a week. I had two kids with enuresis (daytime/nighttime wetting accidents) so my laundry pile NEVER shrunk.
Now that it is just my youngest and I (one of the 2 with enuresis) we only have a small portable washer so we do 5-8 small loads of laundry a week and usually do blankets/comforters every other week (which requires a trip to the laundromat).
I do laundry once a week and it is 4 loads. 5 loads on the weeks I do all our bedding. We are VERY minimalist 🙂 But I don’t think 7 loads is that big a deal at all.
I do 7-10 loads of laundry a week. We have 5 (soon to be 6) in our household (kids 5, 7, 9). My husband is quite tall and it seems that one of his pairs of jeans takes up half the load! I don’t wash everyone’s sheets every week. I encourage the kids to wear clothes more than once, but it does not always seem to happen.
We do about seven loads a week too. I have a newborn that spits up on everything and a large husband that his clothes take up most of the washing machine. I have a 2 year old that loves to make messes. I don’t use paper towels anymore, so I wash cleaning rags often.
We re-wear clothes, especially jeans. I used to more than two days, but since the baby spits up everywhere I’m starting to wash them everyday. Our bathroom towels we wash maybe once every three to four days. We hang them up and reuse them. The bed sheets get washed once a week… more so for the two year old who’s potty training.
To save money on electricity, we have a little hanging rack that I like to hang up the cloth diapers on to dry them. they last longer this way. I’m beggin my husband to put up a clothes line under the shed in the back of the house so I can hang more clothes to dry… especially the towels!
Sheesh, I’m not even sure I want to add them up. Part of the problem is our lack of a laundry room and therefore lack of a place to pile up dirty laundry. (We have one of those tiny, beneath-the-pantry laundry bins…that fills up in 2 days.) We’re a family of five and I would guess we do about 8 loads or so per week…1 whites, 2 coloreds, 3 blacks, 1 uniforms, and 1 miscellaneous (linens or rags). I feel like I’m ALWAYS doing laundry.
My fiance & I do about four loads a month. I don’t have the type of job where I can wear the same thing (we can get written up for wearing the same color two days in one week…) and the sheets and comforter take up a load in their own right.
When I still lived with my parents and there were the five of us, we did about 6 loads a month. My mother said when we were kids (all under 7 – bless her!), it was still about the same – especially since my father had a work outfit that needed washed weekly and was done at work.
I’m kind of amazed at how much laundry many of you do here! Where do you get the time?!? Bless!
I have 5 kids. Counting clothes, towels, sheets (which I don’t wash nearly as often as I should because of the perpetual laundry backup), and cloth diapers, I do about 14 loads of laundry a week. Just washing bedding is 4 or 5 loads…
When Dh is home I do about 5 loads a week. Darks, colors, whites, towels and uniforms. When Dh is not home it’s about 3-4loads a week for just Ds and myself. Speaking of which, I’ve got about 5loads to fold yet. Where did the weekend go?
Oh Man, am I the only laundry hater, none scheduled laundry goon reading this who is feeling an intense amount of relief! I’m still a working mom, and have an intense HATE of laundry, always trying to get caught up and never feeling like I am. It’s good to know that the average would be about 5-7 loads for my 4 person family..not that I want to do that much laundry but it just makes me feel better about my 20 loads every 6 weeks :/
Your VlOG encouraged me to downsize all of our wardrobes though, there are so many clothes we never touch or just throw on the floor. So since then it’s been my goal to get it all clean and then ditch a bunch of it. Again. lol.
@Teresa,
LOL! I know what you mean! I work away from home too and I am never, ever caught up… Funny thing, when I was a teenager, babysitting my nephews, I was completely disgusted that my sister had piles and piles of laundry on her basement floor. Well you should seen mine now!! Ugh!! ; )
We do about three – maybe four if I have a lot of towels (this does NOT include the wash of the cloth diapers which adds two more loads), but it all depends on the washer. Years ago when the front loaders just came out we had the cash and bought it. Well, we have moved, and for a while we had to store our washer and dryer – in which our laundry almost doubled! The amount of clothes that I can put in my front load is amazing! I wouldn’t do it any other way! I also saw it go down a load when my husband got out of construction – those bulky jeans where two loads in themselves!
🙂
Wow, that is a lot of laundry being done by all of us… I let the laundry pile up for a few days so that the kids actually have to wear all their clothes, not just their favorites. We are a family of five and I do about 3 loads every four or five days. I can’t believe how much water all of us collectively are using.
@Jennifer,
You just caused a light bulb moment for me… I never thought about that. Instead of having 3 pairs of jeans and only one being worn to death by my 9 yo. I can hold them hostage in the laundry while the other 2 pair get equal wear. So simple… Thanks for that tip!
I think the only way to get your kids to the point where they’ll be able to keep clothes clean enough to re-wear . . . is to wait. As in, years.
One of the things that surprised me about laundry when we had kids was that my own clothes could rarely be re-worn because of spit-up, slobber, and picking up kids who had just done those things you spoke of like playing in dirt, getting into peanut butter, etc. My youngest is 4 and I’m just now feeling like I can re-wear my own clothes.
We have 5 in our family, and do about 7 loads a week. I have tried every system known to man, and because of my scatter-brainedness, have finally found that doing one big laundry day is the best way for me to stay on top of laundry. I tried for years to do the one load a day method, but rarely remembered to change it over to the dryer, and would end up having to re-wash it the next day, and therefore was forever behind. Getting it all done allows me to stay focused for one day, feel like I’ve really accomplished something, and then live guilt-free for 6 days, knowing that no one in my home is going to have to go commando!
Here’s a description of my laundry day: http://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2010/04/here-it-is-my-laundry-day-in-all-of-its.html
@Nony (A Slob Comes Clean), commando made me giggle. i do laundry once a week as well. some weeks i can stay totally on top of it and do all 6 or 7 loads, even folding and putting them all away. other weeks, like today, i put away nothing! so everything is upstairs in our bedroom out of sight. unfortunately, i still have loads leftover from last monday that had not been put away up there! so we are digging for our outfits a little! most weeks though, i get most of it put away on monday, and put the rest away on tuesday. works for me! 🙂
We’re a family of 4, and I do 3-4 loads on Tuesdays, and then usually 2 or 3 small loads of kid clothes and towels throughout the week.
8-9 loads per week here. Family of 5. Part of what makes my loads so many, though, is because my husband is “big and tall”…his clothes alone take up two loads 2 days per week!! All my loads are full, though, except when my son has a baseball game that falls between laundry days. Who in there right mind puts white pants on 5 and 6 year olds??!!!
It’s just me and my husband, and we do about 2-3/week: 1 sheets/towels, 1 colors/darks, and then whites when there’s enough for a load. A lot of my work clothes I handwash or have dry cleaned, so for things like dress pants I wear them multiple times before washing or cleaning them.
Oh my! I feel pathetic. We do about 2-3 loads a DAY! That does not include bedding. I have truck driving husband, a teen girl and two little boys who love hard play. PS My six year old boy changes his clothes about 4 times a day. Not kidding.
@Brenda,
Love your honesty. We, too, do 2 loads every day. That would be 14 loads a week for our family of 6 (kids are 11,7,4,1). We are working on reducing our wardrobe and hanging towels multiple times, but obviously we are a work in progress! 😉
@Amara,
I am just reading all these comments in amazement. We are a family of 4, and I know I do at least 13 loads a week. We re-wear, etc, too. I do laundry on Monday and Thursday for clothes. I do at least 4 loads each time: whites with bleach (underwear, cloth napkins, white t-shirts, and some white gym towels), 1 lighter colored t-shirts, shorts, etc., 1 jeans and 1 darker colored stuff. I have a large washer/dryer and they are stuffed with this stuff. Sometimes I have to do 5 loads. Then once a week we have 2 loads for sheets (and we alternate weeks on the sheets), one for towels, and 1 for the dog bed covers. One thing is that we work out a lot – including vball for my daughter, so there are a lot of work-out clothes that cannot be reworn. The other thing is that my kids aren’t little any more. My 13-year-old is 5′ 5″, and my younger daughter is 10, so their clothes take up more room. I rewear every pair of pants and my husband rewears at home clothes as he can (some of his work clothes are dry-cleaned as well). Wow, I cannot imagine only having 5-7 loads a week!
I have 4 kids and id say i do a load a day..thats asuming no one has wet the bed or gotten sick (or gone puddel jumping) on average though for myself and4 kids one a day…
We are a family of 7 and I do at least one load a day! Sometimes 2 🙁
I try to do 2 loads a day to keep up, but sometimes 3 or more loads a day is reality…that’s for our family of 9, we have a large capacity front loader….this includes washing towels and sheets….and it is never, ever done! If I get even close to being “done”, you can bet a stomach virus shows up all over the kids’ sheets and we must start washing all over again, lol!
I wash clothes once a week- which ends up being 2 loads- for a family of 3. I think laundry is a waste of my time (and I don’t enjoy it) so I make sure we have enough clothes and linens to last 1 week without heading to the laundry room every 5 minutes. If you find yourself running out of washclothes and that is why you have to do a load, get more washclothes!
Last year my hubby and I moved from an apartment with an in-unit washer and dry to one with no laundry even in the building. Now that I have to a) make a 20 min drive and b) pay actual cash out of pocket to do laundry, my habits have definitely changed! I’ve gone from doing 3-4 loads/week (I love clean linens!) to just one load a week. I probably pack the $4.50/load washer a little too tightly, but the clothes seem to still come clean and I can’t bear to pay any more than that!
@Rebecca, I’m glad you posted, I was afraid to say after seeing how much some folks do. My boyfriend and I only do about 1-2 loads a week. 1 on average, 2 if we have linens or its soccer season for us. We do large loads (on cold/cold) and rewear things. I have nice clothes for work that need to be dry cleaned, so I’ll try to wear it mulitple times (“steaming” sometimes by having it in the bathroom when I take a shower) before using dryel. I’ll take clothes to the dry cleaners only 2-3 times a year. Maybe the difference is in needing to pay $1.50 for the in-building laundry machines (that’s $3.00 per load to wash and dry.) We often do laundry when we’re at our families houses as well. We probably should do linens more often than we do, but I let bf persuade me it’s ok to let it slide for a while.
About 5-10 depending, that is 1 to 2 loads per person! I do two loads of towels which I think is crazy thinking about getting ride of all our towels getting each person in the house three of there own color and vowing only to wash them once a week. Then maybe they will learn to hang there towels up. That will make one load of towels a week. Other than that it is just hard. The kids don’t have enough nice clothes for me to want to let them wear them out to play so they change in junk clothes when they get home..then theirs dance clothes extra.
We have 3 loads/week for myself and my husband. Then we have to wash the two kids clothes seperately because of special circumstances. There is usually a load of towels and sheets every other week. So, for our family of 5 we are running 5-7 loads/week. That will increase in March when we go to cloth diapers solely for the new baby.
Proctor and Gamble (manufacturers of Tide, Gain, etc) claims that the the average American family does 392 loads per year. That works out to 7.5 loads per week.
For my family of 4, I do about 8 loads of laundry per week. I frequently re-wear my work clothes and jeans, but everyone else seems to get too dirty for any chance of that. I’m a little OCD about separating the loads into delicates, whites, lights, brights, darks, jeans, towels, and sheets, so that may add to the number of loads too.
I do 2 loads one week and 3 the next when I wash towels & sheets. Hubby washes his work clothes at the hotel, but if he worked near home more often we’d to 2 loads each week of his work clothes since he only has enough clothes for 3 field days. We all rewear clothes a lot. DS may spill midday one day, but then make it for a day and a half on one outfit the next. I would be embarrassed to say how many days I wear my jeans when I manage to avoid spit up…. It not just about saving money though, it’s about saving time too.
We are a family of 4, And i would guess we do 10+ loads a week.
one of sheets, towels is aprox 2-3 , whites 1, kids darks 1-2, kids whites 1, our darks is problay 3+
Its just my husband and I and we do about 4-5 loads/week. He is a nurse though so one load is just his work clothes since he changes immediately after getting home – you never know WHAT might be lurking on them!! One is towels & sheets, one is our everyday “normal” clothes and then I try to do the kitchen & bathroom rugs weekly as well (though sometimes I forget!). I also wash all of our whites separately on HOT with bleach. For some reason I feel like we should have less but I can’t seem to get it down any further!
Oops! Sunday is colors. 🙂
Doesn’t sound unrealistic to me, Crystal! I have three children: 16, 15 and 11. My son is in football. We have about 8-10 loads per week (on a good week 🙂 I do try to wait until a load is “full” and therefore some loads don’t get done as often. Weekly I hear from one of my boys: “I put that shirt in the laundry DAYS ago and I haven’t gotten it back.” Uff da. Weekly I point out that when the shirt stays on their floor for 3 days and then moves to the laundry basket in their room for 3 days and THEN gets to the laundry room the day after I’ve done that particular load there is a REASON they have not seen that shirt for awhile. I don’t worry about how many loads we do, I’d like to find a great system for getting the laundry TO the laundry room in a timely fashion (we don’t have a laundry chute, but the LR is on the main floor.) Any suggestions for me?
@Deb H. in Wisconsin,
Teach them to do it themselves. Like I tell my own kids, “If you want to complain about it, you can do it yourself”. My mother must have taught me early because I can’t remember not knowing how to do laundry.
@Annie, My mom did the same. I remember when I said something about a piece of clothing not being washed. I had to do my own laundry from then on!!
I have 3 girls- 5, almost 3, and 16mos. I do 7-9 loads a week.
Monday- baby clothes/sheets/changing table cover/ blankets and diapers
Tuesday- sheet and towels They each have their own towel that they use the whole week and I alternate changing their sheets and our sheets every other week
Wednesday- whites
Thursday- girls’ clothes (sometimes 2 loads) They sometimes change outfits several times a day and my 2yo likes to “pack” bags so a lot of times I don’t know if clothes on the floor are clean or dirty so they all get washed.
Friday- darks so hubby has clean clothes for the work week
Saturday- miscellaneous- garage towels, kitchen towels, etc
for my family of nine, we do about 7 extra large loads a week. the kids have their school uniforms, and then their pajamas. my younger two go through clothes more often because of potty training and diaper leaks but unless they are absolutely filthy, I just let the little ones run around with their food spills. I mean, what’s the point of changing them if they’re just going to spill something or wipe something on their clothes within five minutes?
Wow you guys make me feel so much better! I was just beating myself up about doing too much wash! I do about 5-6 loads a week. We are a family of three. My son (almost 3) would rather be outside all day then spend anytime inside, so he doesn’t often re-wear clothing. We wash the bedding and dog pillow cases and blankets every week. Ok, so the dog bedding seems like a lot, but I have a saint bernard and two boxers. Cutting down on the smell of dog is a must!!
We do about 7-8 loads/week, depending on the week. If the kids have stains on their clothes, I try to wash as soon as possible because it is much cheaper to run the washer and dryer than to buy new clothes! We have begun to save money on our laundry by washing in cold water and doing laundry during off-peak hours (usually after the kids are in bed). Also, line drying can save a lot of money, as well. We try to run the dishwasher at night, as well. This not only saves money, but is more eco-friendly.
We are a family of 5, and do 7-9 loads per week, so I think you are right on!
I don’t sort colors, just type. I just wash on warm, and don’t worry about colors unless I have something new that might bleed. Bedding and towels usually get their own loads (or together) and then either kids clothes, adult clothes, and jeans, depending on how much laundry there is. It’s so much easier to fold the loads that way, because I can be completely done with the kids or with mine in one swoop, instead of waiting for different colored loads to be done. Currently I’m doing mine and the kids together every 2-3 days. Hubby is doing his own right now. I usually separate the delicates too, and cloth diapers certainly get their own load!
Family of 3- 4 or 5
2-3 loads of diapers
2 white or dark clothes and bedding or towels (do each group every other week unless there is stuff that needs washed immediately to avoid stains and such)
We rewear a lot of items. My 9m old and I will get dressed to leave the house/run errands and once we’re home I usually let me son run around in a diaper and I put sweats/tshirt on so we don’t dirty our clothes.
I do about 4 loads/week, but it’s just my little one and myself. He is in cloth diapers, though, so that accounts for 2 of the loads. So usually just 2 loads of clothes. Sometimes only 1/week, depending on how many times I re-wear my pants :).
I should mention that I don’t usually sort laundry, I just wash it all in cold water (I only have a few whites, so I only sort them out when I’m washing sheets, because then I have enough whites for a whole load).
Your laundry sounds just right. We are a family of 4 and I do 5-6 loads of laundry a week. I wash clothes on Monday and Friday (one load of darks and one load of lights each day) and sheets/towels on Thursday. We are expecting our 3rd child in January so I’m sure that will add another load.
I don’t think that sounds like a lot at all. We are only 3 and we do at least 5-6 loads clothes and towels a week.
We are also a family of 5 and I would say we average between 7-10 loads a week depending on the season. In the winter it’s solidly 10 because the clothes are so much bulkier (I’m in northern WI).
We are not at the being able to re-wear clothes point right now, my kids are kids and get dirty. Diapers leak at night and accidents happen at night so most of the time we can’t even re-wear jammies.
I don’t think 7 loads is anything to be ashamed of. You have a larger family (or what is considered larger these days). Of course you are going to do more laundry then the lady down the street with one kid.
We do 6-10 loads a week… Cloth diapers and baby clothes alone take 6 loads a week…. If we let the loads get too large they don’t clean as well. One day we will be down too 3-5 a week.
I have a family of 4 I feel bad now after reading this, we do about 9-10 with bedding, towels bathrugs a week. : / I usually pick 1 day a week to do all the laundry. We do not have a minimalist wardrobe and can go a little over a week without feeling the need to wash to have something to wear. I myself wish I knew of a way to cut down on the loads. I do think my husband having work clothes and regular clothes worn in the same day that all ends up in the laundry basket at the end of the day doesn’t help. Maybe I should start with having him re wear his after work clothes and see how that helps.
Do not feel badly, okay? My husband wears suits every day to work. If he wore work clothes, we’d have a lot more laundry!
@Crystal,
Not necessarily. DH has a work uniform that is laundered for him ;). He wears the same t-shirt and jeans in the evening all week and definitely produces the least wash of our crew. DS1 is forever throwing clean stuff on the floor and then puts in the hamper without wearing it at all :(. We do about 7 or 8 loads per week.
We do 3-4 for our family of four, in addition to diaper loads. Lately I’ve been doing all the non-diaper laundry in one fell swoop over the weekend, and it seems to take up much less of my time that way.
I personally only do about 5 loads per week, but my two oldest kids do their own laundry, adding 2+ for each of them. I have trio sorter (darks, colors, whites/delicates) and then a separate basket for the towels and sheets. I don’t like to do a load of laundry unless it’s full, but sometimes my 17 yr. old has tried to cram ALL his darks (jeans and more) into one load… grrr. We don’t use fabric softener, but white vinegar instead. When I can, I’ll hang the laundry out on the line – love that fresh off the line smell!
Our family of 4 does about 4-5 loads a week. My husband and I try to rewear clothes but the kids do not (stains, spills, food, etc.). I grew up using a towel (or 2) for a shower and immediately putting it in the laundry -every day! We all have our own towel and place so it can dry and be used again. I wash them once a week.
Our family of four (with an infant and a toddler) does about 5-6 large loads a week, excluding cloth diapers. The only suggestions I have are to let your children wear their PJs at least twice and wash linens every other week (especially in the winter when you don’t sweat as much). Sometimes I can get away with my toddler son wearing his pants more than once, but shirts are always filthy by the end of the day. I’ve thought about using smaller towels to reduce my laundry but haven’t tried it yet.
We do at least 12-15 at our house. I have 4 children under the age of 6 so with spit up, food spills, grass stains, etc. theres a lot to do!!!
There are five in our family and I wash at least 2-3 loads per day. We live in the country and have lots of animals, my kids play/do chores outside, ride horses and are very involved in sports, my husband works outside – and all that adds up to lots of dirty clothes!
Some have hit on this, but the size of your washer and dryer play a huge role in how many loads you do. I upgraded to a Cabrio by Wirlpool about 2.5 years ago, when the 3rd baby was on the way. I now do about 6 loads a week give or take a few, I don’t count, but what I do see easily is what would have been 6-7 loads piled up is now only 3 loads. the washer will hold a whole hamper full of clothes at one time. so I wash on Monday, 1 each white, dark, towels or another dark just depending on what I have. It is a fact that we use less water than we did before with the old machines and less people. For the record, I would not have a front load. does not make sense on loading to me and the ones I have seen are a LOT smaller than my Cabrio.
@Debbie, I know that makes a big difference! When we got married, my parents bought us a washer/dryer set, and the washer was “Super Capacity” and easily cleaned a BIG basket full of clothes. We are now in an apartment with an “Extra Large Capacity” washer (both are similar age Whirlpool) and it just does not hold as much! The dryer doesn’t either! I know I will be picky when I get to choose my own w/d set again.
My mom has a front-loader, and it works great, I just hate when I find that one lone sock and then I can’t toss it in because the cycle has already started. I think I prefer top-loaders.
I just bought a Cabrio and I love it! We bought the 4.3 size and it’s plenty big enough. I live in California and it qualified for $280 in rebates because it is so energy efficient. I was also happy to discover that my homemade laundry soap is low sudsing so that I can use it with the Cabrio.
With 2 boys, I’m doing about 7 loads/week. 1 load of towels; 1 load of our sheets; 1 load of kids sheets; and 4 loads of clothes. I wash most in cold and line dry a lot. I don’t know how you would make it with 3 little kids on fewer than 6 loads.
I have a family of five and we wash 7-9 loads per week, so 7 sounds good to me. The idea of your kids wearing and rewearing clothing only gets harder as they get older I think:)
Relax- we have a family of 5, similar ages to yours and we do 7 loads als0- I wash darks on Mon/Thur, and whites on Tues/Fri, and sheets on Sat. Wed is no laundry because its my grocery day. 🙂
Akkk! Ok, now I know where are definitely over-laundrying. We do 7 loads a week for a family of 3!! We re-wear a lot of things too.
But I’d just like to add that my huband goes through 3 different outfits a day (work, casual when he gets home and workout). Our 3-month old daughter goes through clothes like crazy – she drools all over everything, including her bibs, within hours. Oh, and I have a minimalist wardrobe as well (the result of weight gain/lost/ from pregnancy) and am breastfeeding, so many of my clothes don’t make it past one day either!
@Rachel, A lot depends on the size of your washer!
Ugh. Too many!!! We currently do about 6 to 7 per week for our family of 4, although right now that includes a load or two of cloth diapers and diaper covers. My son has an amazing ability to get his poops on the changing pad cover, the boppy cover, his clothes, my clothes, my husband’s clothes, you name it. And when he sleeps through the night, he soaks through his crib sheet too! Then there’s my almost 4yo daughter, who likes to change her clothes and her favorite doll’s clothes and sneaks them into the laundry without them being dirty. By the time I get to sorting out her stuff, the clean things have been festering in there with the stinky and dirty ones and need washing as well. Finally, we use a cloth table cloth and fabric placemats, which also need frequent washing. We’re a family of slobs!
we do 7-8 loads of laundry a week for our family of 5. We encourage our kids to re-wear clean items. The down fall for us is really towels, rags, sheets, & cloth napkins which take up at least half of our laundry in a week. To help my kids understand the need to wear or use clothes until dirty they help with laundry. They fold towels, washrags, rags, hand towels, and baby bibs. Then they put them and their own laundry away.
@Lee, as for a system to washing. I try to wash, dry, fold and put away a load every morning. I stick the load in on the way to turn on my morning tea, it usually is finished right as I get breakfast done. Then into the dryer while we get dressed, brush teeth, etc. Then I clean up a bit while the kids have free time then we start our daily chores with the laundry folding. Once it is put away then we move on to other chores then school work. On weekends we wash bedding and my husbands dress clothes from work so it adds in the extra loads.
We are a family of 5 and do 2 loads per week. There are 3 young adults and 2 parents in the family so that might be why we do less laundry loads.
What we do is just pile the laundry into the hamper. It’s always overflowing. Then we just do 1-2 loads per week and if your clothes get washed, they get washed, if they don’t, then we find something else to wear or hand wash it ourselves in the sink if we really want to wear it.
We also wash sheets about 1 time a month and towels once every 2 weeks. Probably not the most sanitary, but none of us get sick or have breathing problems or anything so it works out just fine.
@Michelle,
Yay, finally someone else who only does 1-2 loads a week. We have 4 people in our family–husband, me, 4-year-old son, 2-year-old daughter. We are all kind of neat freaks, though (yes, even the children). And I always throw everything in together. I’ve never had problems with washing whites and colors together. If I have something that is really dirty (mud, diaper leak, etc), I wash it out by hand before putting it in the washing machine. As far as towels go, we each have one of our own that we wash every two weeks.
we do a lot of laundry. I work out daily and need to wash those clothes, then I put on another outfit. My kids always play outside on the farm and the clothes need washed daily. Sometimes they go through more than one outfit. Especially now that my middle child is potty training. We are going through a lot of clothes because he keeps having accidents. My husband is a livestock farmer. In the summer he was changing at lunch because he has sweated through them completely. Therefore, our family of 5 some days goes through 2 outfits a day. Add in towels, sheets, bedding for 5= lot and lots of laundry!! I am guessing 10+ loads.
For our household of six, we do 7-10 loads per week. Some of that is cloth diapers for the 1-year-olds (twins).
I do 8 loads, not including linens. I have three boys under the age of 7, so that’s about right. I can’t remember the last time I used anything other than the ‘tap’ on the water knob. I do all of it on Monday, with maybe one small load of clothes on Friday of clothes that get stained throughout the week. I like having the rest of the week not burdened by laundry
That doesn’t sound like an unreasonable number to me! There are six of us here, and I’d guess that I do 7-10 loads each week, probably closer to 10.
We re-wear some stuff too, but my husband can’t do that for work, and like you said, kids get things DIRTY….sometimes they really can’t be worn again.
We have six children ages 9 down to newborn. We do about *6 loads* of laundry a week, excluding cloth diapers (another 2 medium loads a week). We do have an extra-large capacity washer and dryer.
Sheets are washed every other week. We use an average of 4 bath towels total in a week for our family (baths/showers are 3 times a week for adults and 2 times for children). Clothes are usually worn at least 2 days, and pajamas 3-4. My husband’s work shirts are changed every day though. Clothing isn’t always pristinely clean on the second day, but unless it’s seriously dirty, it’s usually reworn unless we’re going somewhere….
When we had all the dozen kids at home, 14 total, including 6 teenagers. I managed to get it down to 4 loads a day. 28 loads of our family’s mountain of clothing with a large capacity washer and dryer. Whites, darks, towels and the bedding from whoever soaked thru their pullups. I took the bedding to the large capacity washers at the laundry every ten days.
We had color coded towels and washrags monogrammed with each child’s name which cut back on the washing and wearing out of towels as they finally reused them.
I do about 10 loads of laundry for the 4 of us. This includes 2 outfits a day for my husband, his work clothes and then the clothes he wears to school at night.
For three people I do about 3-4 loads of laundry a week. (darks, whites, towels, and part- time cloth diapers) I do use paper towels and paper napkins otherwise I would wash more towels. I also do not wash my bedding every single week.
I don’t think that you are washing too many loads to tell you the truth. When your kids get older and are able to re-wear, their clothes are going to be bigger, so you probably won’t get a break from the amount of loads you do. On a normal week, I probably do six loads for a family of four. I use all cloth napkins, and rags to clean up spills instead of paper towels. I think that you just have to accept if you are going to go to a paper free kitchen, you are going to have an extra load of laundry a week.
anywhere from 8-12, that includes just one load with cheerleading uniforms(I wash them seperate). We are a family of 5 including a 13 yr old girl(the cheerleader) 11 y/o boy(currently in soccer) and a 3 y/0 girl.
For my family of 6 we average 9 loads a week and that does not include bedding. That is with three boys playing football and a cheerleader so there are practice clothes daily and uniforms weekly.
We do so much laundry at our house, I do not like to count!! With 3 boys in football, they cannot re-wear their practice clothes because the team would smell them coming..lol! So that is at least one load 6x week. And on average we do 2 loads per day including the football load so total would be 13 loads…
I do about 4 to 5 loads each week and it is just me and my husband! Sometimes I think I do to many loads but my husband is in the landscaping business and I don’t want to wash his grassy and dirt clothes with our regular clothes! We only have enough kitchen towells to get us through 1 week, sometimes a week and a few days. And I have lots of rag towels so I let those go about every 2 weeks. We have enough bath towels to go every 2 weeks. Then our bed sheets I wash once a week. I am very grateful for our HE washer that saves us a lot of water!!
I’d say I do 5+ loads a week for a family of 4. The kids just do not rewear anything yet. They both almost always have some kind of stain on their shirts and pants by the end of the day.
We have 4 kids and live on a farm. We all go to the barn and I have 7 loads at least 3 times a week. 🙂 no advice here.
I do between 7 and 10 loads each one filled to the brim. And there’s only four of us. That includes towels, bedsheets, and soccer uniforms. I came from a family with 6 kids, so I had to re-wear quite frequently, so to me washing after one use is a little luxury that I indulge in.
We have a family of 4 and we have about 7-12 loads every week. That includes towels and bedding. We have a lot! My husband insists of smaller loads instead of extra large loads. That might be why.
I think 6-7 sounds right on – that’s approximately what we do too, and like you, I have 3 young children (8mo, 2.5yrs & 5). We always run a full load and use cold water (except for whites/bleach loads).
That sounds about right. For our family of four we do about five loads a week. I’d love to hear some tips on reducing that though!
We do about 7 loads of laundry a week for our family of 5, so don’t feel bad!
Do not wash your Jeans,if not dirty place in dryer with softener It’s like having them dry cleaned and they are clean no bacteria on them look fresh works fine