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Toddlers: 24 Months+
Laundry rules? What are yours?
No one ever taught me to do laundry, except to say white & colors separately. I've been doing laundry since I was 10 & everything's turned out fine so far (for the most part!)
My grandmother told me a few weeks ago that I wasn't supposed to wash jeans & towels together. Why not?
Can I wash kitchen towels & washcloths with the kids clothes?
I refuse to do a load of laundry that's 1/2 full. Before the kids came along, we had 1 load of whites, 1 load of colors, 1 load of dress clothes & 1 load of towels a week. But now that the kids are here & their clothes are smaller & they make lots of messes & things need to be washed, I find myself throwing in washcloths with their clothes.
My MIL comes in town & does 3 loads of just her clothes & sometimes there are only 5 things. I HATE this. It's a waste, IMO.
How do you sort & how do you dry?
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Re: Laundry rules? What are yours?
Colors in one pile, white clothes, sheets and towels in the other pile.
Oh and if I find any money in the washer, it's mine.
DH will throw anything in with his laundry and that includes towels. I would rather towels and sheets be its own category.
But the girls laundry is one load and that does include their towels and sheets and washcloths so i am basically a hypocrite to my above statement.
I wash all of our clothes together, even whites, then each DD's in a load, then towels and wash clothes go together, then dress clothes, sheets, and then jeans/husband's work pants. I hang up my work/dress clothes, jeans, and bras. The only thing I learned about doing laundry when I moved out was that you don't put a dryer sheet in with towels. I couldn't figure out why my towels had lit balls all over them (they were new) and my SIL said that is the problem.
Oh, I do wash red sweatshirts by themselves.
Forgot to add that I wash everything in cold water except sheets and towels.wash clothes.
The only reasons I keep towels out of other wash is because I think the wet terrycloth will be rough on my knits and because I wash towels in hot and everything else in cold.Towels are awfully linty, too.
I don't even worry about separating lights & darks once they've been washed so many times. I usually do separate them, but if I've got half a load of each and really want to clear the dirty laundry out, I just throw them all together.
I am the most lazy person when it comes to laundry. Mostly we do darks/whites/towels with sheets. But if we do a mid-week round of washing and then only have on load full on the weekend - all colors go in together.
I refuse to spend my life doing laundry - so the fewest loads possible is the best way in my life!
The amount of sorting I do depends on how much laundry there is to be done. If there is a bit, I'll separate into lights and darks. If not, I'll do it all together in cold.
My only hard and fast rule is to check the pockets before I put things into the washer.
***Twin fraternal girls born at 35w6d in 12/2008***
I do my loads like this.....
Kids: anything kid related. (their sheets, bibs, blankets, clothes, towels, washcloths, etc)
Darks
Colors
Whites
Towels
Sheets/Blankets
ETA: I also wash everything but sheets/towels on cold.
You are all much more organized than I am!!!
Darks & whites...that's it!!! Hot & Bleach w/whites, (& yes, don't care, I use bleach)... cold with darks...
I have my own system, but I don't think there is just one right way.
Towels get hot water and boraxo or oxy clean every few washes to keep them from smelling musty
Whites in cold
Colors in cold
Jeans in cold - i keep them seperate because I tend to buy expensive jeans and I want them to last a long time so I turn them inside out and many of them don't go in the dryer
Sheet and blankets together in cold
All DS's clothing including blankets goes together, but his towels go with ours
I think you are fine to put towels and jeans together, but the towels will wear on your jeans a bit and if you have lighter colored towels they could be discolored by the jeans.
I try to keep towels and sheets separate from clothes, and each of us (me, B, DH) all have loads done of our own stuff, though occasionally I'll throw something of mine in with B's stuff or vice versa. DH always does his own stuff because he washes on higher settings that would destroy B's clothes or my delicates. He also uses dryer sheets on his stuff and I don't.
Rugs, towels, kitchen towels, sheets, etc. all get thrown in together. They always come out just fine, though if DH is doing them they tend to need 3x longer in the dryer because he does oversized loads.
Cold washes always, timed dry on medium for B's and my stuff. No idea what DH does his on.
Diapers have their own washes and dry system, obviously separate from everything else.
Mes Petit Choux
I can't go back to yesterday - because I was a different person then. ~ Alice
Full loads here. I wash socks, underwear and towels together because I wash those in hot water.
The rest gets thrown in together and is washed in cold water.
Ewww, I would not wash kitchen towels and washcloths with clothes.
I do:
darks
lights
whites
towels
Kids clothes do not get washed separately. My husband likes to throw it all together, and I think washcloths (especially kitchen ones) just make my clothes smell funny.
All clothes go together, kids, ours, and are only separated by color if something is new and might run.
Towels get their own load because I don't use fabric softener.
Sheets go in their own load.
Darks clothes - DH/mine/kids all mixed together - on cold
Light/white clothes - again all of ours mixed together - on cold
Towels - bath and kitchen together - all are white - on hot w/ bleach
Sheets - all are white - on hot w/ bleach
Delicates as needed, separated into dark/light, dried on a drying rack
I have 6 laundry hampers in my house - I love to sort before I even get started.
darks - cold
lights/ whites - cold
underwear/socks/ ds clothes - warm
towels/ sheets - warm
kitchen towels - warm
delicates - as needed
I do the following loads:
white clothes (mostly underwear, socks and undershirts)
darks/colors (pretty much everything else)
towels (all towels - kitchen, bath, kid, etc.)
sheets - ours and DD's combined.
delicates if needed
I'll wash DD's clothes separately if needed but normally I do it all together.
If something is really dirty - i.e. DH has nasty work clothes or DD has an accident, I'll wash a very small load separate.
I throw white vinegar or oxy clean to pretty much every load I wash too.
All clothes go together.. (wash on cold) unless DH's are really dirty they get a hot wash.
Towels
and then diapers.
I am simple, nice big loads. I don't separate clothes because there is never enough so they all get washed together (unless they are new they get washed once by themselves). So DH, my, and DDs clothes are all washed together once in awhile a towel will make its way in there, but it isn't a huge deal. The reason I separate towels and clothes is because towels I wash on hot and clothes on cold.
I am actually doing laundry now so I thought I'd chime in!
Our clothing all gets washed together (mine, DH and DS). I do separate darks and whites and the gray stuff goes in whichever load is smaller. I usually do 1 load a week each of darks and whites.
Towels all get washed together (kitchen and bath stuff). I usually do about 3 loads of these a week because I don't like wet stuff sitting around. Sometimes I throw in a few random items with towels since I wash them more often...in tonights load it was a shirt that DS got wet playing outside and a pair of DH's socks that were bugging me on the floor.
Sometimes I throw in my white cami's with towels because I only have 3 of them that I really like and I wear them almost every day.
I was sheets together (ours and DS).
I also do a "pet" load occasionally with our dog's bed cover. That obviously gets washed by itself.
Oh and whenever we go to the pool ALL of that stuff gets washed together...pool towels, cover ups, and bathing suits. I don't like everything else we own to smell like chlorine.
I think that about covers it. Interesting post!
usually all the girls stuff is washed together, all the towels/sheets are a load, and all dh's work stuff is washed together except my work clothes - those are seperate. It works out this way b/c there's a hamper in the girls room, br and our room...but if things get mixed I don't worry about it or sort it...
the only load that is always on its own is our unpaper towels/kitchen cloths & towels...those go in on hot and get an extra soak/rinse weekly...
I don't own my own washing machine, so I would never in a million years wash anything less than a full load. Our washing machine is shared by everyone in my building.
I tend to wash sheets and towels together. There are always enough dirty towels and sheets for this to warrant its own load.
I don't mix towels with anything but sheets because sometimes the fuzz comes off on my clothes.
I line dry most of DD's things in our building's shared basement when we're here. When we're traveling to see relatives abroad, I loooooove line-drying things in the sun. I can't really do that here, though. So most of my non-delicates go in the dryer. My delicates get hung in my bathroom.
Wow, I am totally stunned by these posts about towels. I have only ever separated my laundry by color. I was taught that whites get hot with bleach, darks get cold, and everything else in between I've heard them called "lights" or "colors" go together in warm, so there's no crossing of the wrong colored lint balls. So light colored gym clothes, towels, underwear, kids clothes all go together. The only other special loads I have are new red things, the rugs from my kitchen & bathroom, and any delicate work clothes. Obviously, now my cloth diapers go alone, but only because they get a special soak cycle first. It wouldn't gross me out at all to wash them with other stuff otherwise. The washing machine gets things clean, I don't get how can two clean items contaminate each other. And no way could I use a towel full of static because I skipped the dryer sheet.
One of my main rules is that DH doesn't do the laundry, short of just moving clothes from the washer to the dryer. He will literally just put everything, whites and colors, all in one load.
I used to do three loads - whites, lights, and darks, but now I just do a white/lights load (with color safe bleach) and a dark load. I tend to put the towels, sheets, linens, dish towels, etc. in one load by themselves. But, if I have one washcloth or something that it's the laundry, I'll throw it in with the clothes.