telophase | Got a question--

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laundry darwinism

Got a question--

So every so often I'm watching House Hunters or whatever and one of the buyers mentions that the washer and dryer are important because, as they have kids, they do multiple loads of wash a day.

I can think of some possible causes of this - cloth diapers and you wash them yourself instead of using a service, multiple hard-playing kids in various sports who practice several days a week and constantly come home with dirty, smelly uniforms that need to be ready for tomorrow, etc. - but really don't think that suffices for all of them.

I posed this question to my mother once, and she thinks they're families who use towels once and then wash them. Which is, frankly, alien to me. :) I acknowledge that my family may be on the far end of the bell curve, but living in the middle of the bush in Africa for two years, having to wash your own clothes and towels by hand in the bathtub* knocks any desire whatsoever to not wear your clothes until you can't stand them anymore before washing right out of your head. Back in the States with a washer and dryer, yeah, we wash them before they hit the point where they can stand up on their own, but I still use towels for several days before washing and tend to wear most of my clothing (not socks or underwear, I hasten to add!) at least twice each before washing, unless I've sweated in them, dropped food on them, been near someone smoking in them, or they are otherwise obviously dirty.

I also practice laundry Darwinism and throw everything in together and wash on warm. It's survival of the fittest: if it can't survive that, then I don't want to wear it. (The three items of clothing which have dyes that run excepted. I wash them at the same time in cold. I also wear mostly knits, so I don't have to iron or hang them.) Toby, OTOH, sorts his laundry and washes it all on different temperatures because that's the way his mother did it, as a result of which he tends to do 2 or 3 loads a week, while I tend to do 1. :) At any rate, when I was a kid and we were back in the States and had a washer and dryer, Mom still never did more than a few loads a week, let alone multiple loads every day!

So. Anyway. Back to the original question: If you have a kid or kids and wash multiple loads a day or are familiar with someone who does, why?

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* We had a laundry tub on the back porch, but once an old Africa hand gave my mom the tip of washing them in the bathtub, where you could get in and stomp around to agitate the clothing instead of rubbing them against each other and squeezing them out with your hands, we never looked back. Especially as that meant she could enlist my help.**

** FYI, we draped our underwear over the acacia tree out back to dry. You just knocked any ants off before bringing them back into the house.***

*** Acacia have a nifty symbiotic relationship with a species of ant. Google it. You'll be amazed.

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I don't think we've ever done multiple loads every day of the week, but we certainly run multiple loads a week. We don't practice laundry Darwinism, because I hate shopping and want my clothes to last and look good as long as possible, but any day involving bodily fluids getting onto bedding or other clothes, for instance, probably involves an immediate wash (so as to have spares in case of further bodily fluids, not have them sitting around smelling, etc.). SteelyKid also has a smaller wardrobe than we do because she's going to outgrow it quicker, and gets her clothes far dirtier, so her clothes need washing more regularly.

Even practicing laundry Darwinism, my clothes last long enough that I toss (donate, actually) them because I've outgrown or outshrunk them, or because I've worn them for so long I'm sick of them. :) OTOH, I don't have a position that requires me to dress up more than a loosely casual level, because I don't face the public and, as Systems, I have a greater-than-average chance of needing to crawl around under a desk messing with wires at some point. So my clothes may be sturdier than more businesslike clothing.

I used to wash everything on cold, save money from the hot water heater, until I realized that it was setting stains instead of getting them out. :)

(and by casual I mean jeans, shirts one level up from T-shirts, etc.)

I have one child. We do most laundry once a week. It's usually between two and four loads, depending on the time of year (winter clothes take up more space in the washer), whether or not it's a sheet changing week and whether or not we have towels to wash.

The exception to the once a week rule is my husband's work uniforms. Those get washed whenever he runs out. The uniforms are provided by his employer, and he has no control over how many he has. He's in charge of that, so I tend to forget about it when considering laundry.

I can't imagine doing laundry every day. I specifically plan my wardrobe and my daughter's so that we have enough of everything to get through eight days (in case I do laundry on Sunday instead of Saturday) without washing.

Of course, I may have to start doing an occasional midweek load of something. My daughter's soccer coach wants team shirts worn to both practices and games. Sometimes, I'll be able to get away without washing the shirt, but mud and grass stains happen.

Ugh, I remember uniforms! When I worked food service at a local burger joint we were given the first set - shirt and hat - and had to buy any others, albeit at 50% off the price we sold them to customers. But working minimum wage, you didn't want to spend any more than necessary so I only ever owned two.

That was when I learned that putting Dawn onto grease stains and rubbing it in before washing did wonders, stretching the amount of time before I ahd to invest in another shirt.

With two kids, we probably average a load of laundry every day (and that's with changing sheets and towels only two or three times a month, unless there is An Incident, which there so often is). We tend to use wash rags/old towels for a lot of household clean-up tasks, rather than paper towels, and we have a LOT of household clean-up tasks, so that really adds to the total.

I can see that. We use a lot of paper towels and I want to try to move away from that, but it's hard and we haven't managed it yet.

Hmm. With infants, I certainly went through multiple changes of clothes per day, especially when I used cloth diapers. I could see that with a couple of diaper-aged kids (even in disposables) you could wind up doing multiple loads a day, just because of the constant poop and pee and burp and stuff.

Older kids, though -- pretty much scrub 'em before bedtime, toss clothes in laundry basket.

No kids, so can't comment on that aspect of it, but I wanted to say that I definitely share your laundry philosophy! I wear clothes many times before washing them and use towels at least twice (they seem to get mildew-smelling if I use them any more than that, but I only shower every other day, so even washing them after two showers means not even two towels a week). And I also do all my laundry in one batch, whites and colors together.

I'm a laundry Darwinist too \o/ Also a one load a week washer. I cut irons out of my life a LONG time ago also \o/

I sort by temperature,both because my mother taught me to do it that way and because I've had favorite shirts fall apart when washed with things in other temperatures (washed with denim mostly). I suppose I could sort by material, but sorting by temperature does that, more or less. Although I can't understand the multiple loads of laundry per day. Per week makes sense, but per day sounds like someone is trying to sanitize their house, which is damn near impossible if you have kids, to say nothing of pets.

I said on DW in response to someone that the ultra-casual clothing I tend to wear just may be sturdier than some more businesslike clothes, and stand up to the treatment I give it longer.

The only things (besides the 3 dresses with non-colorfast dyes I mentioned above) that I treat special are my bras, which tend to get unhooked and twisted up in the wash unless I put them in lingerie bags. Well, they still got unhooked and twisted up in the bags until I recently discovered special bags that have a separate pocket for each bra. :) You're supposed to never put bras in the dryer, to make them last longer, but mine tend to last 3-4 years as is, and by then I'm either a different size up or down or sick to death of them, so I'm OK with that.

I do a dark load and a light load, both on warm. I think my parents sort more carefully than that, but even so, we never did that much laundry. Like, one or maybe two days a week were laundry day.

Main thing I think of hearing "multiple loads a day" is "dear god, water bill."

I hadn't even thought about the water bill in that case!

(deleted comment)

Toby used to use one towel per day before we moved in together. Now he's getting sloppier like me. :)

I rented an apartment that came with a w/d combo almost ten years ago and swore NEVER to go back since. I don't care how much it cost, I'm never using a communal laundry room or laundromat again unless it's an emergency!

I don't have a regular day for it, since laundry frequency is dictated by whichever is the limiting article of clothing - usually jeans or bras. And then I do three loads: lights, darks, and delicates. Maybe a fourth one on a big laundry day for sheets and towels. I'm like you - I only use a towel when I'm cleaner than I will be the rest of the day, so it can go several uses before it needs laundering.

My parents, on the other hand, was towels on a never-ending treadmill because my mom complains they get "man stink" after Papa or my brother use them only once. She also did a lot of laundry when we were in school uniforms and tended to change after school. Well, my sister did. I didn't care what I was wearing as long as I wasn't hot/cold.

Underwear tends to be my limiting item, except for this summer when I've been living in my capris because of the heat. I only have 3 of them so they tend to get a workout.

We do multiple loads in a day . . . because we've let it go for a few days and it's stacking up. Six people do go through a fair amount of clothes.

I resemble that remark! I put it off as long as humanly possible, and end up doing 2-3 loads a day, mostly (the 1/week statement above is an average).

Maybe it's more a case of "what if my kids all get the stomach flu at the same time and I have to do 5 loads of laundry in the middle of the night???" than actually doing multiple loads everyday? I mean, even when I was washing cloth diapers I may have done one load per day, sometimes more, but I wouldn't say I did multiple loads every single day. And now it's more like 4-6 loads a week, total.

Maybe. I don't remember the exact wording I've heard people use, but I'll pay closer attention the next time I watch and see what they say.

We had three or four loads a week because everyone was responsible for their own laundry.

Now-a-days I do anywhere from one to three loads depending on if kitchen linens need doing (I save them up until I have a load), bath towels need doing (you're wiping off your CLEAN BODY why do you need to wash your bath towel more than a couple times a month?), if I have enough for a full load of jeans or if everything can just go in one load together, or if bed linens need doing.

I also hang-dry most of my clothes.

BUT I also live in a climate where humidity is a rare occurrence and towels and clothes don't get musty smelling as a general rule. It's so dry here, I like to hang out in the room I'm hang-drying clothes in the winter just for a bit of moisture!

I love House Hunters but sometimes I seriously wonder at people. A woman and her eight-year-old daughter /neeeeeeded/ a house with two bathrooms because she couldn't share with her daughter. ...and people wonder where all this raging self-entitlement in our youth comes from.

Edited 2011-08-31 17:06 (UTC)

Yeah, I go through towels a bit faster than that, but Texas tends to be warm and humid (especially in the south, although I've moved north now) and damp things mildew quickly if you don't have enough ventilation.

That's what I was thinking. If I lived somewhere less dry I'd likely wash towels and bed linens more often.

...and I'd likely be INSANE from the air touuuuchiiiinnnng meeeeee. Although, I did adapt rather well to NYC/MD last year.

You get used to it ... somewhat. If you're inside, it's usually a bit less humid and you forget about it until you walk outside and it's like someone hitting you in the face with a swimming pool. On some nights, if you're in an area lit with streetlights, like my undergraduate campus, you can see it hanging in the air, almost like a fog.

HNNNG! *claws at face*
Gedditoff!!!

...maybe I can put up with snow. XD

I was one of four girls in a two-parent household, and even with my sisters and I all using two towels when showering because we all had hair at least to the mid-back, two sisters regularly wearing at least two outfits a day (because you couldn't possibly wear the same thing to hang out with friends at night that you'd worn to school that day), and one sister absolutely refusing to re-use unwashed towels, the most we ever did was one load a day. That said, I did a lot of babysitting for families with babies and pre-schoolers, and some of those mothers would change their kids' entire outfits if the kid so much as stood still long enough for a speck of dust to settle on them. This seemed a more frequent state of affairs with first-time parents or only-child parents (something I've noticed about House Hunters, actually). By the time the second kid showed up, most parents seemed to have figured out that kids are messy creatures and that's really okay.

My mom stopped dressing us as soon as we were capable of dressing ourselves, and until we were teenagers, she did her best to make us wear the same outfit the whole day as a means to teach us to think about what a given activity would do to our clothes. She didn't want to be tethered to the washer, neither she nor Dad were particularly keen to pay the water/gas/electricity bills involved in doing more laundry, and neither of them wanted to spend the money on replacing clothes that got more worn out through frequent washing.

I never was much for switching clothes during the day, but I try to do it occasionally now, if I'm wearing something nice to work, just to put on something crummy for making/eating/cleaning up after dinner, because I tend to get stuff all over me without realizing it. You'd think I'd own an apron by now, but noooooo...

My mom got me washing my own clothes as soon as she humanly could, because she didn't like doing it. :)

We have one child and I'm sure we don't average close to even one load per day. Maybe three loads per week on average? It was probably higher when he was younger, but not multiple loads per day, certainly.

I've only seen little snippets of the show - are any of these people from outside the US? Washing machines in some places can be a lot smaller. I recall one apartment my aunt and uncle rented in Paris which had a washer and dryer, but they were each large enough to hold maybe two outfits, so they did a LOT of loads.

For the most part, regular House Hunters has Americans on it. House Hunters International has a few non-Americans on it.* I'm not sure how many are coming from apartments that might have extra-small w/d units because I hadn't paid attention to that, but I'll have a look for that when I watch in future.

* Who are always so much nicer to watch, because instead of complaining about how small the rooms are, they exclaim over how cozy they are.

Who are always so much nicer to watch, because instead of complaining about how small the rooms are, they exclaim over how cozy they are.

I bet. You can see the same effect on hotel rating sites - trying to find a hotel in say, London is a pain because so many reviews are from Americans who say things like "the rooms are small." No shit, tell me something I DON'T know.

I remember seeing that on TripAdvisor when I was booking rooms for our UK trip last fall. So many "For this amount of money, I expect a bigger room!" and I just wanted to say "Do you not realize HOW EXPENSIVE London property is? The hotel would lose money if it built its room to what you expect for that price!"

Toby and I were pleasantly surprised at the size of our London hotel room. We were expecting to have to practically climb on the bed to let the other person pass, and it was larger than the spare bedroom in our house.

I don't really understand why you (general you) give a fuck about room size, anyway. YOU ARE SLEEPING THERE. YOU ARE ON VACATION. IF YOU WANT TO HANG OUT AND WATCH TV, WHY AREN'T YOU AT HOME?

Edited 2011-09-01 01:24 (UTC)

I suppose it IS possible for a hotel room to be so cramped that simply doing things like bathing and dressing and so forth with more than one person in the room become annoyingly difficult. But yeah, if that's not the case, then I don't see much reason to worry about it. (Unless you have small children with you or something.)

Yeah, maybe multiple kids and suitcases (like, for a week's trip) might make size/storage an issue. But really, any hotel bathroom is usually at least the size of my tiny-ass one at home, and I don't need linen storage....

My mom taught me one towel, one use. Then I went to college. So much for that!

I have: Nice stuff, cotton (light), cotton (dark), knits, underwear (light), underwear (dark), sheets/towels. I normally do laundry on Sundays so I have a nice full load when I do them, except for my nice/work clothes.

"multiple loads of wash" may not all be full loads. I love the washer we bought when we bought our house five years ago. It's got about nine water level settings, so I can do a really tiny load if I need to. I remember growing up, my parents' washer only had a choice of three levels.

I do remember doing a lot of loads when my son was little (I think my washer had five levels). Part of the reason was that it was cheaper to wash clothes (and I air-dried most of them) than to buy lots of clothes. Really little kids can get a lot of stuff dirty really quickly.

I'm with you on towels - usually only wash them about once a week.

And yeah, college also made me less picky about my loads. I lived in Keathley at A&M and back then there was only a couple washes & dryers per floor, so competition was fierce. I only washed stuff when it was REALLY dirty, always took laundry on visits home, and did a lot of hand-washing of stuff that could have gone in a washer.

I'm also with you on insisting (back when I was a wealthier renter) on an in-unit washer and dryer. The last time I shared was when my ex and I first moved to the Seattle area in 1984. The apartment buildings were six-plexes where each unit had an inner door that opened to the common laundry area, so at least stuff was a little more secure.

Growing up it was usually just my mum looking after me and my brother as my dad worked away a lot. She was a dab hand at not spending money on stuff she didn't have to (I suspect what money was sent to us was neither a lot nor frequent) and this included doing the bare minimum of laundry. I don't think she ever did more than 2 loads a week unless we were really sick or she'd stripped all the beds. Clothes were worn at least 2 days (unless we came home looking like we'd rolled in mud) and towels were always draped over the bannister to dry so they could be used multiple times. Of course I suspect it helped that instead of paying quarterly/ monthly bills a lot of our stuff was metered. There's nothing quite like filling a meter by hand with £1 coins and then being able to watch the dial click down to zero (sometimes at an alarming pace) to hammer home the importance of not wasting electric/ water/ gas.

Maybe four or more offspring combined with a really low-capacity washer combined with multiple groups of clothing that all need to be washed separately, combined with cold weather (more layers) and maybe something such as farm work?

If people regularly get shit or something similarly nasty on their clothing, they'll have to have a minimum of two sets of outfits per day so that they don't wear shit-covered clothing indoors or to school/public.

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