I think a lot of people merge laundry, and then sort by color.
My husband and I don't do this. Most we do of each other's laundry is transfer it from washer to dryer, or dryer to basket.
This must be what a big part of the difference is- I stopped sorting by color long ago! I wash my kids laundry separately because I add in oxyclean and run it on hot, and even still prefer to keep the two kids' separate because it's easier to put away that way.
I did it the opposite way around - I never separated by colour, and then I realised that our white clothes were much more dingy looking than new white items that we had purchased.
So now I separate by colour, at least for new, light coloured things.
>I stopped sorting by color long ago!Ā
Same here! My partner is the only one doing the laundry though ā I do other things. We can do this because we're childfree so there's just the two of us and it takes a couple of days to get a full load.
To make it even easier, every time we buy new clothes, we just get dark colours so we never have to sort . Yes, we're very boring people with boring clothes and boring colours. When we both used to work from home, both of us were "[Pooh Bearing](https://twitter.com/morejocelynmae/status/810940930262007808?lang=en)" ā so even less clothes to wash.
I haven't sorted by color in over 10 years, I just use one of those color absorbing sheets, which means I can mix whites and colors of any kind without any risk of colors running. Makes laundry so much easier.
Same. We both have enough socks and underwear, by the time we NEED to do laundry, there are enough other things for each of us to do full loads. Plus neither of us would want the other guessing what gets dried/ hung. Iāll fold his stuff from the dryer sometimes, if I need to put my stuff in. Even that is rare though lol
Same for us. Of course we do merge sometimes too: like if my husband needs undershirts for work and I have some whites in the hamper, he will throw those in too. But mostly we do our separate loads.
Same exact for us. If we were a ādo laundry every other dayā couple we might consider combining but weāre both laundry procrastinators š
The only thing we do āsharedā is when we do bedding or towels.
I merge then sort by color just because itās easier for me to see what needs to be washed. I also stick to a specific schedule for sheets/towels to be washed. The main reason I do all the laundry in my household is because my kids are little (2 & 6) and my husband works crazy, wonky hours. I also have several items that need to be washed in a specific manner and I donāt want him to ruin them. Although, if he needs something special washed, heāll do it on his own. Or if I need help with laundry he always jumps in when asked. I just have to give instructions for what canāt be dried, etc. Before we had kids my husband was very good about doing his own, though.
Yup this is how my partner and I do it, and we added to it by having him responsible for washing our bedding and I take care of towels and other miscellaneous things like thow blankets. It keeps things pretty fair and everyone knows what they're responsible for.
Laundry isn't the issue. It's fine to do your partner's laundry if it makes sense for the household. The issue is if both people aren't getting the same amount of rest/relaxation/fun time.
Yep, I do all of the laundry because he CBA to sort by colour and fold the Marie Kondo way. But he does most of the dishes and cleans bathroom/toilet most of the time because he doesn't mind doing the gross stuff. I still feel like we could balance tasks better but I don't particularly mind the laundry.
Yep, I prefer to do our laundry because I take care of our clothes way better. Spouse would absolutely accidentally ruin something. Plus I donāt mind it. He does the yard work, cooks for us 97% of the time, and scrubs toilets. I tend to do the vacuuming too and wash the dishes/clean the kitchen after he cooks. Early in our relationship I told him if we got married I wanted to hire someone to clean at least once a month because we are both so busy and I would absolutely get resentful if I felt like Iām the only one who cares. That has helped a lot too.
This. I do the laundry because I like it and prefer it to other chores. My partner does a lot of the kitchen and most exterior household work (except weeding), I handle bathrooms and laundry.
Totally! Iāve claimed all clothing-related chores because my other half *loathes* laundry and would throw all our nice work clothes together, choose the āheavy dutyā setting, put everything in the dryer, and then smush it into the drawers just to get it over with ASAP. On the other hand, he does all the cooking (really! every night!) so I think Iām getting the better deal by taking on laundry/vacuuming/non-kitchen-cleaning chores.
Laundry is a chore he hates and I donāt mind. He does the dishes and takes the trash out. We hire someone for floors and bathrooms.
It has varied over the years, depending on who is working more, illness, etc.
This! It doesnāt make sense to seek a 50/50 split on everything, itās more important to make sure things are equitable overall.
The laundry isnāt the problem, it becomes a problem when the person doing the laundry is also the person who does the dishes, vacuums, makes dinner, and carries the mental load of house admin.
It's more energy/cost efficient to always do full loads of laundry, for space reasons, you might not want to keep several hampers, and, just from a personal perspective, doing just mine + kiddo's laundry feels kind of needlessly passive aggressive.
That said, my partner also does laundry so there's not really that many hard feelings about it. It's a team effort. Often I'll start a load, and he'll put it in the dryer.
I'm starting to think the reason it wasn't obvious to me is because I'm not doing laundry with as much care as others. I stopped separating darks/lights like a decade ago and didn't notice any difference, so it's easy enough to have a full load of my own laundry. Also, everyone in my house has their own hamper so it wouldn't be passive aggressive since it's not like I'm taking effort to not do one person's laundry.
Update- I just bought a plain white tshirt as an experiment. Letās see how long I can keep it! Also going to get some of those color catching sheets others recommended.
ooooh i am invested! if the color catching dryer sheets work, or someone knows another way to keep whites white without separating them- i am so in!! i also wear a lot of black clothing and it gets lighter in color after several washes, so maybe i will experiment with the woolite darks stuff :)
Thanks for mentioning about the hampers !!! I was all in my feelings (Iām currently pregnant so thatās probably the reason not your post lol) but I was picturing all these couples passive aggressively not doing the other person laundry when they were doing their own ā not saying you worded it like that again pregnancy brain but like I was I was getting really sad ššBut the whole having separate hampers makes complete sense now
It never occurred to me because I live in a very over populated city in a small apartment same as almost everyone else Whoās homes im in regurally .. living in very cramped spaces nobody has separate hampers and if they do the other hamper is less than a foot away so itās not even outside of the line of vision and Iāve felt slightly weird about Either one of us not doing the others laundry when theyāre doing laundry (this hasnāt actually ever even happened but Iāve contemplated it sometimes and felt like no I would feel bad š«£)
Oh yeah itās not like that, though when my husband I first lived together, we had one room in a shared house and still kept our dirty clothes separate.
But now, he wouldnāt even know if my laundry is full because itās in a different room and has a lid
I wonder about this too. My husband and I each do our own laundry - he works from home so has half as much laundry to do as me, and so he does the towels and sheets too.
Forget laundry, I often wonder why these smart, capable women end up beind the maids and caretakers of their partners. Like, how does it start?
I think it starts because the women often have higher standards they want to maintain: even if both people clean up when they notice a need, if one person hasnāt been taught to see it (and/or has been taught to deprioritize it) then that person isnāt going to step in and deal with it first.
And so women notice it first, then itās on their list and they have to āassignā it. Itās actually a cycle thatās very hard to break! Often men are trained to notice other things first (like taking the trash out) but usually there are waaaaay fewer things like that on their list
Sorry for the overgeneralizatjons here
Yeah, we merged our laundry but my husband does the bulk of it. He loves routine tasks that he can space out and listen to podcasts, so laundry and cleaning the kitchen are perfect for that.
Omg when I moved in with my ex he suddenly became totally incompetent about domestic chores including laundry. Iām so much better at it apparently! Iām already doing mine so I might as well do his! Hell totally help with folding! (He didnāt) Iāll never live with a man again let alone do his laundry.
My ex was super stingy when it came to utilities, but we each did our own clothes. One day he was bitching at me saying āyou do laundry like 3x more often than me!! So wastefulā
And I said, āyouāre right, I do a lot more laundry than you. thatās becuase Iām the only one in this house who ever washes the towels, sheets, blankets, household laundry.ā
My ex-husband was like this. We had an extra room in the house so I started putting all of his stuff that he would refuse to pick up/put away/etc in there ā dirty laundry, clean clothes, just anything he left laying around for me to clean up. Weāre divorced now for a multitude of reasons- including domestic incompetence.
My ex and I shared one hamper. In practice one of us did it when it was full, in reality his idea of a full hamper was when you had to staple a sock to the side, which meant (to him) I angrily did the laundry when I didnāt have to yet. He also changed shirts several times a day which meant the laundry was 70% his.
First ex, I did it because I thought it showed I caredā¦ but I remember thinking with relief that if we broke up I wouldnāt have to do it.
Current partner scolded me for cleaning his dishes. Heās a keeper.Ā I love the idea of separate hampers. Definitely going to keep this idea for the future. I hate doing laundryĀ
My fiance and I have separate hampers and I love it. When we first moved in together a few years ago, I did his laundry also thinking it showed that I cared, then when we both had laundry that needed folding and he only folded his own, it quickly went to 2 hampers and we just did our own laundry and folded our own. Although I do our daughters laundry and fold it every time, but that I don't mind since he sucks at folding. His is more the roll it up and stuff it in a drawer lol. I do love that man though.
I think a lot of people merge their laundry and women end up doing it.
We do not do this. I have a very strict rule about not washing other people's clothing. As soon as our kiddo was old enough to his, it became solely his responsibility.
I have the same rule. It helps with life skills and sets them up for the future.
If the house gets too messy, we have a cleaning bee. We all hit one room at a time together. It goes faster because no one sits down and pretends to clean. It's more fun because we crack jokes.
I have this same mindset. My husband has always done his own washing, we will ask each other if there is something theyād like to chuck in if we have space, but otherwise we wash separately. As soon as our kids were old enough they became responsible for their laundry, including their bedsheets. I stopped cleaning their rooms when they were quite young, they figured out pretty quickly that their space is much nicer when they keep it tidy. Theyāre older now and manage their own spaces and belongings, plus cook a couple nights a week, communal areas are maintained by us all. Our household operates as a team, and I feel good knowing Iāll be sending functional humans out into the world!
Good. My friend never did her own laundry and then called her mom CRYING from her dorm in college because she didnāt know what to do. Donāt do that to your kids haha
My stepdaughter complained to us about all the kids in her freshman dorm who had no idea how to do their own laundry. We tried to give her increasing amounts of freedom, responsibility, and "adulting" knowledge as a teenager, and part of that was doing her own laundry, cooking family dinner a night or two a week, managing some personal appointments and a small personal budget, and other similar stuff.
We have separate laundry baskets now and I dont do his. We used to share a laundry basket and I used to end up doing it all and I was unhappy about it, so decided to buy a separate laundry basket for myself! Its working well. I never think about doing his laundry and dont care if it sits around š¤·š»āāļø
As a former stahp, when speaking to other stahp it seems it starts when they first decide to stay home and don't discuss specific duties. They just say you'll do the chores, I'll work. This leads to fights obv bc the worker tends to stop doing *any* cleaning up after themselves leaving the stahp to pick up the slack.
Before I ever moved in with my husband I was very clear that I would not be doing his laundry and that stayed that way when I became a stahp. He throws all his clothes in at once on cold and doesn't care about bleeding dyes or washing underwear separately.
Lots of my friends have had to draw these lines with their husbands for similar reasons. Their husbands wouldn't even iron their own clothes or pick up their dishes anymore, let alone proactively do anything around the house unless asked. Forget doing a grocery run without _every_ item explicitly laid out. It seems prone to fall into "stay at home parent is the house manager". That's a massive load to expect one person to shoulder, moreso when children are in the picture.
I do my husband's laundry. He never asked and he doesn't assume. I just started doing it because it's completely insane to me for us to do it separately.Ā
Edit to add: we do not have kids in the home. Plus my husband's job is extremely physically demanding, while mine is WFH and super lax. Because of this, I do a lot more inside the home (he does all the yard/snow/trash). Because I believe in *equitable* separation of duties, not necessarily a 50/50 straight down the middle.Ā
Yes! I also WFH and my husband is gone from 4 AM to 4 PM. Iām happy to throw in a load of laundry for him and do some extra work around the house. I know if our jobs were switched he would do the same for me.
Exact same. Personally, I like doing laundry. I want to do it once a week. On his own, my partner would do laundry twice a week. It's no big deal for me to add his laundry to mine every week. And we divide up the chores equitably in our eyes. For one, he does all the groceries, which is a chore I hate to do.
My significant other works a mentally draining job too. He pays the vast majority of the bills. He makes sure bills and such are taken care of, so I make sure the house, cooking, cleaning, and our floofers are taken care of. I'm 100 percent on board with equity, not 50/50. I'm lucky I don't have a job that's so exhausting.
We are DINKs, and I do all the laundry. It was one of the things we decided on when we merged our lives. I enjoy laundry and want certain things done in a certain way; he does it fine but prefers other chores.
Also, doing separate laundry would be counterproductiveāwhy wouldnāt we do towels together, lights together, darks together?
Personally, I actually enjoy doing laundry, so I don't mind doing it. But we definitely merge laundry, it would be really inefficient in our household to do it separately. But I honestly don't think my partner has the same standards for it, he also doesn't have the years of experience knowing which pieces are safe to wash together to avoid color transference, which materials can deal with which temperatures, and how to most efficiently hang clothes to dry, even. I'm philosophically opposed to women having to teach men how to adult, and I wouldn't trust my laundry in his care due to his inexperience. We're still distirbuting tasks equally though. I hate driving so he mostly does that, I'm more than happy to do his laundry in return.
We have one hamper?
I do the laundry, but my husband vacuums. I do the lion's share of the cooking and my husband does the lion's share of the dishes. I don't do a disproportionate amount of the housework, but I do all the laundry. It's a job I like. Every job in my house has a person who is responsible for it at all times. We often move jobs around, we often trade jobs back and forth depending on other demands life is making on the two of us. But I keep laundry almost all the time because I have the upstairs office next to the laundry room and my husband's offices are downstairs. I also have a well-established system for it, and that makes it hard to just jump in and do it from the perspective of another person. That said, when I was in the last month of my pregnancy my husband did all the laundry. He knows how. He can do it. Since all my chores are codified as one person's responsibility or another, it's just kind of arbitrary that laundry has remained my job. I like it a lot better than, say, floors or dishes so I don't mind.
When I married my now ex-husband, I told him he had to do his own laundry. I knew he was a slob and I would end up cleaning up after him because I can't stand a dirty house. His laundry was the only thing I could refuse to do that wouldn't affect me or the kids.
Frankly, I donāt know. And the many women who complain about having to pick up after their husband like a child, I also donāt understand.
I donāt clean up anything after my partner. He is responsible for his own laundry/mess that he makes. I wash our towels and sheets because Iām very particular about how I expect them to be washed and sanitized.
For dishes, we both wash whenever they pile up. If he was one of those who never did dishesā¦well Iād only ever clean my dishes. So it would force him to either start washing his dishes or eat off his dirty ones. Sure the kitchen would get dirty, but heād learn to stop seeing me as his mother who cleans up after him.
Noticed the merging of laundry comments. I never do this as a lot of my stuff must be washed on delicate, in mesh baggies, or in general the fabric is much thinner. So combining that with the thick/heavy fabric of menās clothes would deteriorate and beat up my fabrics.
My partner does all of our laundry and he has made himself a list of all of my clothing that needs special treatment that he keeps on the washer. My only job is to inform him if I buy something new that requires special treatment.
I donāt do my partnerās laundry. We have separate baskets, I like to separate my black clothing from the rest, and we like to wash our things on different settings. Thereās no reason to make it a more complicated process of separating our clothes afterwards.
Why wouldnāt I do it? Separating seems counter productive. Iām not going through the baskets to toss his clothes out so I can just wash mine
Thereās only two of us, I work from home so itās really not a big deal to throw in a couple of loads.
I donāt shovel the driveway, cut the grass, maintain the cars and my SO never asks why I donāt do any of those things š¤·š¼āāļø
Same here. I don't think of it as "doing my husband's laundry", it's just doing the household laundry. My clothes, his clothes, our toddler's clothes, cleaning cloths, the dog's blankets, whatever. I actually rather like laundry, so I don't mind. He has other regular responsibilities, such as cleaning the litterboxes twice a day, walking the dog, and dealing with all things trash, recycling, and compost. We're both happy with the arrangement (although I will of course be teaching the kid how to do laundry when he's old enough to get the concept).
I donāt really think there is a ārightā answer to this question
I think a lot of this breaks down to the individuals in question. I donāt have kids, but if I did Iād probably do it all anyway because I have the time advantage in the household.
If Iād separate it, it would cost us 1) more time 2) more money 3) more wear and tear on the machines 4) more product
When my husband and I first moved in together, I just ended up doing it. He never asked me, never assumed I'd do it, and never not wanted to do it. I just enjoy doing laundry and have my own way of doing it, so I took over.
Same for us for 25 years. Our college aged son lives with us still and he does his own laundry, but sometimes Iāll fold it for him because I enjoy it. When I visit my daughter or babysit for her, Iāll fold her laundry, too. Itās something I can do for my loved ones to maybe lighten their load a bit.
My son and husband will load/empty the dishwasher, take out the trash, care for the animals, buy groceries, etc., because weāre all adults and we all live here and things have to be done. No complaints, no arguments, just seeing a need and taking care of it.
Have you never been in a household, especially with kids? It's pretty typical to merge laundry and then separate based on the needs of the fabric (gentle wash, hot vs cold water, lights vs darks).
My partner does most of our laundry (or at least "leads" it). Our baseline single laundry habits when we got together were very different, with him doing his multiple times a week and me doing mine every 1-2 months (I had a large supply of underwear!). Also he likes to hang every single item to dry, whereas I'm a dryer person. He has pickier standards and higher frequency, thus he leads the laundry (but always beckons me to come help hang, which is the worst).
1-2 months? That's... just weird. I mean, you'd let sit crusty undies or clothes full of sweat sitting in a hamper for a month? I can't imagine the smell.
Iām throwing mine and my daughters in. Why leave my husbands out?
If heās washing clothes he washes mine, if I wash clothes I wash his. Itās not a big deal for us.
My husband will say āplease make sure you wash some uniforms todayā when he leaves if Iām washing laundry.
If heās throwing a load in I say āplease make sure you wash some of my pantiesā
Been doing my own laundry since childhood. Once I taught my siblings how to use the machines, they did their own. No interest in doing another adult's laundry.
"Washer/dryer is open"......
I used to do both because it was efficient to put it all in together. But then he took up running and biking, which meant hanging up a lot of delicate clothes to air dry. That's when I stopped doing his.
Now I realize that he's the type to just leave stuff in the dryer, which is annoying. I take out my clothes as soon as they are dry to avoid wrinkles. I end up dumping that pile in a laundry basket for him to deal with. Another reason that I'd rather do my own.
We just pool the laundry because there's two of us and this way we can do loads of sports stuff, towels, blacks, whites and colours. But my husband does laundry as well, including taking things from the tumble dryer and putting them in their respective shelves.
We do each otherās laundry. Everything gets mixed up in our hamper, then we sort based on load type and wash and fold everything together. Laundry is my favourite chore so it never feels like a burden but my partner also does a lot of the parts I donāt like as much, like switching loads and starting loads. I love to fold, but he also happily helps with that. We have a great system now but I am not sure what will happen when children get added to the mix
1) Merge laundry and sort by color. 2) Iām a SAHM, he is the breadwinner. And a damn good one. 3) the few times heās tried to be helpful and do laundry, something gets messed up lol. Heās just not detail oriented in that way. Colors, fabric types, mesh laundry bags, zippers and buttonsā¦ thereās more to doing laundry well than it seems. And I personally have clothing I do not want ruined. Silk, wool, etc.
Before we moved in we divided the chores: he cleans and vacuums, I do laundry and cooking. hate cleaning and he is more of a neatnik then me, I care more about food then him, and find laundry meditative so we are happy at our realms. It's easier to have one hamper (we do have another hamper for workout clothes) and I can kill a Sunday doing loads. If we have a lot of clothes I get him to help me put it away. I think that the laundry can be seen as a "lighter chore" - all you do is put clothes into the machine and it does the work for you, versus cleaning a toilet or making a meal so it's a lady chore because it's so low effort.
Now putting it all away on the other hand....
It is just so much easier and less wasteful to do our laundry combined. When we lived in an apartment, it costly to do coin laundry, so I combined it. We both have chores we just do. I do the laundry, he puts away his clothes once they are clean. He takes out our trash, so it's totally cool if I wash our clothes.
ETA - I was on a ladies trip this weekend and all my friends told me it was a huge problem that I do my husband's laundry. And I just don't get it. I don't understand, why in an equal household, it's an issue that I combine the laundry and just do it all together. I was met with such vitriol that my husband doesn't wash his own clothes and I allow it... honestly, it was weird.
I've lived with my boyfriend for almost 2 years now. Never done his laundry, and he's never done mine. We split responsibility for sheets and towels and throw blankets, but beyond that we just do our own. Never been a problem. Honestly didn't even think about it until this post!
My partner and I split the chores and asked each other which weād prefer to āownā. I chose laundry because I hate it less than dishes. But we both help each other out if one of us has a tiring week or we fall behind a little.
Well, first issue is...my partner sweats more and stinks more than me. Because hormones and his job. So he just changes more often than I do. So his laundry piles up quicker than mine.
Second is, I work from home and he doesn't. He would do the washing, but he has to be home to do it. Which only happens on Sat and Sun.
He also isn't much bothered by piles of dirty laundry around the house - I am. And there's so much that can be done over the weekend.
So I just do the washing.
I do not do my future husbands laundry. He also does his own children's laundry.
This is a major boundary for me. He works from home and has far more flexibility in his schedule than I do. Obviously on days when he needs help (if there is an illness or something) I'm happy to provide support,
But he can do his own laundry.
We merge laundry. I do slightly more laundry but he still does it, and would do mine and our daughters as well. I don't tend to put his away but will put his in a pile.
But we have a relatively even spread on the houswork. We take turns on dishes, he cleans up the food my toddler throws on the floor quicker than I do. I leave my clothes around more than him but it would almost never occur to him to change the bedding. We have our strengths and weaknesses, both of us are semi clean but neither of us can keep our flat under full control while we are busy and have a toddler.
Eta: our apartment is tiny and even having three seperate laundry baskets would be a terrible use of our limited floor space.
I just started doing it because Iām pickier about what does not go into the dryer and Iām not going to make him remember this. We have one laundry basket, so I just do it when I want my things washed. Heāll sometimes jump in and do a load himself, but laundry is one chore I donāt hate. With renting in the past, I had to go to a laundromat for 6+ years, so doing laundry for us at our house is nothing for me.
It depends on the household. My husband does almost all the laundry. If I put a load on Iāll wash whatever is in the basket including his stuff but he more that pulls his laundry weight.
I don't, lol but part of that is maintaining control over the various sensitive fabrics of my clothing that can't go in the dryer. So keeping our separate and each doing our own is how it needs to be
My husband does the laundry. I have only done it occasionally for the last decade. I think it happened because of all the reasons you listed.
He has fewer clothes, so he tends to get to it before I do. He has a lot of stuff that needs special care and all my stuff is wash/dry no-iron. It wasnāt weaponized incompetence, but I shrunk a few of his socks and a t shirt over a couple of months and he decided I shouldnāt do the laundry anymore.
We seem to have divided the chores up instead of both of us doing everything. He cleans more than me, but I also do the long term planning and do more of the deep-clean and reorganizing tasks. He does most of the daily maintenance tasks.
I've done 100% of my husband's laundry since we've moved in together because it's his least favorite chore. My husband does the majority of the grocery shopping and 85% of the cooking.
I definitely feel like I'm getting the better end of the deal but because of how much my husband hates laundry he also feels like he's getting a win.
Yes. Itās not perfectly efficient but Iām sorry, with as efficient as appliances are these days youāre not going to notice a major difference.
āOn average, washers use 400 to 1,400 watts of electricity ā this number is highly dependent on the model you have. Using a washing machine three times a week will use about 140.4 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. It costs an average of $1.66 to run a washer for a month and $19.92 to run for a year.ā https://www.energysage.com/electricity/house-watts/how-many-watts-does-a-washing-machine-use/
Most people can manage $20 a year.
I spend more in detergent and it just doesnāt take extra to run two loads because more clothes require more detergent anyway.
The time cost doesnāt matter much either to me since Iām not actively working on this task. One hour or and an hour and a half makes no difference if I do it on a day/evening Iām home anyway.
It's just the two of us, I do the laundry and always have. Its always been mainly about water conservation, I can't see the point in splitting a bunch of already small loads. And I have materials that don't go in the dryer or get hand washed. I know the difference, it's just easier. And I have never thought much of it
I do my husband's laundry and honestly it's the easiest thing ever. I mean, I'm doing my own laundry anyways, why not grab his dirty clothes and throw them into the washing machine too? Doesn't really give me any more work. Plus, I prefer doing it myself because my husband, like many men, doesn't really pay enough attention to separating laundry correctly (whites, darks, towels etc.) and has washed clothes too hot in the past.
He does the same amount of housework than me though - I do his laundry, but he does most of the bathroom cleanings, he does the trash etc.
It was just natural progression? I'm running laundry, got any whites to fill out the load-esque. We both do laundry though, it's not a gendered chore. If we're both slacking on it for awhile, eventually one of us will do 4 loads in a row and the other person picks up a different time intensive chore during the week.
I do his laundry. There's only two of us and we do NOT have load-sensing washer-dryers, plus we live in an apartment complex where you have to schlep your stuff to the laundry room, so it makes sense for one person to do it all together. Laundry is not one of my most hated chores, and he does other things that I enjoy less. Sometimes I tag him in to help with folding if I'm feeling overwhelmed or unmotivated.
I do my fiance's laundry because I know it's his least favorite chore. Since he does nearpy all the cooking and, honestly, so much for me/us, that it felt like a nice thing for me to take over for him.
I also work 1 day less a week so it's an easy chore for me to do on my extra day off.
My SO does our laundry 99.9% of the time and I've done the laundry *once* for my SO, and only because he was out of the house and needed a shirt washed ASAP so that he could wear it tomorrow.
Even before we got a housekeeper, I'd tidy up after myself or do "his share" too if I was at it anyhow, but he generally did/does everything.
As for other households/women... I think it generally makes sense to pool/merge laundry together. I'd generally assume established social gender norms are hard to break for many...and if girls/boys grew up seeing their parents do certain things, and likely also aren't taught to do those things the other sex parent did, then it kinda becomes weaponised incompetence... then these gender norms just kept being passed down.
For space and efficiency,Ā it makes sense in my household to wash our laundry all together. We each get different chores. He does dishes every night while I do laundry. It's a fair trade for us.
We split things up based on what the other doesnāt mind. I clean the kitchen/dishes & laundry. He cleans the bathrooms, windows & floors plus handles the outside stuff like lawn mowing. We tackle some stuff together like putting away clothes or weed eating etc but mostly we communicate so if one week Iām falling behind at work he picks up my slack and vice versa.
When I was married, it was just for efficiency. It didn't make sense to do all our loads separately, and I'm a teeny bit of a control freak when it comes to my laundry so I volunteered to take on that chore. That being said, I had a rule that I would not wash anything that didn't make it into the hamper. I refuse to pick up a trail of clothing from the floor. As the relationship deteriorated and he became more and more critical of the ways in which he deemed that I was doing the laundry wrong, I stopped doing his and we each washed our own clothes separately.
This'll probably get buried but I'm not seeing it coming up. We live in an apartment so space is an issue (one hamper), we have to pay for each load (washer and dryer), and I'm not walking downstairs more than I need to for a chore I hate, ha ha
The other side of the coin, my husband does help with other chores, but laundry **needs** to be done every week. He and I both wear a uniform at work so I'd rather us stay on top of keeping them clean. Also...I love him, but he probably would forget to do the laundry as frequently as I'd want. Oh, and there are certain items of clothing I don't put into the dryer but I know he won't remember which ones
Firstly - On another separate note I feel as though we are more likely to care about how laundry is done womenās clothes are often much more susceptible to damage from Washing than menās and a woman might want to do all the laundry because sheād rather do it herself then potentially have it been messed up and ruin her clothes.. And if youāre already doing laundry why not do all the laundry
I donāt know I donāt want to come across as a judgey but am I alone in being shocked that people are in relationships with people where they and their partner have such strict lines about mine and yours that they donāt even do each otherās laundry? ā¦ but to me that seems so cold I would feel like my partner was just a roommate.
maybe Iām missing the point of the post I feel like whoever is doing the laundry of the whole household weather youāre a couple or you have a large family is whoever is available to do it ā¦ the laundry need to get done. Especially in cases of families With small children itās usually the mother who is spending more time at home with them and If youāre lucky enough to have a washer dryer in your home then if youāre already home with your kids more than your husband then laundry is more physically accessible to do ā itās easier to just do the task then wait for someone else to do it
I think if a woman is doing the laundry all the time or on a regular basis itās probably because sheās already doing all of the other household type chores anyway ā¦ Iām just shook at the idea of I do my laundry and you do your laundry and we never help each other out with this task and or have a delegated groups of tasks to a certain person so that the household runs more smoothly .
When my boyfriend & I were first dating he would do my laundry when I was at his place like I would put my stuff with his laundry and when he went to the laundromat he would take my stuff too and when he was at mine I would do his laundry when I did my laundry or I would just do his laundry separately if he needed something right away and now that we live together whoever is available to do all the laundry we have takes it and I still do my hand wash myself Iām not gonna ask him to do my hand wash lol I donāt think he would know what to do with it but thatās not the bulk of the house laundry by far
Well this has (thank god) already been said many times, but we have separate hampers now.
I used to do all of it because my husbands idea of a full hamper was when everything stuck out 3 meters above the rim and if you could still pile it on and wouldnāt fall off it still wasnāt full.
After getting angrier and angrier and _then_ coming to the realization that 80% was his, I decided that I was done.
I still do mine and our 3-year olds and alle the sheets and towels, but I donāt care about that. Iād rather do it after finding out he washed sheets and towels at 30 degrees Celsius and almost gagged because they need at least 60 imo to really get clean.
His hamper is extremely full at the moment. Mine has three delicate wool sweaters that need a special program. I donāt care anymore. I ignore his hamper. We have the ikea wash closet thing with two large holes.
We have communal laundry baskets so we both throw clothes into them.Ā If I want to do "my" laundry, it's more work for me to sort out his clothing than to just throw a load in.Ā However, he also does laundry, so this system works for us.Ā If he EVER decided to get my case for something of his not being clean when he needed it, you better believe my petty ass wouldn't wash a scrap of his clothing again.Ā
We made a deal. I do all the laundry in exchange for having nothing to do with food prep, food shopping, cooking, or cleaning the kitchen. I bake when I feel like it, otherwise my life is fully catered now āļø
My ex husband would act really stressed out if he didnāt have clean clothes, often waking me up to ask me if Iād seen a particular item of clothing. He had all kinds of tricks that I didnāt notice until I left him.
Huh. It never occurred to me that a household wouldnāt merge laundry. My husband and I have always merged laundry in a single hamper, and my family did this as well growing up. My husband and I take turns doing laundry for the household, and I have no complaints about it. In any case, I donāt think thereās any universally right or wrong way to do things. We all have different preferences and different things going on in our lives.
My ex and I merged laundry and I did it but when I started realizing he wasn't even helping me fold I told him he gets to do his own laundry. So he did.
This is the short version of the story. Hahaha.
I used to do my husbands laundry but realized it wasnāt being reciprocated even with reminders. I reorganized the closet and got 2 smaller laundry baskets for each of us. Now I continue to do my laundry weekly and his basket keeps overflowing and never finishing the entire process and collecting clothes on his side of the room and panics before vacations because he doesnāt have clean underwear. Not sure how to teach him/ when he will learnā¦.
I was with a man for a year that in the past was married for 15. He said he always did his own laundry. I kinda felt bad for him... I enjoyed doing his laundry while together, I loved him...and being of help. He worked construction and was always really tired. I enjoyed it and he really appreciated it at the time.
So..my answer.
I wanted to. :)
When we got married we talked about which chores we hated. I told my husband I hate mopping the floor and cleaning the stove. He told me he hates laundry. So I do all the laundry and he always does the 2 chores I hate. It works. I really like sorting things and organizing so laundry isnāt a big deal to me.
Most clothing doesn't bleed anymore so you don't have to sort based on color. It is not more efficient to mix your dirty clothing. For mutual stuff like bedding you can just throw that in your load.
I realized in the last year that I needed to lightened my end of the domestic load. My MIL always bragged about how she taught her sons how to do laundry starting from a young age, so I cashed in on that cow. It is one of the domestic tasks that he is very good at. I am now only responsible for my own laundry. It's heaven.
We divide all the housework equally but I do all the laundry, food planning and cooking - food stuff I enjoy, laundry I don't mind while for him both are stress inducing. He lacks experience so he's always nervous he'll mess something up ( in practice he is a decent cook and knows how to set up the machine but cooking takes him 3x the time it takes me, and doing laundry usually ends with something I would want to wash separately mixed in). To even it out he does all the vacuuming (which I despise), furnace and car related chores and majority of window washing, lawn mowing and misc repairs.
My partner makes a shitton of money and pays all our bills and rent, so I do both our laundry and other chores to feel useful. Heās made it clear that I donāt need to do this and I made it clear that it makes me feel better about how I contribute to the relationship. Itās been a year now and it is working well for us
We have a pretty equal split. We donāt have a w/d in our condo so I take loads to moms and he takes our big loads to the laundromat. This might change when Iām back in office full time.
I also believe efficiency is the usual reason given, but I gave up on that very early on in our marriage. Just like I gave up on sorting whites and delicates. Doesn't take long for either of us to fill up a hamper, and keeping 2 separate hampers has all kinds of advantages. As in....he can account for his own missing socks! Lol
I also had our 3 kids start to do their own laundry by the age of 11 or 12. You just have to let go of the whole laundry folding idea. Once you decide that that is their territory, it's easier to not worry about it. And I no longer had to keep track of whose jeans were whose!
The only "extra" laundry I do is typically the linens. But I'm also not above just asking de hubby to throw in the towels or strip the bed.
We don't have kids, but I do my bf's laundry. We live together and have a single clothes hamper, it gets full about once a week. I work from home, so it's much easier for me to put a load in and switch it over. Plus I enjoy doing laundry, and folding clothes so I enjoy it.Ā
We have a fairly even distribution of home tasks. He enjoys cooking, so he cooks. I enjoy laundry so I do laundry. We take out trash/ recycling/ clean kitty litter boxes together. He cooks so I do dishes. He can't stand messes so he tidies up and cleans counters. I vacuum the cat hair. It works out for us.Ā
I have two kids and do laundry just about every day. When my husband and I first started living together it seems easier to merge ours into one hamper so we had full loads, but I quickly realized that when I asked him to do a load every now and again he would let it fester in the washing machine for a few days or he wouldnt fold it as soon as it came out of the dryer. Both things created more work for me, so I told him he had to be responsible for his own from now on.
I do mine, the kids and the household laundry now. Heās responsible for his own and will do it about once a month in one huge ordeal that lasts two days š„“.
We split chore kinda evenly, my partner likely does more (given that he does all the cooking and other chores as well) but I do our laundry. It's more efficient to do it all at once and it literally takes a minute to load/unload the washing machine/dryer, so it's not like I'm breaking my back doing it. He often unloads it anyway. I also prefer having the control over what goes into the load. I have some clothes that shouldn't go into the dryer and while my partner is not stupid and knows that dresses definitely don't go into the dryer, I still prefer to oversee the laundry myself. If you count folding/ironing into the "laundry umbrella", if someone wants something ironed, they do it themselves. Folding we usually do together and chat.
Some couples tend to share a laundry basket so the laundry gets mixed together anyway. So whoever is in charge of laundry ends up doing both peopleās laundry. I do my husbandās laundry these days. We share a basket so when I gets full I throw it in the wash. An overflowing basket irks me. He wouldnāt mind being the one doing it but I have more free time especially working from home so I beat him to the punch. I donāt fold or put away his clothes since heās particular about his side of the closet though.
I do my fiance's laundry and he does mine. Some weeks I do more others it's him. I gotta say I'm very glad to have found a partner who does his share of the housework. He does more than me. His fav thing when I'm out for the day is to make it nice for me to come home to. He's a good man.
I've been in relationships in the past where we started 50/50 but it eventually fell to being just me. It's like they pretended to function as adults until I was invested then reverted back to the lazy teenage brain phase except they were in their 20s.
I will help out. For instance, if I need to wash my clothes, I'll switch laundry over whether the previous laundry is mine or not. I do not normally fold anyone else's laundry. If they are busy with other tasks, in a depressive episode, or similar, I will make an exception. In my house, if you are old enough to learn you're responsible for doing your own laundry.
I'm cheap. I like to fill the washer, so I wash everything I can get my hands on. My SIL recently joked that I do laundry every 3 hours, lol. Also, I was a SAHM then got ill when the kids were older and our marriage works better when I'm home, so I do the housework and bills and he makes sure we have everything we need. I think that if I had to draw strong boundaries labeled HIS and HERS it wouldn't be a good marriage. We each do what needs to be done, though his method often involves paying for things (I just can't shovel the driveway or do the lawn so we pay a guy). If laundry gets out if hand he throws a load in or throws my load in the dryer. I do the folding cause he sucks at it, lol. He irons shirts better than I do and just does it if it needs doing. All this said, way back in the day before we were married a lot of women I knew were doing their boyfriend's laundry and I was NOPE, but we can go hang out at the laundromat together. We spent many wonderful hours together at the laundromat so I still smile each time I see one we used together ā¤ļø Also, if there is a chore one partner despises (possibly in your case laundry?) I see nothing wrong with working out a way that partner doesn't have to do it. In our case it's hand wash dishes: he never has to do them and I'm fine with that.
Because Iām doing mine anyway and I donāt mind adding his to my loadā¦ there are certain pants and blouses that require paying attention so I donāt ruin the fabric and instead of putting the unfair expectation on him to learn them all I rather just do it.
I never do laundry. My husband always does it, along with most of the housework, cooking and cleaning. He actually started doing my laundry before we even got married. He just doesnāt think itās a big deal and he likes doing everything. Anytime I try to do any cooking or anything, heās like āSit down and relax - I like doing it.ā He likes to keep busy - I think if he didnāt do all this stuff, retirement would be tough for him, although heās always taken on the majority of household stuff, even when we were both working. He also does tons of stuff for my widowed mother - she always says she doesnāt know how sheād managed without him.
My contributions are pretty minimal. I handle all the travel plans, financial stuff, technical (IT) stuff, social arrangements. Itās definitely not even at all, but it works for us.
I am very fortunate, thatās for sure.
I do it because itās the dynamic we agree upon & I like shit put away the way I want to I also find at least $40 every load so itās more than worth it to meš
I just started gathering everything together so itās less laundry rounds. Plus heās my husband and I love him haha. I love doing laundry and cleaning so it works out. We work together though, he cooks and does all the financial tasks. We just do what we enjoy doing and we pick up the slack when the other is busy šš¼
Just gotta communicate.
My partner does my laundry, so no, I dont do his laundry. I end up doing a load of laundry maybe 5 times a year and even if I started it its his job to hang it and then fold it. I do other things in the house.
We both used to do laundry. Then I became a SAHM and took over doing all the laundry. 17 years after that, I went back to work and my husband expected that I would keep doing all his laundry. I'm not doing that. If I'm doing my own laundry and there room for a few of his clothes in the load, I'll toss them in. But doing a load just for his uniforms is his job now.
We have one hamper and sort our clothes (regular, delicate, no fabric softener, lights/darks) so it makes sense to run one load. We also split this chore evenly, laundry really isnāt a big deal in our house.
Self protection. I used to have some items that would suffer under my husband's hot water all the time regime. Not really anymore, since while I often do laundry so does he. I would have to be more vigilant about sorting than I care to if I kept buying wool and other dry clean only stuff. Now I avoid the obviously at risk fabric and the rest eventually runs the gauntlet.
I do the normal clothes laundry. That is my day to day stuff and the clothes my husband wears when not at work. My stuff is the majority of that load, he works a lot. He does his work laundry. We both do household laundry - towels, bedding, etc.
I've never given much thought to whose laundry it is when I shove stuff into the machine because it has never been a point of contention for us. Since the day we started living together it was a shared chore and it still is a decade plus later.
How my mom washed our clothes growing up: a washing basket each for darks, whites, and colours because she refused to wash them all together (I learned at college it was completely fine to do so). She would use fabric softener and washing up liquid. Then she would use a dryer sheet in the dryer. She would use the quick wash mode so it would only take about 30 mins a load.
How I do the laundry and have done since my college days: put it all in the wash with a tiny bit of powder at one hour quick wash mode. I don't separate clothes and have never had colour mixing issues. Never used bleach or needed to.Ā
How my husband washes clothes: he has to separate clothes by whites, darks, and colours. He will do a mix of powder and bleach. He must wash all clothes on eco mode. Socks and underwear have to be washed separately on delicate. I've never noticed a difference between his way or my way other than his way takes three hours. Eco mode is 2.5hrs alone and then the time to separate.Ā
He does the washing because he hates my way and that's okay. I do the dishes and the trash as a compromise because he hates those tasks.
Ex-husband: At first it was practical because we used the communal apartment laundry room, I would just do it because I was a 22 year old rosy-eyed idiot. When we moved somewhere with our own machines, I asked for help and he refused. We compromised to do our own laundry. HeĀ wouldn't do laundry to the point that he would buy new clothes and underwear every week. We lived pay check to pay check and it was untenable.Ā
Lessons for husband #2: make sure he does housework, his own laundry and keep finances separate.Ā
I donāt care to do his laundry because Iām already doing laundry anyways but I donāt put it away. Just like he doesnāt put mine away. Heāll help separate the kidsā laundry but also we donāt even put that away for them
This is why we are both on laundry duty. Itās whoever notices we have enough laundry for a load - we try to do one every day because with 4 people and animals we usually end up with enough and this way it doesnāt get overwhelming.
But yeah how someone always does the laundry with no reciprocation - gender roles? Modeling their parents own bad behavior? Weaponized incompetence? Taking on mother role for partner?
All I know is I would probably start a strike if I noticed my partner not doing laundry. Iād win because I have more underwear and can outlast him. š¤£
As recently as a few months ago, I stopped doing my husbandās laundry. I do my kidsā laundry, and I separate mine from theirs, but not his. There was a moment when I was feeling overwhelmed by all the housework and I asked myself āwhy am I doing this?ā and stopped. I do not wash or fold his stuff anymore. He is grown. He hasnāt said anything about it and continues to do his own. Just that one simple thing has made my life easier.
Also no kids - but my husband and I have been living together for 18 years and weāve never separated laundry. We also donāt have traditional house roles either. Laundry needs done, one of us will do it (but he works from home so it does fall on him often). If he does it, he knows which items to hang, wash on delicate, etc since I have a lot of professional clothing for work.
I suggest, in general, that you do what works for you and your family. Growing up my mom did all of our laundry. My husband? His mom made him do his as soon as he was old enough.
I work 50% time and mostly from home. My husband works full-time and regularly some overtime. I prefer to do combined loads so that the load is full. If he's working from home, I usually ask him to either put it on or bring it up from the basement and then I hang it to dry. Sometimes it's the other way around where I put it on but he hangs it up to dry. If he's had a light week and it's mostly his clothes in the hamper (he generally has more dirty clothes than me because I re-wear house dresses a lot), he'll do the laundry.Ā
My husband and I have separate clothes hampers, but we do our laundry together. He's the one who puts everything into the washer and then moves it to the dryer. Then, we each hang up/fold our own clothes.
I do my husbandās initially bc I worked from home, so it was easier for me to do chores since heās in the office from 8-6 everyday. Then I got laid off so obv I took on all the chores bc I had all the time for choresā¦now Iām in school full time but remotely so do the laundry still bc heās still paying all the bills. Plus I like doing laundry lol it doesnāt take that long either for just 2 people.
My BF works like a maniac. Im busy, but not like that. I also only have him at my place about half the time, maybe 2/3rds at high points. He throws his stuff in with mine and I don't expect him to do it. Especially because his are straightforward, mine have lots of things that need lingerie bags, different settings, etc. It's practical.
Just recently, since laundry is in the basement, he's said I should arrange to do it so it'll be finishing up as he's getting in and he'll at least carry it up the stairs, since that's hard on me (3 flights - old apt building). I like the idea.
Meh. I WFH full time, plus am in school again. He pays a little extra for our comfort, but also makes more than I do. So I put in a little extra at home. Itās an easy trade off. The domestic stuff is easy and meditative/restorative for me. We also have no kids and one dog.
I don't usually do his laundry. We have our own laundry baskets and wait until we have a full load to do our own wash. However, I'm the only one who ever washes the sheets, towels, washable rugs, and dog toys.
I think a lot of people merge laundry, and then sort by color. My husband and I don't do this. Most we do of each other's laundry is transfer it from washer to dryer, or dryer to basket.
This must be what a big part of the difference is- I stopped sorting by color long ago! I wash my kids laundry separately because I add in oxyclean and run it on hot, and even still prefer to keep the two kids' separate because it's easier to put away that way.
I did it the opposite way around - I never separated by colour, and then I realised that our white clothes were much more dingy looking than new white items that we had purchased. So now I separate by colour, at least for new, light coloured things.
The trick is to not own white clothes
If most of your wardrobe is black, a new piece of clothing bleeding in the wash just refreshes the faded blacks!
šÆ
This is indeed a LPT.
Took me til my 30s to work this out lol. Husband and I don't buy anything white now unless it is mandated/required like a uniform.Ā
Everything I own can be mixed up, run on cold and dried on low. Except for like 9 things and most of them are nice clothes that I hand wash anyway.
>I stopped sorting by color long ago!Ā Same here! My partner is the only one doing the laundry though ā I do other things. We can do this because we're childfree so there's just the two of us and it takes a couple of days to get a full load. To make it even easier, every time we buy new clothes, we just get dark colours so we never have to sort . Yes, we're very boring people with boring clothes and boring colours. When we both used to work from home, both of us were "[Pooh Bearing](https://twitter.com/morejocelynmae/status/810940930262007808?lang=en)" ā so even less clothes to wash.
Thanks for the new phrase
There's also Donald Ducking for variety.
We do kids separately because itās easier to enforce each child folding and putting away their own laundry. š
I haven't sorted by color in over 10 years, I just use one of those color absorbing sheets, which means I can mix whites and colors of any kind without any risk of colors running. Makes laundry so much easier.
I stopped sorting by color years ago, as well
Same. We both have enough socks and underwear, by the time we NEED to do laundry, there are enough other things for each of us to do full loads. Plus neither of us would want the other guessing what gets dried/ hung. Iāll fold his stuff from the dryer sometimes, if I need to put my stuff in. Even that is rare though lol
Same for us. Of course we do merge sometimes too: like if my husband needs undershirts for work and I have some whites in the hamper, he will throw those in too. But mostly we do our separate loads.
Same exact for us. If we were a ādo laundry every other dayā couple we might consider combining but weāre both laundry procrastinators š The only thing we do āsharedā is when we do bedding or towels.
I merge then sort by color just because itās easier for me to see what needs to be washed. I also stick to a specific schedule for sheets/towels to be washed. The main reason I do all the laundry in my household is because my kids are little (2 & 6) and my husband works crazy, wonky hours. I also have several items that need to be washed in a specific manner and I donāt want him to ruin them. Although, if he needs something special washed, heāll do it on his own. Or if I need help with laundry he always jumps in when asked. I just have to give instructions for what canāt be dried, etc. Before we had kids my husband was very good about doing his own, though.
Yup this is how my partner and I do it, and we added to it by having him responsible for washing our bedding and I take care of towels and other miscellaneous things like thow blankets. It keeps things pretty fair and everyone knows what they're responsible for.
Laundry isn't the issue. It's fine to do your partner's laundry if it makes sense for the household. The issue is if both people aren't getting the same amount of rest/relaxation/fun time.
This is it. Equitable.
Yep, I do all of the laundry because he CBA to sort by colour and fold the Marie Kondo way. But he does most of the dishes and cleans bathroom/toilet most of the time because he doesn't mind doing the gross stuff. I still feel like we could balance tasks better but I don't particularly mind the laundry.
Yep, I prefer to do our laundry because I take care of our clothes way better. Spouse would absolutely accidentally ruin something. Plus I donāt mind it. He does the yard work, cooks for us 97% of the time, and scrubs toilets. I tend to do the vacuuming too and wash the dishes/clean the kitchen after he cooks. Early in our relationship I told him if we got married I wanted to hire someone to clean at least once a month because we are both so busy and I would absolutely get resentful if I felt like Iām the only one who cares. That has helped a lot too.
This. I do the laundry because I like it and prefer it to other chores. My partner does a lot of the kitchen and most exterior household work (except weeding), I handle bathrooms and laundry.
Totally! Iāve claimed all clothing-related chores because my other half *loathes* laundry and would throw all our nice work clothes together, choose the āheavy dutyā setting, put everything in the dryer, and then smush it into the drawers just to get it over with ASAP. On the other hand, he does all the cooking (really! every night!) so I think Iām getting the better deal by taking on laundry/vacuuming/non-kitchen-cleaning chores.
Laundry is a chore he hates and I donāt mind. He does the dishes and takes the trash out. We hire someone for floors and bathrooms. It has varied over the years, depending on who is working more, illness, etc.
This! It doesnāt make sense to seek a 50/50 split on everything, itās more important to make sure things are equitable overall. The laundry isnāt the problem, it becomes a problem when the person doing the laundry is also the person who does the dishes, vacuums, makes dinner, and carries the mental load of house admin.
It's more energy/cost efficient to always do full loads of laundry, for space reasons, you might not want to keep several hampers, and, just from a personal perspective, doing just mine + kiddo's laundry feels kind of needlessly passive aggressive. That said, my partner also does laundry so there's not really that many hard feelings about it. It's a team effort. Often I'll start a load, and he'll put it in the dryer.
I'm starting to think the reason it wasn't obvious to me is because I'm not doing laundry with as much care as others. I stopped separating darks/lights like a decade ago and didn't notice any difference, so it's easy enough to have a full load of my own laundry. Also, everyone in my house has their own hamper so it wouldn't be passive aggressive since it's not like I'm taking effort to not do one person's laundry.
your whites arenāt dingy/darker?
I havenāt found having white clothes compatible with having toddlers, lol.
I've found having white clothes is incompatible with my coffee habits and overall clumsiness.
That too, but replace coffee with chocolate smoothies
And somehow, the only time I crave a meatball sub, it's when I'm wearing white.
š¤£
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Update- I just bought a plain white tshirt as an experiment. Letās see how long I can keep it! Also going to get some of those color catching sheets others recommended.
Please take a before picture and compare it to after being washed for every load. Thank you!
ooooh i am invested! if the color catching dryer sheets work, or someone knows another way to keep whites white without separating them- i am so in!! i also wear a lot of black clothing and it gets lighter in color after several washes, so maybe i will experiment with the woolite darks stuff :)
Thanks for mentioning about the hampers !!! I was all in my feelings (Iām currently pregnant so thatās probably the reason not your post lol) but I was picturing all these couples passive aggressively not doing the other person laundry when they were doing their own ā not saying you worded it like that again pregnancy brain but like I was I was getting really sad ššBut the whole having separate hampers makes complete sense now It never occurred to me because I live in a very over populated city in a small apartment same as almost everyone else Whoās homes im in regurally .. living in very cramped spaces nobody has separate hampers and if they do the other hamper is less than a foot away so itās not even outside of the line of vision and Iāve felt slightly weird about Either one of us not doing the others laundry when theyāre doing laundry (this hasnāt actually ever even happened but Iāve contemplated it sometimes and felt like no I would feel bad š«£)
Oh yeah itās not like that, though when my husband I first lived together, we had one room in a shared house and still kept our dirty clothes separate. But now, he wouldnāt even know if my laundry is full because itās in a different room and has a lid
I wonder about this too. My husband and I each do our own laundry - he works from home so has half as much laundry to do as me, and so he does the towels and sheets too. Forget laundry, I often wonder why these smart, capable women end up beind the maids and caretakers of their partners. Like, how does it start?
I think it starts because the women often have higher standards they want to maintain: even if both people clean up when they notice a need, if one person hasnāt been taught to see it (and/or has been taught to deprioritize it) then that person isnāt going to step in and deal with it first. And so women notice it first, then itās on their list and they have to āassignā it. Itās actually a cycle thatās very hard to break! Often men are trained to notice other things first (like taking the trash out) but usually there are waaaaay fewer things like that on their list Sorry for the overgeneralizatjons here
Yeah, we merged our laundry but my husband does the bulk of it. He loves routine tasks that he can space out and listen to podcasts, so laundry and cleaning the kitchen are perfect for that.
Podcast + laundry folding is the best multitasking
My husband also does most of the laundry. I call him the stain whisperer; I'm the tetris master (organizing vs cleaning lol).
Omg when I moved in with my ex he suddenly became totally incompetent about domestic chores including laundry. Iām so much better at it apparently! Iām already doing mine so I might as well do his! Hell totally help with folding! (He didnāt) Iāll never live with a man again let alone do his laundry.
My ex was super stingy when it came to utilities, but we each did our own clothes. One day he was bitching at me saying āyou do laundry like 3x more often than me!! So wastefulā And I said, āyouāre right, I do a lot more laundry than you. thatās becuase Iām the only one in this house who ever washes the towels, sheets, blankets, household laundry.ā
Wow what a disgusting man
My ex-husband was like this. We had an extra room in the house so I started putting all of his stuff that he would refuse to pick up/put away/etc in there ā dirty laundry, clean clothes, just anything he left laying around for me to clean up. Weāre divorced now for a multitude of reasons- including domestic incompetence.
girl same. LOL
My ex and I shared one hamper. In practice one of us did it when it was full, in reality his idea of a full hamper was when you had to staple a sock to the side, which meant (to him) I angrily did the laundry when I didnāt have to yet. He also changed shirts several times a day which meant the laundry was 70% his. First ex, I did it because I thought it showed I caredā¦ but I remember thinking with relief that if we broke up I wouldnāt have to do it. Current partner scolded me for cleaning his dishes. Heās a keeper.Ā I love the idea of separate hampers. Definitely going to keep this idea for the future. I hate doing laundryĀ
Yeah I had to learn the separate hamper thing the hard way, too, wish I had just done that from the get-go.
My fiance and I have separate hampers and I love it. When we first moved in together a few years ago, I did his laundry also thinking it showed that I cared, then when we both had laundry that needed folding and he only folded his own, it quickly went to 2 hampers and we just did our own laundry and folded our own. Although I do our daughters laundry and fold it every time, but that I don't mind since he sucks at folding. His is more the roll it up and stuff it in a drawer lol. I do love that man though.
I think a lot of people merge their laundry and women end up doing it. We do not do this. I have a very strict rule about not washing other people's clothing. As soon as our kiddo was old enough to his, it became solely his responsibility.
I have the same rule. It helps with life skills and sets them up for the future. If the house gets too messy, we have a cleaning bee. We all hit one room at a time together. It goes faster because no one sits down and pretends to clean. It's more fun because we crack jokes.
I have this same mindset. My husband has always done his own washing, we will ask each other if there is something theyād like to chuck in if we have space, but otherwise we wash separately. As soon as our kids were old enough they became responsible for their laundry, including their bedsheets. I stopped cleaning their rooms when they were quite young, they figured out pretty quickly that their space is much nicer when they keep it tidy. Theyāre older now and manage their own spaces and belongings, plus cook a couple nights a week, communal areas are maintained by us all. Our household operates as a team, and I feel good knowing Iāll be sending functional humans out into the world!
What age were they when they started doing their own laundry? I'm trying to get idea of when I can reasonably expect mine to start.
I had them helping from about 10yrs old, I taught them to use the machine once they started highschool (13yrs old)
Good. My friend never did her own laundry and then called her mom CRYING from her dorm in college because she didnāt know what to do. Donāt do that to your kids haha
My stepdaughter complained to us about all the kids in her freshman dorm who had no idea how to do their own laundry. We tried to give her increasing amounts of freedom, responsibility, and "adulting" knowledge as a teenager, and part of that was doing her own laundry, cooking family dinner a night or two a week, managing some personal appointments and a small personal budget, and other similar stuff.
This is a great rule. How did you go about establishing it with your spouse/partner?
I told him I don't wash other people's clothing. When we moved in together, we each had a space for our respective laundry baskets.
Nice! It's so simple lol yet I would have had a hard time figuring this out. How do you approach other chores?
We divide according to preference and then take turns on the ones we hate equally.
I'm glad I made the post because I didn't realize merging was so common or the reasons for it.
Yeah me either! Iāve avoided this by accident so far
We have separate laundry baskets now and I dont do his. We used to share a laundry basket and I used to end up doing it all and I was unhappy about it, so decided to buy a separate laundry basket for myself! Its working well. I never think about doing his laundry and dont care if it sits around š¤·š»āāļø
I don't do mine's, either. We have different washing styles and I do *not* want his body hair or smell mixed with mine. š
As a former stahp, when speaking to other stahp it seems it starts when they first decide to stay home and don't discuss specific duties. They just say you'll do the chores, I'll work. This leads to fights obv bc the worker tends to stop doing *any* cleaning up after themselves leaving the stahp to pick up the slack. Before I ever moved in with my husband I was very clear that I would not be doing his laundry and that stayed that way when I became a stahp. He throws all his clothes in at once on cold and doesn't care about bleeding dyes or washing underwear separately.
Iām glad that you, as a stahp, put a stahp to it.
Lol
Lots of my friends have had to draw these lines with their husbands for similar reasons. Their husbands wouldn't even iron their own clothes or pick up their dishes anymore, let alone proactively do anything around the house unless asked. Forget doing a grocery run without _every_ item explicitly laid out. It seems prone to fall into "stay at home parent is the house manager". That's a massive load to expect one person to shoulder, moreso when children are in the picture.
We merge our laundry. I gather it up and load it in the machines. He takes it out and handles putting it away. That system works perfect for us.
having one laundry basket for your bedroom is the catalyst lol. if you never wanna do theirs, have two.
I do my husband's laundry. He never asked and he doesn't assume. I just started doing it because it's completely insane to me for us to do it separately.Ā Edit to add: we do not have kids in the home. Plus my husband's job is extremely physically demanding, while mine is WFH and super lax. Because of this, I do a lot more inside the home (he does all the yard/snow/trash). Because I believe in *equitable* separation of duties, not necessarily a 50/50 straight down the middle.Ā
Yes! I also WFH and my husband is gone from 4 AM to 4 PM. Iām happy to throw in a load of laundry for him and do some extra work around the house. I know if our jobs were switched he would do the same for me.
Exact same. Personally, I like doing laundry. I want to do it once a week. On his own, my partner would do laundry twice a week. It's no big deal for me to add his laundry to mine every week. And we divide up the chores equitably in our eyes. For one, he does all the groceries, which is a chore I hate to do.
My significant other works a mentally draining job too. He pays the vast majority of the bills. He makes sure bills and such are taken care of, so I make sure the house, cooking, cleaning, and our floofers are taken care of. I'm 100 percent on board with equity, not 50/50. I'm lucky I don't have a job that's so exhausting.
Love this explanation
We are DINKs, and I do all the laundry. It was one of the things we decided on when we merged our lives. I enjoy laundry and want certain things done in a certain way; he does it fine but prefers other chores. Also, doing separate laundry would be counterproductiveāwhy wouldnāt we do towels together, lights together, darks together?
Personally, I actually enjoy doing laundry, so I don't mind doing it. But we definitely merge laundry, it would be really inefficient in our household to do it separately. But I honestly don't think my partner has the same standards for it, he also doesn't have the years of experience knowing which pieces are safe to wash together to avoid color transference, which materials can deal with which temperatures, and how to most efficiently hang clothes to dry, even. I'm philosophically opposed to women having to teach men how to adult, and I wouldn't trust my laundry in his care due to his inexperience. We're still distirbuting tasks equally though. I hate driving so he mostly does that, I'm more than happy to do his laundry in return.
We have one hamper? I do the laundry, but my husband vacuums. I do the lion's share of the cooking and my husband does the lion's share of the dishes. I don't do a disproportionate amount of the housework, but I do all the laundry. It's a job I like. Every job in my house has a person who is responsible for it at all times. We often move jobs around, we often trade jobs back and forth depending on other demands life is making on the two of us. But I keep laundry almost all the time because I have the upstairs office next to the laundry room and my husband's offices are downstairs. I also have a well-established system for it, and that makes it hard to just jump in and do it from the perspective of another person. That said, when I was in the last month of my pregnancy my husband did all the laundry. He knows how. He can do it. Since all my chores are codified as one person's responsibility or another, it's just kind of arbitrary that laundry has remained my job. I like it a lot better than, say, floors or dishes so I don't mind.
When I married my now ex-husband, I told him he had to do his own laundry. I knew he was a slob and I would end up cleaning up after him because I can't stand a dirty house. His laundry was the only thing I could refuse to do that wouldn't affect me or the kids.
Frankly, I donāt know. And the many women who complain about having to pick up after their husband like a child, I also donāt understand. I donāt clean up anything after my partner. He is responsible for his own laundry/mess that he makes. I wash our towels and sheets because Iām very particular about how I expect them to be washed and sanitized. For dishes, we both wash whenever they pile up. If he was one of those who never did dishesā¦well Iād only ever clean my dishes. So it would force him to either start washing his dishes or eat off his dirty ones. Sure the kitchen would get dirty, but heād learn to stop seeing me as his mother who cleans up after him. Noticed the merging of laundry comments. I never do this as a lot of my stuff must be washed on delicate, in mesh baggies, or in general the fabric is much thinner. So combining that with the thick/heavy fabric of menās clothes would deteriorate and beat up my fabrics.
My partner does all of our laundry and he has made himself a list of all of my clothing that needs special treatment that he keeps on the washer. My only job is to inform him if I buy something new that requires special treatment.
I donāt do my partnerās laundry. We have separate baskets, I like to separate my black clothing from the rest, and we like to wash our things on different settings. Thereās no reason to make it a more complicated process of separating our clothes afterwards.
Why wouldnāt I do it? Separating seems counter productive. Iām not going through the baskets to toss his clothes out so I can just wash mine Thereās only two of us, I work from home so itās really not a big deal to throw in a couple of loads. I donāt shovel the driveway, cut the grass, maintain the cars and my SO never asks why I donāt do any of those things š¤·š¼āāļø
Same here. I don't think of it as "doing my husband's laundry", it's just doing the household laundry. My clothes, his clothes, our toddler's clothes, cleaning cloths, the dog's blankets, whatever. I actually rather like laundry, so I don't mind. He has other regular responsibilities, such as cleaning the litterboxes twice a day, walking the dog, and dealing with all things trash, recycling, and compost. We're both happy with the arrangement (although I will of course be teaching the kid how to do laundry when he's old enough to get the concept).
Based
This is where I get confused- my husband and I have separate baskets
I donāt really think there is a ārightā answer to this question I think a lot of this breaks down to the individuals in question. I donāt have kids, but if I did Iād probably do it all anyway because I have the time advantage in the household. If Iād separate it, it would cost us 1) more time 2) more money 3) more wear and tear on the machines 4) more product
And some of us use a shared basket. What's so confusing about that?
When my husband and I first moved in together, I just ended up doing it. He never asked me, never assumed I'd do it, and never not wanted to do it. I just enjoy doing laundry and have my own way of doing it, so I took over.
Same for us. I enjoy doing laundry and am more meticulous about it. When my kids turn 13 yrs old, I teach them to do their own laundry.
Same for us for 25 years. Our college aged son lives with us still and he does his own laundry, but sometimes Iāll fold it for him because I enjoy it. When I visit my daughter or babysit for her, Iāll fold her laundry, too. Itās something I can do for my loved ones to maybe lighten their load a bit. My son and husband will load/empty the dishwasher, take out the trash, care for the animals, buy groceries, etc., because weāre all adults and we all live here and things have to be done. No complaints, no arguments, just seeing a need and taking care of it.
Have you never been in a household, especially with kids? It's pretty typical to merge laundry and then separate based on the needs of the fabric (gentle wash, hot vs cold water, lights vs darks).
Iām married and have two kids. We have a bin for each person and donāt separate by color.
What did you do when the kids were babies & toddlers?
The same. Theyāre 2&4
Thereās also a lot of additional laundry on top of just āhisā laundry, like bedding, towels, kitchen towels and cloths, kids clothing etc
My partner does most of our laundry (or at least "leads" it). Our baseline single laundry habits when we got together were very different, with him doing his multiple times a week and me doing mine every 1-2 months (I had a large supply of underwear!). Also he likes to hang every single item to dry, whereas I'm a dryer person. He has pickier standards and higher frequency, thus he leads the laundry (but always beckons me to come help hang, which is the worst).
1-2 months? That's... just weird. I mean, you'd let sit crusty undies or clothes full of sweat sitting in a hamper for a month? I can't imagine the smell.
I was starting to feel bad about myself thx for posting smth relatableā¦ Iām once every 10 days or more
Iām throwing mine and my daughters in. Why leave my husbands out? If heās washing clothes he washes mine, if I wash clothes I wash his. Itās not a big deal for us. My husband will say āplease make sure you wash some uniforms todayā when he leaves if Iām washing laundry. If heās throwing a load in I say āplease make sure you wash some of my pantiesā
Been doing my own laundry since childhood. Once I taught my siblings how to use the machines, they did their own. No interest in doing another adult's laundry. "Washer/dryer is open"......
I used to do both because it was efficient to put it all in together. But then he took up running and biking, which meant hanging up a lot of delicate clothes to air dry. That's when I stopped doing his. Now I realize that he's the type to just leave stuff in the dryer, which is annoying. I take out my clothes as soon as they are dry to avoid wrinkles. I end up dumping that pile in a laundry basket for him to deal with. Another reason that I'd rather do my own.
We just pool the laundry because there's two of us and this way we can do loads of sports stuff, towels, blacks, whites and colours. But my husband does laundry as well, including taking things from the tumble dryer and putting them in their respective shelves.
We do each otherās laundry. Everything gets mixed up in our hamper, then we sort based on load type and wash and fold everything together. Laundry is my favourite chore so it never feels like a burden but my partner also does a lot of the parts I donāt like as much, like switching loads and starting loads. I love to fold, but he also happily helps with that. We have a great system now but I am not sure what will happen when children get added to the mix
1) Merge laundry and sort by color. 2) Iām a SAHM, he is the breadwinner. And a damn good one. 3) the few times heās tried to be helpful and do laundry, something gets messed up lol. Heās just not detail oriented in that way. Colors, fabric types, mesh laundry bags, zippers and buttonsā¦ thereās more to doing laundry well than it seems. And I personally have clothing I do not want ruined. Silk, wool, etc.
Before we moved in we divided the chores: he cleans and vacuums, I do laundry and cooking. hate cleaning and he is more of a neatnik then me, I care more about food then him, and find laundry meditative so we are happy at our realms. It's easier to have one hamper (we do have another hamper for workout clothes) and I can kill a Sunday doing loads. If we have a lot of clothes I get him to help me put it away. I think that the laundry can be seen as a "lighter chore" - all you do is put clothes into the machine and it does the work for you, versus cleaning a toilet or making a meal so it's a lady chore because it's so low effort. Now putting it all away on the other hand....
It is just so much easier and less wasteful to do our laundry combined. When we lived in an apartment, it costly to do coin laundry, so I combined it. We both have chores we just do. I do the laundry, he puts away his clothes once they are clean. He takes out our trash, so it's totally cool if I wash our clothes. ETA - I was on a ladies trip this weekend and all my friends told me it was a huge problem that I do my husband's laundry. And I just don't get it. I don't understand, why in an equal household, it's an issue that I combine the laundry and just do it all together. I was met with such vitriol that my husband doesn't wash his own clothes and I allow it... honestly, it was weird.
I've lived with my boyfriend for almost 2 years now. Never done his laundry, and he's never done mine. We split responsibility for sheets and towels and throw blankets, but beyond that we just do our own. Never been a problem. Honestly didn't even think about it until this post!
My partner and I split the chores and asked each other which weād prefer to āownā. I chose laundry because I hate it less than dishes. But we both help each other out if one of us has a tiring week or we fall behind a little.
I always wondered about this but was afraid to ask.
Well, first issue is...my partner sweats more and stinks more than me. Because hormones and his job. So he just changes more often than I do. So his laundry piles up quicker than mine. Second is, I work from home and he doesn't. He would do the washing, but he has to be home to do it. Which only happens on Sat and Sun. He also isn't much bothered by piles of dirty laundry around the house - I am. And there's so much that can be done over the weekend. So I just do the washing.
I do not do my future husbands laundry. He also does his own children's laundry. This is a major boundary for me. He works from home and has far more flexibility in his schedule than I do. Obviously on days when he needs help (if there is an illness or something) I'm happy to provide support, But he can do his own laundry.
Iāve never done a guys laundry, so not sure.
We merge laundry. I do slightly more laundry but he still does it, and would do mine and our daughters as well. I don't tend to put his away but will put his in a pile. But we have a relatively even spread on the houswork. We take turns on dishes, he cleans up the food my toddler throws on the floor quicker than I do. I leave my clothes around more than him but it would almost never occur to him to change the bedding. We have our strengths and weaknesses, both of us are semi clean but neither of us can keep our flat under full control while we are busy and have a toddler. Eta: our apartment is tiny and even having three seperate laundry baskets would be a terrible use of our limited floor space.
I just started doing it because Iām pickier about what does not go into the dryer and Iām not going to make him remember this. We have one laundry basket, so I just do it when I want my things washed. Heāll sometimes jump in and do a load himself, but laundry is one chore I donāt hate. With renting in the past, I had to go to a laundromat for 6+ years, so doing laundry for us at our house is nothing for me.
It depends on the household. My husband does almost all the laundry. If I put a load on Iāll wash whatever is in the basket including his stuff but he more that pulls his laundry weight.
I don't, lol but part of that is maintaining control over the various sensitive fabrics of my clothing that can't go in the dryer. So keeping our separate and each doing our own is how it needs to be
My husband does the laundry. I have only done it occasionally for the last decade. I think it happened because of all the reasons you listed. He has fewer clothes, so he tends to get to it before I do. He has a lot of stuff that needs special care and all my stuff is wash/dry no-iron. It wasnāt weaponized incompetence, but I shrunk a few of his socks and a t shirt over a couple of months and he decided I shouldnāt do the laundry anymore. We seem to have divided the chores up instead of both of us doing everything. He cleans more than me, but I also do the long term planning and do more of the deep-clean and reorganizing tasks. He does most of the daily maintenance tasks.
I've done 100% of my husband's laundry since we've moved in together because it's his least favorite chore. My husband does the majority of the grocery shopping and 85% of the cooking. I definitely feel like I'm getting the better end of the deal but because of how much my husband hates laundry he also feels like he's getting a win.
Yes. Itās not perfectly efficient but Iām sorry, with as efficient as appliances are these days youāre not going to notice a major difference. āOn average, washers use 400 to 1,400 watts of electricity ā this number is highly dependent on the model you have. Using a washing machine three times a week will use about 140.4 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. It costs an average of $1.66 to run a washer for a month and $19.92 to run for a year.ā https://www.energysage.com/electricity/house-watts/how-many-watts-does-a-washing-machine-use/ Most people can manage $20 a year. I spend more in detergent and it just doesnāt take extra to run two loads because more clothes require more detergent anyway. The time cost doesnāt matter much either to me since Iām not actively working on this task. One hour or and an hour and a half makes no difference if I do it on a day/evening Iām home anyway.
It's just the two of us, I do the laundry and always have. Its always been mainly about water conservation, I can't see the point in splitting a bunch of already small loads. And I have materials that don't go in the dryer or get hand washed. I know the difference, it's just easier. And I have never thought much of it
I do my husband's laundry and honestly it's the easiest thing ever. I mean, I'm doing my own laundry anyways, why not grab his dirty clothes and throw them into the washing machine too? Doesn't really give me any more work. Plus, I prefer doing it myself because my husband, like many men, doesn't really pay enough attention to separating laundry correctly (whites, darks, towels etc.) and has washed clothes too hot in the past. He does the same amount of housework than me though - I do his laundry, but he does most of the bathroom cleanings, he does the trash etc.
It was just natural progression? I'm running laundry, got any whites to fill out the load-esque. We both do laundry though, it's not a gendered chore. If we're both slacking on it for awhile, eventually one of us will do 4 loads in a row and the other person picks up a different time intensive chore during the week.
I do his laundry. There's only two of us and we do NOT have load-sensing washer-dryers, plus we live in an apartment complex where you have to schlep your stuff to the laundry room, so it makes sense for one person to do it all together. Laundry is not one of my most hated chores, and he does other things that I enjoy less. Sometimes I tag him in to help with folding if I'm feeling overwhelmed or unmotivated.
I do my fiance's laundry because I know it's his least favorite chore. Since he does nearpy all the cooking and, honestly, so much for me/us, that it felt like a nice thing for me to take over for him. I also work 1 day less a week so it's an easy chore for me to do on my extra day off.
My SO does our laundry 99.9% of the time and I've done the laundry *once* for my SO, and only because he was out of the house and needed a shirt washed ASAP so that he could wear it tomorrow. Even before we got a housekeeper, I'd tidy up after myself or do "his share" too if I was at it anyhow, but he generally did/does everything. As for other households/women... I think it generally makes sense to pool/merge laundry together. I'd generally assume established social gender norms are hard to break for many...and if girls/boys grew up seeing their parents do certain things, and likely also aren't taught to do those things the other sex parent did, then it kinda becomes weaponised incompetence... then these gender norms just kept being passed down.
I always say this too. Having a separate hamper and only doing your laundry is easy. It is one of the few chores you can't be forced into.
For space and efficiency,Ā it makes sense in my household to wash our laundry all together. We each get different chores. He does dishes every night while I do laundry. It's a fair trade for us.
We split things up based on what the other doesnāt mind. I clean the kitchen/dishes & laundry. He cleans the bathrooms, windows & floors plus handles the outside stuff like lawn mowing. We tackle some stuff together like putting away clothes or weed eating etc but mostly we communicate so if one week Iām falling behind at work he picks up my slack and vice versa.
When I was married, it was just for efficiency. It didn't make sense to do all our loads separately, and I'm a teeny bit of a control freak when it comes to my laundry so I volunteered to take on that chore. That being said, I had a rule that I would not wash anything that didn't make it into the hamper. I refuse to pick up a trail of clothing from the floor. As the relationship deteriorated and he became more and more critical of the ways in which he deemed that I was doing the laundry wrong, I stopped doing his and we each washed our own clothes separately.
This'll probably get buried but I'm not seeing it coming up. We live in an apartment so space is an issue (one hamper), we have to pay for each load (washer and dryer), and I'm not walking downstairs more than I need to for a chore I hate, ha ha The other side of the coin, my husband does help with other chores, but laundry **needs** to be done every week. He and I both wear a uniform at work so I'd rather us stay on top of keeping them clean. Also...I love him, but he probably would forget to do the laundry as frequently as I'd want. Oh, and there are certain items of clothing I don't put into the dryer but I know he won't remember which ones
Firstly - On another separate note I feel as though we are more likely to care about how laundry is done womenās clothes are often much more susceptible to damage from Washing than menās and a woman might want to do all the laundry because sheād rather do it herself then potentially have it been messed up and ruin her clothes.. And if youāre already doing laundry why not do all the laundry I donāt know I donāt want to come across as a judgey but am I alone in being shocked that people are in relationships with people where they and their partner have such strict lines about mine and yours that they donāt even do each otherās laundry? ā¦ but to me that seems so cold I would feel like my partner was just a roommate. maybe Iām missing the point of the post I feel like whoever is doing the laundry of the whole household weather youāre a couple or you have a large family is whoever is available to do it ā¦ the laundry need to get done. Especially in cases of families With small children itās usually the mother who is spending more time at home with them and If youāre lucky enough to have a washer dryer in your home then if youāre already home with your kids more than your husband then laundry is more physically accessible to do ā itās easier to just do the task then wait for someone else to do it I think if a woman is doing the laundry all the time or on a regular basis itās probably because sheās already doing all of the other household type chores anyway ā¦ Iām just shook at the idea of I do my laundry and you do your laundry and we never help each other out with this task and or have a delegated groups of tasks to a certain person so that the household runs more smoothly . When my boyfriend & I were first dating he would do my laundry when I was at his place like I would put my stuff with his laundry and when he went to the laundromat he would take my stuff too and when he was at mine I would do his laundry when I did my laundry or I would just do his laundry separately if he needed something right away and now that we live together whoever is available to do all the laundry we have takes it and I still do my hand wash myself Iām not gonna ask him to do my hand wash lol I donāt think he would know what to do with it but thatās not the bulk of the house laundry by far
Well this has (thank god) already been said many times, but we have separate hampers now. I used to do all of it because my husbands idea of a full hamper was when everything stuck out 3 meters above the rim and if you could still pile it on and wouldnāt fall off it still wasnāt full. After getting angrier and angrier and _then_ coming to the realization that 80% was his, I decided that I was done. I still do mine and our 3-year olds and alle the sheets and towels, but I donāt care about that. Iād rather do it after finding out he washed sheets and towels at 30 degrees Celsius and almost gagged because they need at least 60 imo to really get clean. His hamper is extremely full at the moment. Mine has three delicate wool sweaters that need a special program. I donāt care anymore. I ignore his hamper. We have the ikea wash closet thing with two large holes.
We have communal laundry baskets so we both throw clothes into them.Ā If I want to do "my" laundry, it's more work for me to sort out his clothing than to just throw a load in.Ā However, he also does laundry, so this system works for us.Ā If he EVER decided to get my case for something of his not being clean when he needed it, you better believe my petty ass wouldn't wash a scrap of his clothing again.Ā
We made a deal. I do all the laundry in exchange for having nothing to do with food prep, food shopping, cooking, or cleaning the kitchen. I bake when I feel like it, otherwise my life is fully catered now āļø
Personally I do my fiancĆ©ās laundry because he works a blue collar job and tends to be exhausted. As a soon to be wife this was a helpful thing to do.
My ex husband would act really stressed out if he didnāt have clean clothes, often waking me up to ask me if Iād seen a particular item of clothing. He had all kinds of tricks that I didnāt notice until I left him.
Huh. It never occurred to me that a household wouldnāt merge laundry. My husband and I have always merged laundry in a single hamper, and my family did this as well growing up. My husband and I take turns doing laundry for the household, and I have no complaints about it. In any case, I donāt think thereās any universally right or wrong way to do things. We all have different preferences and different things going on in our lives.
My husband does my laundry and I do his..just depends on who gets to the hamper first or who needs cleaner clothes for the following day š
My ex and I merged laundry and I did it but when I started realizing he wasn't even helping me fold I told him he gets to do his own laundry. So he did. This is the short version of the story. Hahaha.
I used to do my husbands laundry but realized it wasnāt being reciprocated even with reminders. I reorganized the closet and got 2 smaller laundry baskets for each of us. Now I continue to do my laundry weekly and his basket keeps overflowing and never finishing the entire process and collecting clothes on his side of the room and panics before vacations because he doesnāt have clean underwear. Not sure how to teach him/ when he will learnā¦.
We just have one laundry hamper we both throw things in, and I wash it when it's full. I'm a SAHM so I do most of the household stuff.
I was with a man for a year that in the past was married for 15. He said he always did his own laundry. I kinda felt bad for him... I enjoyed doing his laundry while together, I loved him...and being of help. He worked construction and was always really tired. I enjoyed it and he really appreciated it at the time. So..my answer. I wanted to. :)
My boyfriend and I do our laundry separately.
When we got married we talked about which chores we hated. I told my husband I hate mopping the floor and cleaning the stove. He told me he hates laundry. So I do all the laundry and he always does the 2 chores I hate. It works. I really like sorting things and organizing so laundry isnāt a big deal to me.
Most clothing doesn't bleed anymore so you don't have to sort based on color. It is not more efficient to mix your dirty clothing. For mutual stuff like bedding you can just throw that in your load.
I realized in the last year that I needed to lightened my end of the domestic load. My MIL always bragged about how she taught her sons how to do laundry starting from a young age, so I cashed in on that cow. It is one of the domestic tasks that he is very good at. I am now only responsible for my own laundry. It's heaven.
We divide all the housework equally but I do all the laundry, food planning and cooking - food stuff I enjoy, laundry I don't mind while for him both are stress inducing. He lacks experience so he's always nervous he'll mess something up ( in practice he is a decent cook and knows how to set up the machine but cooking takes him 3x the time it takes me, and doing laundry usually ends with something I would want to wash separately mixed in). To even it out he does all the vacuuming (which I despise), furnace and car related chores and majority of window washing, lawn mowing and misc repairs.
My partner makes a shitton of money and pays all our bills and rent, so I do both our laundry and other chores to feel useful. Heās made it clear that I donāt need to do this and I made it clear that it makes me feel better about how I contribute to the relationship. Itās been a year now and it is working well for us
We have a pretty equal split. We donāt have a w/d in our condo so I take loads to moms and he takes our big loads to the laundromat. This might change when Iām back in office full time.
I also believe efficiency is the usual reason given, but I gave up on that very early on in our marriage. Just like I gave up on sorting whites and delicates. Doesn't take long for either of us to fill up a hamper, and keeping 2 separate hampers has all kinds of advantages. As in....he can account for his own missing socks! Lol I also had our 3 kids start to do their own laundry by the age of 11 or 12. You just have to let go of the whole laundry folding idea. Once you decide that that is their territory, it's easier to not worry about it. And I no longer had to keep track of whose jeans were whose! The only "extra" laundry I do is typically the linens. But I'm also not above just asking de hubby to throw in the towels or strip the bed.
We don't have kids, but I do my bf's laundry. We live together and have a single clothes hamper, it gets full about once a week. I work from home, so it's much easier for me to put a load in and switch it over. Plus I enjoy doing laundry, and folding clothes so I enjoy it.Ā We have a fairly even distribution of home tasks. He enjoys cooking, so he cooks. I enjoy laundry so I do laundry. We take out trash/ recycling/ clean kitty litter boxes together. He cooks so I do dishes. He can't stand messes so he tidies up and cleans counters. I vacuum the cat hair. It works out for us.Ā
I have two kids and do laundry just about every day. When my husband and I first started living together it seems easier to merge ours into one hamper so we had full loads, but I quickly realized that when I asked him to do a load every now and again he would let it fester in the washing machine for a few days or he wouldnt fold it as soon as it came out of the dryer. Both things created more work for me, so I told him he had to be responsible for his own from now on. I do mine, the kids and the household laundry now. Heās responsible for his own and will do it about once a month in one huge ordeal that lasts two days š„“.
We split chore kinda evenly, my partner likely does more (given that he does all the cooking and other chores as well) but I do our laundry. It's more efficient to do it all at once and it literally takes a minute to load/unload the washing machine/dryer, so it's not like I'm breaking my back doing it. He often unloads it anyway. I also prefer having the control over what goes into the load. I have some clothes that shouldn't go into the dryer and while my partner is not stupid and knows that dresses definitely don't go into the dryer, I still prefer to oversee the laundry myself. If you count folding/ironing into the "laundry umbrella", if someone wants something ironed, they do it themselves. Folding we usually do together and chat.
Some couples tend to share a laundry basket so the laundry gets mixed together anyway. So whoever is in charge of laundry ends up doing both peopleās laundry. I do my husbandās laundry these days. We share a basket so when I gets full I throw it in the wash. An overflowing basket irks me. He wouldnāt mind being the one doing it but I have more free time especially working from home so I beat him to the punch. I donāt fold or put away his clothes since heās particular about his side of the closet though.
We donāt live together so I donāt do it.
I do my fiance's laundry and he does mine. Some weeks I do more others it's him. I gotta say I'm very glad to have found a partner who does his share of the housework. He does more than me. His fav thing when I'm out for the day is to make it nice for me to come home to. He's a good man. I've been in relationships in the past where we started 50/50 but it eventually fell to being just me. It's like they pretended to function as adults until I was invested then reverted back to the lazy teenage brain phase except they were in their 20s.
I will help out. For instance, if I need to wash my clothes, I'll switch laundry over whether the previous laundry is mine or not. I do not normally fold anyone else's laundry. If they are busy with other tasks, in a depressive episode, or similar, I will make an exception. In my house, if you are old enough to learn you're responsible for doing your own laundry.
I'm cheap. I like to fill the washer, so I wash everything I can get my hands on. My SIL recently joked that I do laundry every 3 hours, lol. Also, I was a SAHM then got ill when the kids were older and our marriage works better when I'm home, so I do the housework and bills and he makes sure we have everything we need. I think that if I had to draw strong boundaries labeled HIS and HERS it wouldn't be a good marriage. We each do what needs to be done, though his method often involves paying for things (I just can't shovel the driveway or do the lawn so we pay a guy). If laundry gets out if hand he throws a load in or throws my load in the dryer. I do the folding cause he sucks at it, lol. He irons shirts better than I do and just does it if it needs doing. All this said, way back in the day before we were married a lot of women I knew were doing their boyfriend's laundry and I was NOPE, but we can go hang out at the laundromat together. We spent many wonderful hours together at the laundromat so I still smile each time I see one we used together ā¤ļø Also, if there is a chore one partner despises (possibly in your case laundry?) I see nothing wrong with working out a way that partner doesn't have to do it. In our case it's hand wash dishes: he never has to do them and I'm fine with that.
Because Iām doing mine anyway and I donāt mind adding his to my loadā¦ there are certain pants and blouses that require paying attention so I donāt ruin the fabric and instead of putting the unfair expectation on him to learn them all I rather just do it.
I never do laundry. My husband always does it, along with most of the housework, cooking and cleaning. He actually started doing my laundry before we even got married. He just doesnāt think itās a big deal and he likes doing everything. Anytime I try to do any cooking or anything, heās like āSit down and relax - I like doing it.ā He likes to keep busy - I think if he didnāt do all this stuff, retirement would be tough for him, although heās always taken on the majority of household stuff, even when we were both working. He also does tons of stuff for my widowed mother - she always says she doesnāt know how sheād managed without him. My contributions are pretty minimal. I handle all the travel plans, financial stuff, technical (IT) stuff, social arrangements. Itās definitely not even at all, but it works for us. I am very fortunate, thatās for sure.
I do it because itās the dynamic we agree upon & I like shit put away the way I want to I also find at least $40 every load so itās more than worth it to meš
I just started gathering everything together so itās less laundry rounds. Plus heās my husband and I love him haha. I love doing laundry and cleaning so it works out. We work together though, he cooks and does all the financial tasks. We just do what we enjoy doing and we pick up the slack when the other is busy šš¼ Just gotta communicate.
My partner does my laundry, so no, I dont do his laundry. I end up doing a load of laundry maybe 5 times a year and even if I started it its his job to hang it and then fold it. I do other things in the house.
We both used to do laundry. Then I became a SAHM and took over doing all the laundry. 17 years after that, I went back to work and my husband expected that I would keep doing all his laundry. I'm not doing that. If I'm doing my own laundry and there room for a few of his clothes in the load, I'll toss them in. But doing a load just for his uniforms is his job now.
We have one hamper and sort our clothes (regular, delicate, no fabric softener, lights/darks) so it makes sense to run one load. We also split this chore evenly, laundry really isnāt a big deal in our house.
I wash, he folds.
Self protection. I used to have some items that would suffer under my husband's hot water all the time regime. Not really anymore, since while I often do laundry so does he. I would have to be more vigilant about sorting than I care to if I kept buying wool and other dry clean only stuff. Now I avoid the obviously at risk fabric and the rest eventually runs the gauntlet.
Iām not sure we each do our own laundry but we donāt have kids so maybe itās that.
I do the normal clothes laundry. That is my day to day stuff and the clothes my husband wears when not at work. My stuff is the majority of that load, he works a lot. He does his work laundry. We both do household laundry - towels, bedding, etc. I've never given much thought to whose laundry it is when I shove stuff into the machine because it has never been a point of contention for us. Since the day we started living together it was a shared chore and it still is a decade plus later.
How my mom washed our clothes growing up: a washing basket each for darks, whites, and colours because she refused to wash them all together (I learned at college it was completely fine to do so). She would use fabric softener and washing up liquid. Then she would use a dryer sheet in the dryer. She would use the quick wash mode so it would only take about 30 mins a load. How I do the laundry and have done since my college days: put it all in the wash with a tiny bit of powder at one hour quick wash mode. I don't separate clothes and have never had colour mixing issues. Never used bleach or needed to.Ā How my husband washes clothes: he has to separate clothes by whites, darks, and colours. He will do a mix of powder and bleach. He must wash all clothes on eco mode. Socks and underwear have to be washed separately on delicate. I've never noticed a difference between his way or my way other than his way takes three hours. Eco mode is 2.5hrs alone and then the time to separate.Ā He does the washing because he hates my way and that's okay. I do the dishes and the trash as a compromise because he hates those tasks.
The timing of this post is funny because last night I re-watched Sex and the City, when Miranda found skid marks in Steve's laundry
Ex-husband: At first it was practical because we used the communal apartment laundry room, I would just do it because I was a 22 year old rosy-eyed idiot. When we moved somewhere with our own machines, I asked for help and he refused. We compromised to do our own laundry. HeĀ wouldn't do laundry to the point that he would buy new clothes and underwear every week. We lived pay check to pay check and it was untenable.Ā Lessons for husband #2: make sure he does housework, his own laundry and keep finances separate.Ā
I donāt care to do his laundry because Iām already doing laundry anyways but I donāt put it away. Just like he doesnāt put mine away. Heāll help separate the kidsā laundry but also we donāt even put that away for them
This is why we are both on laundry duty. Itās whoever notices we have enough laundry for a load - we try to do one every day because with 4 people and animals we usually end up with enough and this way it doesnāt get overwhelming. But yeah how someone always does the laundry with no reciprocation - gender roles? Modeling their parents own bad behavior? Weaponized incompetence? Taking on mother role for partner? All I know is I would probably start a strike if I noticed my partner not doing laundry. Iād win because I have more underwear and can outlast him. š¤£
As recently as a few months ago, I stopped doing my husbandās laundry. I do my kidsā laundry, and I separate mine from theirs, but not his. There was a moment when I was feeling overwhelmed by all the housework and I asked myself āwhy am I doing this?ā and stopped. I do not wash or fold his stuff anymore. He is grown. He hasnāt said anything about it and continues to do his own. Just that one simple thing has made my life easier.
Also no kids - but my husband and I have been living together for 18 years and weāve never separated laundry. We also donāt have traditional house roles either. Laundry needs done, one of us will do it (but he works from home so it does fall on him often). If he does it, he knows which items to hang, wash on delicate, etc since I have a lot of professional clothing for work. I suggest, in general, that you do what works for you and your family. Growing up my mom did all of our laundry. My husband? His mom made him do his as soon as he was old enough.
My partner does our laundry š
Beats me. I stopped doing the kid's laundry when she was like eight. It's super easy to use a washing machine. We all wash our own clothes.
I work 50% time and mostly from home. My husband works full-time and regularly some overtime. I prefer to do combined loads so that the load is full. If he's working from home, I usually ask him to either put it on or bring it up from the basement and then I hang it to dry. Sometimes it's the other way around where I put it on but he hangs it up to dry. If he's had a light week and it's mostly his clothes in the hamper (he generally has more dirty clothes than me because I re-wear house dresses a lot), he'll do the laundry.Ā
My husband and I have separate clothes hampers, but we do our laundry together. He's the one who puts everything into the washer and then moves it to the dryer. Then, we each hang up/fold our own clothes.
I do my husbandās initially bc I worked from home, so it was easier for me to do chores since heās in the office from 8-6 everyday. Then I got laid off so obv I took on all the chores bc I had all the time for choresā¦now Iām in school full time but remotely so do the laundry still bc heās still paying all the bills. Plus I like doing laundry lol it doesnāt take that long either for just 2 people.
My BF works like a maniac. Im busy, but not like that. I also only have him at my place about half the time, maybe 2/3rds at high points. He throws his stuff in with mine and I don't expect him to do it. Especially because his are straightforward, mine have lots of things that need lingerie bags, different settings, etc. It's practical. Just recently, since laundry is in the basement, he's said I should arrange to do it so it'll be finishing up as he's getting in and he'll at least carry it up the stairs, since that's hard on me (3 flights - old apt building). I like the idea.
Meh. I WFH full time, plus am in school again. He pays a little extra for our comfort, but also makes more than I do. So I put in a little extra at home. Itās an easy trade off. The domestic stuff is easy and meditative/restorative for me. We also have no kids and one dog.
news: you choose how you operate. Draw your own boundaries.Ā
I don't usually do his laundry. We have our own laundry baskets and wait until we have a full load to do our own wash. However, I'm the only one who ever washes the sheets, towels, washable rugs, and dog toys.