For every 5 ecomodders...
 

theres someone like this



She does 15 loads of laundry each week
(shes married with no kids)

clicky poll - how often do you wash towels?


to each their own, but it makes me a little sad since I conserve water so actively

Ah yeah, i give em a scald in front of the stove and they're good to go! Gotta keep the tumble dryer use to a minimum right? And some bacteria is ok too.....builds up the immune system. That could be taken as sarcasm but i'm serious. I grew up on a farm and pretty much swam in cow poo. Never met my family doctor. Well, there was this one time when my home made go-kart didn't go too well....or rather, stop too well... heh!
But yeah, a lot of people get paranoid about washing clothes. I'm constantly putting the kids clothes back on the shelf for use the next day, even if there is a little dirt on there. Dotie Pet is always giving out over it. And even with all my efforts there is a ton of washing being done every day. Whats the solution?

ollie

The solution is to disable the wash machine.

I wear clothes multiple times before they hit the wash. I don't stink either. I have grubby work clothes for when I'm working, and decent clothes for making appearances in society.

Clothes don't get that filthy in one day. "Bacteria" or whatever cooties these people freak out over, are irrelevant unless you are working in the AIDS unit at the hospital.

I think not washing and especially not putting clothes through the dryer so much very very much extends their lives. All that lint in the dryer screen is, well, your fabric.

Later in the thread mrsbooboo reveals that she's nucking futs.

I get the same feeling re: for every 5 ecomodders... every time I'm out and about. No... make that every time I'm conscious, as I can hear the madness outside from 5am-1am M-F before I even get out of bed. For every 1 ecomodder there are 1,000,000 *******s out there rippin' it up like there's no tomorrow.

tell me about it

i do maybe 3 loads/week and i re-use clothes like the rest of us

i dont stink either and i even go gym 3-4x a week


our living space is rather small so we dont air dry as much as we want

sadly, its on our wish list

Well, I'm sorry, but I qualify as a person that washes their clothes every time I wear them. Well, that is not exactly true. I wash my shirts every time I wear them. I wash my pants once a week. I smell if I don't though.

Off topic, my breath smells bad when I brush my teeth, but smells good when I don't. What's up with that?

That meat flavored toothpaste is for CATS.

I usually never type this, but this situation warrants an OMG... 15 loads of laundry A WEEK?? I wear all my jeans twice before I wash them, and I wind up doing like two loads of laundry every week and a half or so. And I use my towel for two weeks at a time, since you're clean when you use a towel. I don't wash it until it starts smelling bad.

You probably have gingivitis. The sugar in the toothpaste is feeding the bacteria in your mouth, which then produce gasses that make your breath smell unpleasant. The cure is to rinse with baking soda/water or peroxide twice a day for a week, and keep brushing regularly.

My teeth are all but gone, unfortunately, I didn't find out that I had calcification problems until it was too late to take care of it. The calcium in my blood literally burned the enamel off my teeth, making my brushing efforts essentially futile. I've since stopped even bothering (years ago) and just rinse once in awhile with Bacardi 151 and cinnamon/nutmeg or use some peroxide and then follow it with a good chew on a cinnamon stick.

There are many days I don't do anything that would require that I actually take a shower, so unless I feel like getting wet, I just wash up before bed time.

Often, in a week, I don't get a full load of laundry. My wife doesn't either, although we do the laundry once a week, full load or not, and she separates our clothes because mine are often very dirty/greasy. I usually grab a pair of "dirty pants" and wear them all week, and then I have one or two pairs of "clean" pants that I also wear. All my clothes are basically the same, so noone really ever notices anyway. My under shirts only get worn again if I didn't sweat in them noticeably, or if I didn't wear them for very long. Socks get changed every day, if not twice a day. I hate wet feet, and survival training kinda drilled clean/dry socks into my head. I stopped wearing skivvies several years ago because I was lazy and didn't want to do more laundry than I had to, not to mention saving the cost of replacement, since those, I would buy new. I don't think I've bought new clothes in years. I always get used clothes from places like the Salvation Army Thrift Store. It's cheaper, and they're every bit as good.

The cloth diapers get washed as a half load once a day, so that uses alot of water, but not nearly as much as would be used to make/ship/market/sell/buy the equivalent amount of disposables. They soak in water/soap/borax solution from the time they're taken off, and that gets dumped into the washer with the diapers, because there's nothing wrong w/ the water/soap that's in the bucket. The washer then doesn't have to fill up as much (5 gallons less per load).

I use a dryer for my clothes, because I don't like the way they feel after being dried outside. Often, I don't like the smell either. As few clothes as we use, it shouldn't really be a problem, though. I have been known to hang clothes outside during the winter, though. They dry fairly quickly because the air is usually quite dry during the winter.

I have a small washer, and do less than a load a week. Waterless hand cleaner is good for greasy spots, but I don't know how it compares to the official products. I may be clean when I use the towels, but they do accumulate dead skin. When laundry will freeze outdoors, I hang it up inside because the house needs the humidity. I put the shirts and pants on hangers while wet, and move them to the closet when dry. Experts say that the fewest minutes go into drying when clothes are loosely piled on a drying rack and stirred occasionally.

I too don't like laundry that dries cardboard stiff on the line. So I put it all on the line anyway until there's just a very little bit of moisture left, then toss it all in the dryer. The extra handling is hardly any extra work, the dryer fluffs it all up, and the dryer doesn't have to run very long.

That's a great idea, Frank!

The alternative option that I've used before is to dry them hanging in the wood room (wood stove fire dries things very quickly) until they're just damp enough to be tolerable to wear, then toss them in the dryer on air dry cycle, sucking heat from the wood room through the intake. That was back when my Father's dryer was in a warmer part of the house, though. I'm still trying to get him to move the freezer back into the colder part of the house, the root cellar, to take advantage of the cooler environment.

Anyway, doing that with the dryer on air-dry just fluffs the fabric up enough to make them tolerable to wear comfort wise. I used to wear very heavy denim pants, and they were abhorrent when line dried.

Well... truth be known... I do laundry about once a month through a combination of re-wearing stuff and just having lots of clothes and bedding to rotate through, and letting it pile up in the basket. Then I do several loads in succession when my laundry day finally comes up. It's a more efficient means of using both the water heater and the dryer... and my time too. There isn't enough clothesline for it all, so I'll hang the sheets and whatnot first, then clothes right on top of them, none of it with any clothespins, just flop 'em over the line then go do something else for the day. When I get back to it, it's mostly dry but of course some dampness under the "overlap" which is just dandy for the fluffing process in the dryer anyway.

I hate clothes pins. I used to get them just to fling them at the neighbor's house off the line when we lived in suburbs when I was a kid. Was always pretty fun. :)

Cleaning is her life!! I didn't have the nerve to read that thread to the end, but I wonder what's with her: was she writing just for laughs (doesn't have too many posts on that forum), or is she a bored housewife? If the latter, then I feel sorry for her, and maybe her hubby (though he doesn't seem too concerned). I'd be worried not only about so much going to waste with the laundry and cleaning, but also about all the chemicals in the house and environment.

Many years ago I was talking with an Amercian father of two teenaged daughters, and he told me that his kids change their clothes 3-4 times a day! They come home from school and change. After a few hours of just sitting in the house they change and go out with friends. Come back and change. Etc. They've been known to put something on, look in the mirror, change their mind and put something else on, and throw the previous clothes into the hamper! The guy said his wife is always doing laundry. I was quite young then, so I just shook my head. Today I would have asked him where, in his opinion, is the source of the problem? Who brought those kids up and are they responible for their behavior?

My Wife often asks me how long I've been wearing a shirt or jeans. Like others here, I have house clothes and civilised clothes, the first usually being once-civilised clothes which I'm not allowed to wear in civilisation anymore. My policy is to not wear my house clothes for more than a week at time. If a t-shirt starts getting less fresh, then I use it 2-3 times for running in the morning and then it's gone. The civilised clothes are usually worn for only a few hours at a time, and after 3-5 cycles go to the hamper.

In our house of three we do about two washes (lights and darks) per 7-10 days. The Wife always tries to do the laundry before her dad can get at it, since he always uses more detergent and sets the temperature to 70-80*C. Today's detergents are just fine in 40*C, or even in 30*C, so a higher temp only means longer wash time, more energy, and a shorter lifetime for the clothes.

My Step-Dad likes to joke: "But if I turn my undies inside-out, then I can wear them for at least another two weeks" ;)

I don't know where all this psychotic clothes changing and washing comes from, but I believe it's related to germ/microbe phobia that's especially bad among mothers towards children. Maybe it's Johnson & Johnson's fault; they're continually bombarding moms with advertisements and commercials showing how laden their environment is with animated monster germs unless they liberally apply the latest anti-whatever miracle product. :rolleyes:

It wasn't all that long ago when people took annual or semi-annual baths!!! :eek: And that is why perfume was invented.

The happy medium is somewhere between.

I always do like frank. Actually I let it all dry outside and then I make it tumble for 2-3 minutes. No need for hot air, just the tumblingmotion will break the stiffness.

Who said your clothes are dirty after you've been wearing them for a day? Why is that? Why not 2 days? Why not 12 hours? Why not a week? I think this is all arbitrary. As long as my clothes do not smell or are not visually dirty, I don't feel a need to wash them.

Oh and regarding teeth, brush em, and brush em properly with an up-down motion, not front to back brushing, that is actually very bad for your gum and it wears down your enamel really bad. You also need to floss. Remember, floss only those you wanna keep. My wife used to be a dental hygienist.

i do the line dry thing with the dryer finish as well
makes em fluffier


but weather has a lot to do with it

when i was in PA i could go a few days with the same clothes

you sweat less (or not at all) + the cold nulls a lot of smell


take me somewhere warmer (last week it was almost 90) and you sweat
which is why we live in shorts and a shirt
and the 3 piece cages hop from AC to AC

I do a load a week. Sometimes two. I'll wash shirts worn all day after 2 or so wearings. House-clothing I sometimes yank from the hamper. Workout clothing gets reused because it's already rank, and I usually am the only one around. Plus I don't care what my workout clothing smells like because working out makes you sweat, and sweat smells. It gets washed at the end of the week with everything else.

Doing 15 loads a week is crazy. Blech.

I usually wear things a few times before washing them. Between being cold blooded at 97.0 and living in Michigan, I don't sweat much. In the summer I have a tshirt and flannel at the minimum. Winter I usually have that plus a heavy flannel plus a heavier hooded flannel. As I sit I'm at 3 layers. The outer layers rarely need washed, they don't have a place to get dirty.

For towels, I try to use one several times, till the wife takes it since she doesn't like it hanging there. I read somewhere years ago "you get out of the bath/shower, you dry your CLEAN body with a CLEAN towel. The towel is not necessarily dirty". At the very minimum, one can use the towel they last dried off with as the floor towel for next time.

My sister was just complaining last weekend about how her water bill is like $80 a month. But she's one of those like the OP was talking about.

so the first girl went from 15 to 5 loads a week

NMMR:Critique my new laundry system

then another crazy chimed in with 37 loads a week (3 people)



and here i was feeling bad since i (only occasionally) do 3 loads a week

As a single guy...

I do laundry when the clothes run out, its usually a couple loads over a few days, after a few weeks.


strange about the teeth. breathe bad after brushing, not good. The stiff alcohol, old school, or regular mouth rinse is good. I have injury work related that leave me in bad shape there..brushing with flouride is a modern think, the alcohol rinse isn't. A thought to ponder.

A lady that recently left the place I am renting was obsessed with laundry. I did notice the thumping machine is silent alot more lately, like my city streets. I actually want to here some noise...

If you want noise and yet be in the middle of nowhere, you can stay at my place.

In fact, I'll sell it to ya.