The Bosch finished the second load of the morning at 11:48 with the little tune it plays, and by the time I'm writing this the towels are in a warm basket on my lap, with Mabel making a claim on the top one. It's Wednesday in the Easter holidays, which means towel day, with both kids in the lounge and the telly on.
We moved into this house in April 2017, which makes this the eighth year of the same washing routine, give or take a machine. I've tried fiddling with it. Every few months I read about a new system, and every time I come back to this one, because it does one thing no other system has managed: it keeps the laundry basket from getting to the top of the stairs.
Three wash days, nine loads
We do about nine loads a week, in three goes of three, on fixed days:
- Monday: the weekend's clothes, the whites and tea towels, and Friday's school uniform (which has sat in the basket all weekend).
- Wednesday: towels, the kids' T-shirts and pyjamas, and bedding on alternate weeks (ours one time, the children's the next).
- Saturday: Isla's PE kit and her swimming bag, Rob's work clothes, and whatever dark things are left.
Most loads go on the Eco 40-60 programme, which takes just under three hours and sounds like a very long time until you stop watching it. The Bosch is 8kg, bought in January 2023 for £429, and I fill it until there's about a hand's width at the top. If I cram it, the clothes come out smelling of last week.
Between April and September, if it's dry, everything goes on the rotary line in the back garden. The cover came off the rotary line on Sunday, and Monday's whites were the first load of the year to dry outside. From October it's the heated airer and the dehumidifier in the lounge, which is a different story.
The baskets the kids actually use
This is the part I'm proudest of, which probably says something. There are three baskets on the landing: lights, darks and towels. Each has a coloured dot stuck on the front, because Alfie couldn't read "darks" and now doesn't have to. Rob's work socks and shirts have a separate bag on the back of the cupboard door, because a postie's socks are their own category.
Each child has a laundry bag on their bedroom door handle. On Sunday night, they carry it to the landing and sort it into the right basket. Alfie carries; Isla sorts and checks pockets. The pocket check has a bounty: anything she finds in a pocket that isn't a tissue goes in her money jar. The haul so far this year is 65p, a shell, two pencil sharpeners and half a rubber.
What I've stopped worrying about
I used to wash everything at 60 degrees, to be on the safe side. Now it's 40 for nearly all of it, with the occasional 60 for towels and bedding. I use an Aldi non-bio liquid, which works out at about 9p a wash, and a big box of bio powder for the muddy PE kit. No fabric softener, because we've never missed it.
I also stopped washing things that aren't dirty. Jumpers get a sniff and a hang. That alone knocked off a load or so a week, and I'd like it noted that nobody has complained.
What still doesn't work
Odd socks. We have a basket of them, a lonely collection that seems to grow overnight, and Rob insists a match will turn up. Term time is tighter too: Friday's uniform is washed on Monday and has to be dry by Tuesday night, and if it rains all week I'm drying a pinafore with a hairdryer at 7:50 on a Wednesday morning, which is not a happy sound.
The towels in my lap came in off the line at half past two. They went out at 12:15 in a breeze that made the whole garden smell of cut grass, and Alfie has just come in to tell me the cat has been on the clean pile. She has. It's been that kind of Wednesday.
