Does everyone else's teens do their own laundry?
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Anonymous
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I hate doing laundry. I don't why. When they were teens they were perfectly fine doing their own. I would run what they needed if super busy and they asked me. I taught them how to iron dress clothes. We have a steam dryer. And I use it to quickly get out wrinkles.
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Anonymous
| My kids have been doing their own laundry since they were in late elementary (thanks, neighborhood mom, who told me to implement this). I've noticed that the teen years require a lot more management to make sure it gets done. There is no sorting or folding, but the clothes are clean and eventually put where they belong. |
Anonymous
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Mine do. I do offer to help if they have a heavy exam or sports period. I often do my son’s school uniforms on Fridays after school just so there is not a panic Sunday night or, more likely, he wears very wrinkled dirty clothes.
And I secretly sometimes re-do my son’s loads to use the laundry sanitizer to help with odor. He doesn’t really smell, but his laundry is horrific. I had had to implement a “last call” so that a load is not going while I try to go to bed since the laundry closet is right outside my bedroom door. |
Anonymous
| No. I do mine and kids laundry normally, as it's inefficient to do it all separately, we have a large capacity washer and dryer. That said, if needed, teens know how to do it. My DH is the one who doesn't want to do his, because it's the "woman's job", but I only do his when he does the dishes, haha! |
Anonymous
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I taught DD when she was in 6th grade, thinking that if she had to do her own laundry she wouldn't be so cavalier about trying on an outfit and throwing it in the hamper.
She does her own laundry, but it has not influenced whether she wears something for a hot minute and then into the hamper it goes! Oh well! |
Anonymous
| Everyone in our house does their own laundry. My husband does our linens, son does his. I hate folding laundry so no one wants to wait around for me.😆 |
Anonymous
| I taught both my kids how to do their own. The 16 year old wakes up and does hers every Saturday morning. My 12 year old can but is less reliable so I still tend to do hers with her though sometimes will tell her go grab a load from her hamper and start it. There’s a lot of things I will do for my kids but this is one of those things I saw as a life skill that didn’t benefit them for me to do forever. At some point you do need to be able to identify when you need to wash clothes, sort your clothes, clean them and put them away. |
Anonymous
| My kids do not do laundry. They will start when they go to college, just like I did. |
Anonymous
| I don't see how it's efficient to have everyone do their own laundry - in our 4 person household, I do 4-5 loads of clothes per week (1 whites, 1 delicates, 2-3 colors) - we'd need a lot more clothes if everyone individually amassed enough dirty laundry to run their own load(s)! I do have my newly-10 year old stripping her bed and putting the sheets in the wash every weekend. My 4 year old likes to help move clothes from the washer to the dryer. And I don't fold/put away clothes - everyone gets a pile of clean stuff on their bed to put away. |
Anonymous
It’s so much more efficient for us! For better or worse, many clothes that you own now are at least partly synthetic materials. They don’t bleed and there is no need to separate clothes. We haven’t had an issue with colors bleeding in many many years. Each person dumps out their hamper, does a load, takes that load back to their room. You’re also spending time separating the load by person once clean, even if you don’t fold it. If there’s a load in the dryer and I need to get in, I unload, see it’s fully my son’s and then move it to his room. Done. If each load is mixed, you need to stay on top of it all the time. Which, good for you! We used to end up with a crazy pile on our guest bed. And it took each person longer to find their clothes in that mess. Now, either we decide to live out of a basket or we spend literally 5 minutes to put away our own clothes. It is less overwhelming to put away, so Dh and I are always on top of it now. I don’t care if the kids have to do it, so long as I don’t have to! They fold 50% of the time. I still wash everyone’s sheets and towels. (Cleaners strip the sheets and put on new sheets.) We have separate colored towels for each person so it’s easier to organize. |
Anonymous
| Both my boys do laundry occasionally. I usually will announce the 'Wash all the clothes' effort and then everyone has a subsequent folding job. Kids - socks, underwear, pants, pjs. Parent - Shirts and Hoodies. I started making them participate so they clearly understood the consequences of three outfits a day. |
Anonymous
For real. We all help each other out at our house, and if there’s a chore you are capable of doing, you go ahead and do it. Kitchen and trash duty on a schedule, do your own laundry, help unload groceries unless you’re studying or something. We are lucky enough to get the house cleaned every week and lawn service. My kids can do the bare minimum above. I stopped doing laundry for the kids when they got annoyed about me forgetting once or losing something in the wash. If you want it done to your standards, do it yourself! They only have themselves to blame now. In busy weeks, I will absolutely run loads for them if they need but they need to put it in a basket. I won’t go into the hamper to figure out what they want washed in a load. |
Anonymous
I have never sorted lights and darks and never had anything bad happen because of that. I do the laundry for me and DH, kids each do their own and have since they were 9. |
Anonymous
| we each do our own loads of clothes to make sorting easy - but we will have a pile of whites or reds and do those together and do towels together. |
Anonymous
| Geez. When I got full into puberty, getting my period, and most definitely masturbating every night before bed, I absolutely felt it was my business to maintain my privacy by doing my own laundry by age 14. I even had a towel I kept on my bed, under the sheets for obvious reasons and there was no way my mom was going to wash that! |