My MIL Says I Am Wrong...

Wait - people actually put clothes BACK into the baskets? I usually carry them to the washing machine. When they are done with the dryer, I'm lucky if they are actually put away immediately rather than tossed on the bed/floor/daughter's dresser! Have her come to my house and be totally appalled!

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All of my laudrey baskets are interchageable! LOL They could have dirty clothes in them in the morning - - then clean ones in the afternoon! Seriously, how dirty can the basket get from regular dirty clothes? Most people don't throw clothes with like puke on them in the basket, so they stay pretty clean.

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OMG, Really with 3 kids, full time job, and a house to manage the last thing I care about is the mildly dirty clothes sharing a basket with clean clothes (not at same time) I do wipe down the baskets once and a while and if I have heavily soiled laundrey.

MIL has WAY too much time on her hands.

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The laundry baskets in my house are for laundry, clean or dirty. From the basket to the washer they go and then from the dryer back into the basket they go. From time to time, if I see the need (which is not often at all) I will wash them out...but I have 5 laundry baskets...that's a lot to wash! I say there are plenty other things to be concerned about...I think your MIL thinks too much. : )

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You know I DO use separate baskets.

Not that it matters, since MIL is ALWAYS wrong!

(Unless of course YOU'RE the MIL, tehehehe, and aren't we ALL just future MILs after all?)

:)

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That's absurd. I mean really...How the heck dirty are your MILs clothes anyway? What does she do all day -- Role around in the mud?!

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Is your MIL June Clever?

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I use the same ones. To be honest, I do not have time to worry about which basket I'm using for clean vs dirty clothes. Do we have the same MIL? hee hee!

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I mean really - how dirty are our clothes? Not sure about your MIL, but in our house, we wear them 1 time then wash them, including pajamas. If there are any blowouts, puking episodes, or wet beds, that laundry goes straight into the washing machine - which is 2 floors down, so if it's a lot, it gets carried down in some kind of disposable bag. But otherwise 1 hamper upstairs (sometimes I do wash the hamper because it's a cloth one that hangs on a stand and is machine washable), and 1 basket to transport dirty down, clean up. I never even thought about using separate baskets...wow your MIL needs a hobby. Or I'm just not very clean. ;)

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One basket for dirty clothes and my hands for clean clothes. yes i would find it gross. and yes i am also guilty of washing the top of cans before opening them, and if by any chance the lid slips a bit in after i open the can, the can goes into trash. i am a germaphobe.

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Same basket!

I do wash the can's off because I once saw a show where mice and rats walked all over the tops of cans. I never did it before I saw this. Even soda cans, I will not drink out of them because of this.

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Your MIL doesn't have enough to keep her occupied. I have never in all my life heard of a different laundry basket for dirty and clean clothes. Even my mom never thought of that, and her floors were so clean when we were kids, that we could have eaten off of them.

What on earth else does she fault you for?
D.

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HAHA What a petty thing to complain about....MIL's She must have way to much time on her hands....Maybe she will do the laundry for you! LOL We use the same ones here...

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I use the same one... but my hubby thinks it's gross. lol. I told him he can do laundry if he didn't like the way I did it... and he dropped the subject. lol.

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I agree, Most clothes don't get so dirty that they leave dirt in the basket unless the person has been working down in the coal mines or out rolling in the mud for hours at a time. Sometimes I don't even see anything on the clothes but I'm washing it because it was worn. who wants to be hauling two baskets around.LOL

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Dirty clothes go down in the basket, and come back up in the same one at my house. We don't often vomit or soil ourselves, but maybe that's not the case at her house, (I'll bet your MIL washes the tops of cans before she opens them, too.)
For those who use separate baskets, wicker is very porous and impossible to clean effectively, so if you're really concerned about germs, keep the dirty ones in plastic that can be cleaned.

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I do it the same way you do so I guess I'm gross too. :)

Our clothes don't get nasty dirty, just dirty from everyday wear so I don't see the problem.

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Every bedroom in our house has a laundry basket/hamper. They are used to deliver the clothes to the laundry room and then returned to the rooms to collect more dirty stuff. I have laundry baskets that STAY in the laundry room (or on the sofa, lol) that the clean clothes go in when they come out of the dryer. These get wiped out with a clean cloth or paper towel periodically, too. (Somehow!! they end up with sand/grit/dust/dirt in the bottom of them... probably from being set on the floor and then being stacked).

I also rinse the top of my cans before opening. ;) I mean, who knows how long they have been sitting in the warehouse then the delivery trucks then the store, and how many times pesticide has been sprayed on them or on the places they are stacked (and then they are stacked on top of another can, so the residue could easily get onto the top of the lids).

And I am NOT a germa-phobe. Not by a long shot.

But I would NEVER tell anyone else that doing something different is WRONG. geesh.

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I do it your MIL's way, but I don't think it's a big deal and I think your MIL was wrong to say anything to you about the way you do it.

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My husband is HORRIBLE about leaving clothes all over the house, so we have 6 hampers all over the house (laundry room, bathroom, changing room, both bedrooms and my husbands closet). The hampers sometimes get dumped into a basket or sometimes get taken right to the laundry room depending on how full it is. The basket gets re-used for the clean laundry. The hampers do not get filled with clean clothes after being empied. I will admit..I do NOT clean my baskets out with any sort of disinfectant. If I notice something in/on them I clean them.

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I do not use the same basket for clean and dirty clothes. And yes, I wash off cans before I use them too! LOL!! ;-)

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LOL your MIL sounds like my SIL!!LOL I totaly use the same basket for my dirty and clean. I agree with a previous poster that is something is really dirty like puck or pee or something like that on it I carry it down and put it right in the washer!!! LOL that is funny. How many kids did she have? I know with working full time and having 3 kids, I count on my SIL to think of things like that and then I laugh at her cause she has now kids and get to have time to actualy clean her house LOL

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I use the same ones, but I do "clorox wipe" the baskets every couple of weeks! Never thought of this before... little on the OCD side, but she does sort of make a point.

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Any clothes that we have that are so dirty that it would transfer to a basket go right into the washer, and don't go in a basket. I use the same basket to carry clothes from hamper to washer, then from dryer to couch to fold them. She needs to realize that there are so many other things in life to worry about. This isn't one of them!

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um yeah i have a washer dryer in the house and don't really use a basket for clean, but i would use seperate. but that would be mainly for towels or anything wet.
and my spices aren't alphabitized or anything super anal like that,

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I'm a little different... the baskets are for clean clothes. Dirty clothes go in the hampers or the floor! LOL I wouldn't care about putting them in the same basket tho. The reason I do it this way is to know what's clean & what's dirty!

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Laundry baskets are for Laundry, right? dirty or clean I usually sort the laundry out of the numerous hampers into a basket and carry it down to the laundry room. My boys each have a laundry basket of thier clothes that they are responsible to put away and bring the basket back down usually with more dirty clothes. That is actually pretty funny, I will not put clean laundry on the floor- just because we have dogs.

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Well, unless they have pee or puke on them, or are super muddy or something, she just has a thing about dirt. My washer/dryer are upstairs right near the bedrooms, so I tend to sort and fold as the wash comes out of the dryer and just carry the piles to the bedrooms. They stay folded better. :)

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I have a dirty laundry hamper right next to the washing machine clothes don't get left out all over the place we change we put them into the dirty hamper so we only need 1 hamper,now when my babies were little I had a basket for their dirty clothes but now they know where they go then the rest of them are for clean clothes.So no I wouldn't use the same hamper or laundry basket for dirty clothes to me that is cross contamination.

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This is hilarious! You got a ton of great responses. No, I don't have seperate laundry baskets, I guess I'm dirty too! :)

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Yep - I have clean laundry baskets and dirty laundry baskets, but I am also admittedly an obsessive compulsive neat freak with a bad case of germophobia!

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LOL, that's all I can say about that one...does the dirt jump off the clothes into the basket so that the clean ones can "pick" it up...

Stop discussing your laundry methods with your MIL...just kidding!

PS: And I am a neat, clean picky person!

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I have about 2 or 3 small ones. It works for me, so do whatever works for you.

Although, I do have one dirty one and I don't put clean clothes in it. It's the one where peed on sheets and stuff like that goes in. It's actually been scientifically proven that washing machines, laundry baskets... do have trace amounts of feces (poop) on them.

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I have used the same one before, and lysol spray them every once in awhile but usually clothes go from dryer to bed for folding via my arms. If we actually worried about every germ.....oh my, we would have no time for anything else LOL

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I have laundry bags on stands. I transport dirty/clean laundry in them, but I wash the bags every so often.
Unless you've got lots of mud, poop or vomit, I don't think it's a problem.
Last time my son came home as a mud monster (he stepped in a drainage ditch and sank in the mud up to his knees) I hosed the worst of it off in the back yard and had him take off his pants on the back porch (we're out in the country - no one can view you on the porch except for maybe a few cows). I took the pants right to the wash machine and he headed straight to the shower.

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I only have two laundry baskets. One stays in the laundry room all the time for dirty stuff and the other is used for both clean and dirty clothes. I also have a hamper that the kids toss their dirty clothes in but it's never used to transport the clean clothes back upstairs. I don't have the space for separate laundry baskets!

You want to talk about gross? How about when my husband puts the laundry basket, whether is has clean or dirty clothes, ON THE BED! Gag me! lol

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I have one, but sometimes I do wipe it after the dirty clothes was in it(when boys get muddy or baby has a blow out)

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I have separate baskets for dirty and clean laundry, but only b/c I have 3 large ones in laundry room (everyone brings dirty clothes to laundry room and separates them in large baskets ~ or their laundry doesn't get done). Then I have a few regular laundry baskets that I take the clothes into the living room with and fold them there. Hadn't really thought about the issues you've presented.
My boys also like to play in the laundry baskets that I use to bring clothes from the dryer to the living room in. They sit in them, build forts with them and even put the dog in them :) Your MIL would love that!!

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I seriously don't see the point in 2 laundry baskets... unless you live on a farm or hubbie is in construction or something equally dirty or grease on it. My bedroom floor is covered with clean clothes just waiting for someone to fold them(or run of clothes, whichever comes first!). Maybe that will get done tonight, another load needs to be done, guess I should get caught up on the 3 loads that are already there. I do agree with wiping off cans, I rarely do it, but I think we all should.

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We use the same baskets. No big deal to me. Its not like I have super soiled clothes in them. I usually take clothes, that are super soiled directly down to the washer....

Someone here at my work said his wife uses two, its the first time I ever heard someone say they did that. To each their own....lol.

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I use to do the same thing until I got a hamper for the dirty clothes. I can just drag it over to the washing machine since our room is right beside the laundry room.

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I use the same baskets for both, but if there was something particularly gross (like a diaper blowout) I will wipe the laundry basket out before I put clean clothes in it. Other than that, our clothes don't get that nasty, so it's not a big deal! My grandma would flip if she heard that, she used to clean all her plastic hangers twice a year, and she wouldn't wash dish towels and bath towels in the same load.

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I multi use my baskets. The only thing I don't put in my baskets is dirty towels. I have a specific basket for dirty towels and washcloths. If they start looking bad due to extremely dirty clothes then I clean the baskets. Also if my kids clothes are dirty or wet I make them leave them in the garage.

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Yes I am a clean freak. I have the wicker baskets for dirty clothes. I use the plastic ones for clean clothes.

MIL is right on this one. If you look at my responses you'll see that I raised a healthy family and I am a healthy older woman. I keep the close that are already worn on a rack in my dressing room.

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I use a laundry bag for my cloth diapers and it gets washed when the diapers do, but for all the other stuff they go back into one of the baskets they came out of after everything is washed and dried, however I have been known to clean my laundry baskets every so often (ok like once or twice a month, lol).

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I'm weird about my laundry. It's the one household chore I LOVE and am therefore really picky about it! My laundry room is off of our bedrooms, so I just generally grab it and take it to a bed to fold it/hang it. I have hampers and baskets for the dirties. In the past when I've had to transport dirty and clean, I did use separate baskets, but I don't think it's that big of a deal. I would only make a big exception if I was taking dirty sheets, clothes and towels from someone who had been really sick to wash -I wouldn't want to then put clean clothes in there without a good Lysol wipe down! Or if you wash a lot of very muddy/dusty clothing or something of that nature.

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Gee, how dirty are your clothes? If my kids have been outside playing in the dirt and I see sticks and mud in the bottom of the basket, I wipe it out. I usually don't put away my kids' clean clothes, they have to pick up from the laundry room or I throw the clean laundry on the family room floor for them to sort and fold while they watch TV.

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Same basket! Although sometimes I do spray with a quick spritz of Lysol while first load is in the washer/dryer. Fun post!

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I agree with you MIL on principle (I've thought the same thing with my own laundry), but the reality is, I have two kids under 3 and I don't have the time or energy to a)keep track of dirty & clean laundry let alone the baskets they go in; or b) disinfect my laundry baskets (I actually thought I was crazy for even THINKING about it! :) )

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I take the dirty clothes basket down to the washer, unload the clothes, and then put the clean clothes out of the dryer in the basket. Different generations do things differently. I think this seems a little too time consuming for me.

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Well, i cloth diaper, and think that would be gross for those but the rest? No issue.

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LOL
Tell her you sanitize it after each use - How would she know LOL

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I use the same basket, but I do admit I think it's kind of gross putting clean clothes back into something where dirty clothes came from, but I still do it anyways! :)

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One laundry basket.

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For me as I go to a laundry mat, I use laundry bags and always throw the bags in the wash, because the clothes sat in them for days and they are not ventilated. But when I had washer in basement same basket as does my mom and did my grandma etc.

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First let me say my MIL is great....she's 87 . And she used to iron my husband's underwear.
As a working mom, raised 4 kids and use a clothesline from spring to fall my baskets can get kind of gross.... I only care that the dried clothes somehow make it off the dining room table and into the bedrooms at some point under 3 days. I sort the clothes on the line... towels together, jeans together, etc and then fold as I pick them off dry. Unless its starting to rain !!!! I dry in drier small items, not enough clothes pins for that ! I have learned its better to fold and sort on the drier and put into the baskets right then , then carry a big mess upstairs . Its only taken me 35 years to get a perfect system : ) I refuse to pay for gas and electricity to run a drier when the yard is full of free air and breeze. And its somewhat like yoga with all the stretching. The kids' red wagon elevate my baskets and I leave the clothespins on the line . I have 3 lines. Works great . And I save big $$$
I do wash can lids off before opening ... who would want gross grocery store dirt falling into the can or when the can lid sinks into the can.... ick.
ps if a bird does his biz on the towel.........

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I started to say same basket. Then realized we put the dirty clothing in tall white hampers. (each room has one) then it gets brought to the laundry room and sorted by the 15 year old who takes the hampers back to each room after the sorting. I have 2 laundry baskets which get the clean stuff put in and taken to each room for putting away. But its more a space issue lol I don't have room for big rectangle laundry baskets I slide the hampers in at the end of the dresser. never really thought about the clothing being icky or gross.

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I do the same as you!!!! :)

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Sorry, I'd have to agree with your MIL. I think its pretty icky to put clean clothes in the basket you had your dirty clothes sitting in!

A. V.

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I use them to carry or sort dirty clothes, and to carry clean folded clothes up to everyones rooms. I would have to have like 15 baskets if I didn't use them for both! That's nuts!

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i use the same basket but i spray it with lysol before i put the clean clothes in.

~M.

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We have laundry hampers/bags for dirty clothes and laundry baskets for clean clothes. But, I would think nothing of using the laundry basket both ways unless your stuff is really grimy. I actually haven't used my laundry baskets in ages. One sits on top of the washer and holds some cleaning products and the iron. The other is in my bedroom still full of hangers I pull off the pole when they're empty, and then availble to hang clean clothes as I wash. I'm using those square bottom reusable shopping bags for the clean clothes. They're smaller = lighter, and I sort the clothes as I fold them, one bag for each person, which makes it easier to put away.

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Same as you except I have a basket specifically for cloth diapers. I just spray that one with Lysol when it is empty.

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I do use seperate ones but it's mainly a space issue as the dirty clothes basket always seems to have something in it. I would think it would be okay if you used one as long as you wiped it out every once in awhile.

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I know I am late posting, but........Do you wash your hands after touching your clothes while wearing them???? Unless, they are visibly soiled with something disgusting, at which point I toss them into the utility sink and not the dirty clothes, I don't feel the need to wash my hands after I touch the clothes that I am wearing. Now, I will after touching underwear from a potty training toddler or after an illness that is particularly messy from various bodily fluids. To me the clothes are not THAT dirty after just wearing them on a normal day.

Having said that, I do have separate laundry baskets. I carry my clothes in small batches to the laundry room (on the complete other side of the house) to work in more exercise into my day (time allowing).

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We have a laundry chute with a tall basket to "catch" them in the basement. That basket remains there permanently and I have 2 other smaller baskets to carry clean laundry back upstairs in. Honestly, without the chute though... I wouldn't be too concerned about using the same basket for both clean and dirty.

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Ew -- I'm with your MIL on this one. Dirty clothes basket/hamper for the dirty clothes & I have one basket that I use for the clean clothes. =)

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same basket!, lol whoever has enough space for 'clean" and "dirty" baskets needs to utilize the space better

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I use different baskets for my clean clothes. Think about it - you have all these gross dirty clothes in a basket with possible stains, food, dirt, germs, etc. Then you take your nice, fresh clean clothes and put them back in that basket. I think its gross.
My husband on the other hand...he uses the same basket for his clean and dirty clothes. And that is pretty bad since he gets pretty dirty at work.

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