Surveys indicate that American households average five loads of laundry per week, with many families doing laundry more than once a day. By comparison, other countries such as France typically average more like three laundry loads each week.
How often do people do laundry? Depending on how you fill your washing machine, the sort of clothes you wear and how fresh you like your clothes, the average person does laundry anywhere between one to three times a week. While this may not seem like a lot, it adds up to between 50 and 150 laundry loads every year.
Whether that's to keep their water bills low or because they don't believe that clothes need daily washing, the trend doesn't seem to hold true for parents. Forty-six percent of parents who responded to a BabyCenter poll said they do laundry several times per week, and 23 percent revealed they do it every single day.
The average household washes 7.4 loads -- about 50 pounds of laundry -- per week. Women do 88 percent of the laundry. Fifty percent of all loads are washed in warm water, 35 percent in cold and 15 percent in hot. Ninety percent of all wash loads are put in a dryer.
Consider how many loads of washing you need to do per week
If you're not exactly sure on how much washing you do, analyse your washing behaviours over a few weeks before setting your schedule into action. The average family of four does about 8-10 loads of laundry a week.
The average family does their laundry once a week. Depending on the family size, this can take anywhere between 2 to 5 hours. For a family with pets, doing the laundry can take much longer.
Try doing a load of laundry every day. Assign each member of your family to a day of the week that will be their personal laundry day. Cut down on load sizes and wash time each day while also helping keep each person's clothes separate.
It turns out some items should be washed more often than once a week, while others can go longer between washes (hey, small victories). And really, when it comes to clothes, you should wash them based on the number of times you've worn them as opposed to the amount of time.
The average family of 4 completes 8-10 loads of laundry per week. Depending on how often the wash is done, the time spent will vary, but, on average at least 8-hours will be spent on washing, drying, and folding clothes.
Based on these estimates, the average person spends about 260 minutes per week on laundry, or roughly four hours. If that seems like a lot of time dedicated to keeping our duds free of dirt, there are a few simple ways to cut down on washing time.
Winter peak hours are earlier in the morning, between about 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. During these hours, individuals are turning their heat up to warm up their home after the cold night. For this reason, if you choose to wash your laundry later in the day, especially in the evening, it can help you save money.
Americans do roughly 300 loads of laundry per year! That equals about: 0.8 loads per day. 5.7 loads per week.
Every two days: hand towels and dish towels. Every three to four times you wear or use them: bath towels, bras, slips, dresses, sweaters, skirts, pajamas, slacks and jeans. Weekly: sheets, pillowcases and bath mats. Monthly: mattress pads, bathrobes and pillow liners.
Check out some more interesting facts about habits of the nation: 39% of men and 54% of women reported washing their jeans after 1 to 2 wears. The majority of women aged 18 to over 65 reported doing 4 to 5 loads of laundry per week. Younger people had the highest account of doing more than 10 loads of laundry per week.
Laundry is very subjective, but it is recommended that you should be doing at least one load of laundry a week, depending on how often you re-wear clothes and what kind of daily lifestyle you have.
Depending on how much clothing you own and how big your household is, you may only have to do laundry every few weeks–even once a month! But if you have children or try to keep a minimal closet, you may find yourself doing laundry much more often.
Always run a full load of laundry
Washers and dryers use about the same amount of electricity to wash a small load as they do a full load. So, it's more efficient to wait to do laundry until you have a full load, but remember -- don't over-stuff your dryer.
Pick times that work best for you (and anyone else helping with the laundry). For example – Ideally I like to put washing on first thing in the morning, put to dry when it finishes (mid morning), fold around dinner time and either put into ironing or put away in the evening.
Washing a load of laundry that's too large or small is never a good idea. Too large, and you can damage your washing machine's drum and decrease its efficiency (in addition to keeping clothes from getting as clean). Contrarily, running loads that are too small wastes water and mechanical energy.
Any item that collects a lot of sweat (and potentially bacteria) should be washed after each use, like socks and underwear. Other items like button up shirts and chinos can be washed as early as every other wear. Jeans can be washed inside-out every 4-5 wears as long as they're not raw denim.
An individual in general, is likely to wash anywhere between one to three loads of laundry per week. Although, depending on their unique circumstances this could be more or less.
Doing no more than 5 loads of washing per week is optimal for any household to maintain the quality of clothes and machines. It also helps protect the environment. Do not overload the washing machine though. This can result in the clothes not being washed properly and can damage your washing machine.
“Washing our clothes too often is the number one reason they lose color and shape,” says Frej Lewenhaupt, co-founder and CEO of Steamery. It's also wasteful. The average washing machine runs through 23 gallons of water per load, and older models even more.
An easy way to find out is using the 1-palm trick. By placing your hand into your machine's drum, you can see how much space is left. The perfect load is if you can't fit anything else in the drum, just your hand and your laundry. If you can't fit your hand into the drum, then your load is too big.