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!

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.

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.

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?!

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. : )

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?)

:)

Is your MIL June Clever?

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...

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.

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!

.

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.

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. ;)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Eh...I mix them too. You can't always avoid germs! Well..we do have a three section laundry hamper to sort clothes by color..but with two kids we go through alot of laundry, so I often have to use my regular baskets to keep the mess contained, and I don't worry about mixing them. Come to think of it...I have never thought of it until now..lol. Of course, now I am thinking it might be beneficial to like..once-a-week..wipe the baskets down with disinfectant..but..I seriously doubt I will remember. Don't worry...everyone has their own opinions..especially MILs...glad to see you will still be who you are though :)

LOL! I will always have a chuckle when doing laundry now! I have never thought about this ever. She would be grossed out at my house. Not enough time in the day, my baskets never look dirty to me, would clean them if they seemed dirty. Right now, I have one sitting in our room with clean sheets in it, another in the dryer and the washer has a clean load in it....With 2 very active boys and my husband hasn't done a load of laundry in years, not too worried about using the same basket for clean and dirty....Thanks for the laugh.

Mel G

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

Just saw this post today, and it made me laugh! I have 2 baskets upstairs plus the kids' hamper, and I have 3 baskets in my garage for sorting. Dirty, clean, peed in, puked on... they all go in the same baskets. If they're soiled, they get rinsed in the sink before being put in the basket, but I can barely keep track of which CLOTHES are clean/dirty, let alone which basket to use!!! LOL

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!

I do have a separate "clean" basket that I use to carry the clean clothes back to the rooms. Actually, i think i do it more because this basket is wider and shorter so folded clothes fit better and everything stays more wrinkle free. But, I do have to admit, I feel better about the clean clothes being in the clean basket!

My kids are extremely healthy because they are subjected to germs daily!! lol
I think we have become obsessed with germs. We should not be afraid of our own germs!!
BUT, I do wipe the lids after actually seeing mice run across store floors!! But those are not my germs!

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

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. :)

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)

i your mil doesnt like the way you do the laundry, she is perfectly welcome to do it all herself, tell her while she has all this spare time on her hands, she is perfectly welcome to come and do mine too.you do laundry the same way i do it, but dont let that stop your mil from doing mine too.
K. h.

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.

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!

My ex boyfriend used to freak out if I put clean clothes in a laundry basket where I had put dirty clothes.... I was never sure what was on his clothes that was so disgusting that he wouldn't want it touching his clean clothes... Freak! :)

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,

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I don't have a separate basket...we have the netting/bags in the hampers so the dirty clothes come down in those.

i do have baskets and put dirty clothes into them - however, I will admit there are TIMES when I'm anal and will use a baby wipe to wipe down the bottom...when there's blood and mud!(i have two boys!!)

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!

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.

I don't know if I've ever seen so many responses on a question before! It's funny and interesting at the same time.

What I was wondering when I read your question was, did your mother-in-law have separate baskets for clean/dirty when her children were living with her?

When reading some of these responses, I realized that I am SO normal!!! Laundry baskets all over, with dirty and clean clothes in them, never enough laundry baskets! LOL! On occasion, I have wiped them out with a Chlorox wipe, though. You know, boy dirt!

I line the hamper with a laundry bag and use it to transport dirty clothes to the laundry room.

Clean clothes are carried back up in a basket that is used only after I wash/dry.

I get where your MIL is coming from. LOL!!!!! For once, I agree with a MIL. I just think from a sanitary standpoint, I like to keep things separate for my child's sake.

It's like going to the laundry mat and watching people use the clothes carts to haul in their dirty clothes and then people use them unknowingly to carry their wet washed clothes to the dryer. Ewwwwwwwww!

The thought to use separate clean & dirty laundry baskets wouldn't have even crossed my mind in a million years. Not only that, but I'm actually shocked that so many Mamas out there are adamant about using the same basket gross!!

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!

that is just insane!! i use the same basket !!!

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

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.........

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

~M.

I don't use my laundry basket except for holding the dirty clothes or towels in the closet. I just scoop them up and take them to the laundry room to wash and then carry the pile of folded ones to put them away. I do kind of agree that putting clean clothes where dirty ones have been is a little gross, but not something to make a big deal over. And I always clean the tops of my cans before opening them. Do you have any idea what could have crawled all over the tops?!!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

lol It would be a different matter if it was filled with dirty cloth diapers and then clean clothes! My 2 year old likes to have a ride back to the bedroom in the laundry basket. Is that gross? lol

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).

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.

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! :)

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! :) )

I used to use the same basket, but now I use bags ( the ones they sell at home depot or walmart to promote going green) I live in an area where the laundry is far away, so I have to sort my piles before going down to the laundry.I have four bags that I fill with dirty clothes, and re- fill them with dirty clothes until all loads are done. Then put them back in clothes hampers, to be used again later. Once the laundry is Clean and dry, I fold it, and carry it to the designated room ( not in the bag). Helps me be aware of laundry that needs to be put away and makes it look like it's not too much. When I used the basket method, I would leave it for days. Love doing laundry, but folding is not as much fun.

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.

i'm with you, i don't have time to worry about stupid stuff like that! unless there are some throw up clothes or there are some doodoo clothes inthere i don't care. i have better things to worry about. lol tell your mother in law she is more then welcome to come and do the laundry her way if she would like! lol

We use hampers and baskets, so baskets never have dirty clothes in them (and I would never put my clean clothes in the hampers). I happen to agree with your MIL that your way sounds gross, but unless your MIL is doing your laundry for you regularly, I don't see why it's any of her business. ^_^

One laundry basket.

I'm with you -one basket for both. But i do wipe it out w/bleach for time to time

I grab whatever laundry basket is handy. I don't have time (or space) to figure out so many baskets! As for the cans, I do wipe the top before opening. I have a bigger issue with food germs. Probably comes from having worked in a commercial kitchen and keeping everything spotless.

I used one laundry basket for transporting both my dirty and clean clothes to the laundry room. At least I did before my finance and I got so busy working and planning our wedding & honeymoon that we started sending our laundry out for wash and fold (by the way, the wash and fold place puts our clean, folded clothes back into the same bag we used to bring our dirty clothes in).

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. =)

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

I use the same baskets, I don't put wet/dirty diapers or muddy clothes in the baskets, those go straight to the washer, any little bit of "dry dirt" is not going to be a big issue - if I see a dirty looking spot on the basket, I wash it with a washcloth. A little dirt is god for us - unless you are working in a hospital or a sewer treatment plant, or something similarly germ-dirty, I wouldn't think there wasld be too much that would survive on the clothes to ge on to the basket, to live there through the timeline of washing/drying, to get back on the clean clothes and be something that could hurt us form our usual course of daily activities.

I do wash my produce, with natural organic soap and water and I do usually wipe the top of a pop can before drinking out of it....but I only mop my kitchen floor once a month or so ( oops) ...so as you can see I am not OCD about clean.

Sorry.... I'm gross like you. lmao... Dirty clothes aren't really that dirty are they? I guess maybe if you husband does an industrial job or something. But being a stay at home mom, 3 kids in school and a husband who works with computers... I'm fine with using the same baskets and every once and awhile washing them in the bathtub.

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.

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

I use separate baskets and hampers, but it mostly an organization, motivation thing. We have two hampers with handles that I take out to the garage to sort laundry. There are 4 plastic baskets out there, one for whites, colors, darks, and towels. Then I have one basket that I carry the clean clothes back into the house with. This way I am forced to put away the clean clothes before I can take another load out of the dryer. I also have a clothes rack of wheels that I use to hang clothes up while I watch TV and then can just wheel it down the hall to put clothes away.

I do not clean the tops of cans before I use them. I might wipe them off with a dish towel if they are dusty, but otherwise I feel that as long as the stuff is on the outside of the can it is not getting in the food.

We need to be exposed to some germs and dirt in order to build up immunities to them. If our children do not come into contact with them while they are young, they will have an even worse reaction to them when they are older.

My thought was actually "huh?"

Seriously...who thinks about things like this? We have multiple baskets now because we have multiple people, but we use whichever one is empty for the clean clothes. If it's dirty, we clean it. But we don't clean it just because dirty clothes touched it! We have bettter things to do with our time!

When I was on my own, living in a one room apt. scraping by (when I HAD a place to live), the LAST thing I would have spent $ on was an EXTRA laundry basket.

If your MIL thinks what you do is "gross", I guess you could invite her to take over the chore! *evil grin*

I know you enjoyed the answers so far, but I do have another to add. I can say that I am thankful that my friend's mother is NOT my MIL.. BUT she will use different wash baskets for clean and dirty, bleaches her dishes, AND sprays the INSIDE and OUTSIDE of every NEW trash bag she uses! She is a wonderful kind woman, whom I love dearly, but even she admits that the way she does things is HER way and would never tell someone they were wrong for doing it theirs! (she also JUST told me that her MIL was nearly deaf and blind so they got along GREAT! lol)

As for me and my house, I am lucky, hubby will take the washing upstairs for me, and if I manage to not get to it he will put it in too.. clean or dirty it all goes into a hamper thingie or a wash basket.. 2 kids (1 in school 1 not) cat hubby.. yea.. I figure that time with the kids, and them healthy and happy is whats important in my house :)

I use the same basket for both for my husband and I. Our clothes really do
not get that dirty. When the kids were little sometimes there clothes were
really bad from being outside. I would not use separate baskets, but
I would definitely wipe it down.

From Georgia - I do use the same basket to carry dirty clothes to the washer and return in same when we go camping. I bet she would really have a problem of using that washer and dryer....LOL.
At home, I tote the dirty clothes by hand to the washer daily and tote them back to our room daily. A lesson I learned from my MIL when I had my 3rd child. I wash a load every day and it cuts down on the stress of washing all at once on the weekend as I had been in the practice of doing or folding a pile once or twice a week. It is just a part of my normal morning routine. On Saturdays I just have to wash my delicates and sheets and maybe one other load after cleaning. Works great! Try it!

This was a fun post to read. I have never thought of using seperate baskets in all my life! Love it! I am the mom who does the laundry, folds it and then it stays in the basket all week. Then back to the dryer to fluff! With 4 kids and a husband, can't imagine finding enough space for all the baskets I'd need!

This post had me in stitches!!! We use the same basket for dirty down to the washer in the basement and clean clothes (unfolded) up to the bedrooms on the second floor. We fold them on the bed and put them away directly.

As for cleaning the tops of the cans, I do that. LOL. I worry about the grocery stores storage practices, not mine! LOL.

~C.

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!!

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

I am amazed if I can even find a laundry basket to use! At that point I really don't care if it had dirty laundry in it to begin with. *LAUGH* Somehow most of my laundry baskets ended up as toy boxes...