How Many Hours Will A Family Of Four Spend On Laundry (And Drying) Each Week?”

Throughout the years of our service, we often received a few questions about laundry maintenance for a family of four. Many wanted to know how many loads of laundry a typical family might do in one week, how long it would take, and what strategies could be put in place to handle these loads more efficiently. So in this article, we wish to share with you about our findings.

How many clothes does an average adult wear in one week?

Obviously, this number varies from person to person. However, our studies show that for an average person, a man wears about 7 kg of clothes in a week, and a lady wears about 5 kg clothes during the same period. Therefore, for a couple, they will have about 12 kg of dirty laundry in a week.

Together with the bedsheet, comforter, pillow cases etc, a couple would have about 12 – 14 kg load of laundry in one week. As most household washing machine can take about 6-7kg of load in ONE wash, it means between the two people, you will have about 3 – 4 loads of wash in a week (don’t forget you need to sort your whites against your non-whites clothes to preserve their colours). Because the humility nature in Singapore, clothes typically take at least 24 hours to dry IF it isn't a rainy season. As a result, you will find that almost everyday, your clothes are either in the washing machine, or hanging to dry at your balcony ...

So how about for a family of four with two kids?

You may be surprised that kids generally generate more clothing than adults – spills, sports, uniforms, indecision about what to wear, after-school clothing etc. But because their clothing is typically lighter than those of adults, even though their number of items is higher, their total weekly weigh will be slightly lower. We found that a kid of an age about 5 years old, his weekly wash will weigh about 5 kg. So for a family of four with two kids, their weekly load would be about 26 – 30 kg!

That’s why you will realize that you may be using your washing machine once in every two days. It’s really a tiring job.

Alright, then how long does it take to do the laundry?

Again, the actual hours spent depend on the functions you select on your washing machine but typically, a full cycle of wash would be about 60 minutes. For a load of 30 kg of laundry in a week, you will need about 7 washing cycles, thus, you need about 7 hours to wash your dirty laundry.

Then how much time people usually take to hang their clothes? It’s estimated that for each wash, it may take about 15 min to hang the clothes, and another 20 min to fold them neatly back to the wardrobe.

In other words, for a family of four with two kids, you will spend about 12 hours from start to finish! So housekeeping is really a full time job!! (Don't you have an urge to say a big THANK YOU to your parents right now?)

What’s a good strategy of handling laundry work?

Well, the first strategy needs to make use of three laundry baskets: one for darks, one for lights, one for towels. When a basket is full, do a load. Put them in, then do something else. Come back later and hang your clothes. When they are dry, fold them back to your wardrobe. Separating the garments right in the beginning will save you time later when you need to wash them.

An alternate strategy is to consider buying clothes with similar tone of colours and same materials. When your clothes are similar in colour with same materials, you can do the load wash together and don’t have to spend extra time to separate them. While some men may love this idea, we found that most ladies would not enjoy this strategy.

What would we recommend?

Finally, at My Locker Laundry, we would highly recommend this strategy to you - Turn this tedious task into a family activity. It's actually not very difficult to teach your 5 years old to do her own folding together with you, and you two can chat about school work, ask questions, tell a stories while you are hanging your clothes in the balcony or folding your clean laundry together. In this case, not only you two are sharing some great bonding time together, you are also teaching your young ones to be responsible and take accountability at an early age.

Wanna to learn some amazing tips on how to involve your lovely ones to join you for the housework? Check out the article on “3 Amazing tips to get kids involved in the laundry work” under the Life section.

Try it!