My FIL is recovering from a serious illness and staying with another relative right now. I am picking up his laundry once a week to help out. The first week I was shocked at the amount of laundry he had, but thought perhaps he had some left over from his stay in a nursing home (even though I was doing his laundry during that time too and actually felt bad that I might have missed some). This week I was beyond shocked. In one week, he had 3 pair of slacks, two pair of jeans, four sweat suits, 10 tee shirts, 5 pair of pajamas, two more pajama pants, 3 long sleeve knit shirts, 5 sweaters, a jacket, 10 pair of socks and 3 handkerchiefs. That is more laundry than my husband and I have combined in a week. Does anyone else see this happening to their elder? I haven't tried to approach him about this yet because I'm not sure what to say. His 'dirty' clothes still smell fresh and clean like they did when I washed them the last time, so hygiene isn't a problem. Thoughts? Is this simply quirky? Is he just a clean fiend? I have no idea, but I've never seen anything like it.
I might chat more with the person that he is staying with and just see if they comment on him changing his clothes a lot. I wonder if he may have trouble hanging things up or folding and even if something isn't dirty, he just tosses it in the dirty bin, since that's easier than hanging it back up or folding.
It could be either the relative or FIL who is at the root of it all. You might want to ask (carefully) about all the laundry to see if you can discover why there is so much and whether there is something they can do on their end to minimize it.