Managing laundry load due to incontinence and smell.

The bigger issue is why is she with you? You do not deserve this.

Thinking back so many years to the old fashioned diaper pail--a mixture of Borax and water so that the diapers (in her case, the bedding & clothing) would sit and soak for a couple of days before I'd do a laundry.

Sick, adult urine is a LOT different that baby urine, which has almost no smell. You would need a pretty big container and help to lift it into the washer--maybe.

My SIL disinfected her washer every single time mom washed her clothes, as they had to share laundry facilities.

In retrospect. YB should have installed a small stackable washer/dryer just for mother. Yes, more waiter, but you're running double loads now.

At some point, you are not going to be able to get the smell out. Partly due to her clothing/bedding being saturated over and over. SIlL went through 3 w/d's in the 25 years mom lived with them.

Also--if it's sunny out, hand the things out to dry. This was esp effective for the diapers, they'd come out of a sun-dry so clean and fresh.

And DO NOT overydry the urine soaked clothes. That bakes in the smell.

I know a lot of people are telling you to place MIL, and I would be one of them--but you are obviously set in the placce of caring for her at home. Bless you, it's the most unforgiving job in the world.

With a new baby coming and baby clothes to launder, I understand your concern and desire to take full precautions.

Sam's Club carries the Lysol Laundry Sanitizer mentioned by previous poster Luta. Costco also carries it but they don't consistently have it in stock. I've also found it at Target, Walmart and my local Kroeger grocery store.

I learned about this product during the pandemic when those in my home had contaminated clothes from being at the hospital daily.

OP, it's important to note that there are different instructions for sanitizing and disinfecting when using this product. I contacted Lysol directly to get information on the differences because the label was vague. Their customer svc people couldn't help but one of their chemists got back to me by email and I found out disinfecting was the instructions to follow to eliminate covid germs.

Simple sanitizing may work in your case and this uses less product. To sanitize you add two capfuls to the rinse cycle, then pause it because it's important for the Sanitizer to be in contact with the clothing for 16 minutes. To disinfect you use 2 capfuls PER GALLON OF WATER and pre-soak for 16 minutes before washing as normal. They say to never use the sanitizer with detergent in the wash cycle.

This sanitizer is what I use on colors. If you're talking about sheets, just bleach them good.

My suggestion for what you described is to rinse the items then place them in a container with the sanitizer solution for 16 min. Then rinse good, really good to get the sanitizer out. Then launder as normal in the washer and there will be no need to separately sanitize the washer. With whites and bleach, there's never a need to separately sanitize the washer however you could double wash if you still were concerned.

This sounds untenable, esp with a baby on the way.

Lysol makes a good germ and odor destroying liquid laundry additive, a bit hard to find but very effective. Perhaps you could pour some over the top of a sealed pail to attempt to contain bacteria and odores? And by washing with it, that takes care of the`washer disinfecting too.

Urine odor become so very offensive the longer it sits and there may not be any easy fix. At least with baby diapers, the pails do contain odors, small stuff comparitively.

Maybe dble up on the Depends or try other means of containg the urine?

Uh… you’re about to have a baby AND have a sick MIL that requires more diaper changes daily than a baby?

Soaked sheets will be the least of your problems.

I will sound harsh here. Nothing personal; I don’t know you. I do, however, want to warn you that you’re about to get hit by a train.

You are not grasping how much your entire world is going to be rocked. And how exhausted you’re going to be. Whatever schedule or routine you have will be out the window.

How will you keep your kid AND your MIL safe when the baby starts crawling, pulling up and then toddling? Will the baby crying wake MIL up too? How will you keep the baby from getting into MIL’s meds, or from touching MIL’s soiled sheets or clothes?

How will you handle nights of no sleep, and then having to keep going 24 hours straight or more to tend to MIL too? There will be no napping while the baby naps, because you have a grown baby who needs you. I say that not to speak ill of her. It’s that the nightly wetting/pooping is the same thing babies do. (And despite their small size, babies can make a HUGE pile of poop on a daily basis. For real! But I digress…).

You say it was hard to watch your grandma’s decline in a nursing home. I get that. Unfortunately your MIL is going to decline no matter where she is.

You may think it’s the most loving thing to keep her at home, but it actually it’s not. There is no way on earth you can care for baby and MIL without running yourself into the ground fast. And all three of you will suffer for it.

You love your MIL and your baby. You may think the love for them will sustain you in caring for them. It doesn’t.

She will not get the 24/7 care she needs (and if she doesn’t need it now, she soon will) from you. Not because you’re a bad person, but because it is not physically nor mentally possible.

There are good facilities out there. Shop around. It’s not an easy thing to do, but is the best thing for all involved.

Disposable bed pads are enormously helpful. Use better ones (yes, they are more expensive, but will spare the washables). Also in addition to the adult diaper, use an extra pad in the diaper to absorb the urine. If you must store the soiled sheets/clothes in a bin, at least rinse them with cold water to remove the excess urine (which will reek if left to marinate). I would avoid washing the soiled linens and clothes with your clothes. No need to disinfect the washing machine between washing her linens and your clothes (unless there's fecal matter, in which case, that should be scraped and soaked before going in the machine). Also, try washing her soiled linens with not only detergent, but add some white, distilled vinegar to the load (it's cheap, effective, and adds a bit helps to keep the machine a bit cleaner).

She needs to be in a care facility where professionals know how to handle this. You deserve a better life than you have! And a new baby? Wow. It’s not an environment where I would want to raise a child. Do you? Is the child important to you and your husband? Is a peaceful home where you can enjoy your baby important? Are you important? Or is only MIL important?

You and husband need to talk this through immediately. She needs to go.

Put dirty laundry outside in the garage in a closed receptacle while you wait to do the wash less often. Put dirty incontinence briefs in a receptacle out there too.

Buy white sheets ((on MILs dime) only and use Clorox bleach to disinfect the sheets AND the washing machine at the same time.

You are newlyweds, expecting a baby, and mil is 64 with PD and cognitive impairment per your profile. I'd suggest you make long term plans for her now (in managed care) so your life is not further thrown upside down caring for a sick mil and a newborn. It's too much. If it isn't now, it will be once the baby comes. Trust me on that.

Wishing you the best of luck with all of this.

You're really disinfecting the machine each time? (And we're talking about urine, not feces, it seems.) Is that possibly overkill? For years I did my laundry in laundromats and didn't disinfect the shared machines. And in this case you know for sure how much detergent you're using and that things are coming out clean/washed. Maybe let the disinfecting go? 

A metal bin shouldn't absorb odor. There are odor blocking bags, but maybe one of those metal medical-waste bins (the kind that can actually extinguish a fire when closed) would help with odor?

My only other thought is that if there's a way to cut back a bit on meat consumption (without compromising health, of course), that might help a little.

I don’t know. I was constantly doing laundry as a caregiver for my mom who had Parkinson’s disease.

Maybe others will have viable suggestions for you.

Wishing you well with your caregiving journey. Have you considered placement in a facility?