Nursing home laundry. Any advice on dealing with this situation?

Do you have, or could you draw up, a reasonably accurate inventory of your mother's clothing?

Your mother pays a fee to the NH to have her laundry done. It is absolutely not unreasonable for her to expect to have her clothes returned to her clean, in good condition, and more or less all of them. The odd sock or undervest going missing is one thing, but (assuming she had plenty in the first place) whole empty drawers are getting ridiculous.

So, armed with your inventory, call a higher-up at the NH, explain that you want to take stock of your mother's clothes before you order her next supplies, and ask them to account for what she now has.

It is difficult to manage a nursing home's laundry - very high turnover of work, very high volumes, all kinds of infection prevention and control issues, low pay, long hours, thankless tasks - you can imagine, of course. But it's not enough to say oh well what do you expect. Ask your mother's NH to do better than that.

BuckAndBuck.com for all clothing orders instead of Amazon.

They will label the clothing for you before shipping. And the clothing will with stand the punishment that the laundry service does when running it through the sanitize cycle. They focus on clothing that makes dressing easier, which also may be helpful for your mother.

This was a problem for me too. Like one of the other responders I decided to pick my battles and this was one I gave up on. I went to Target, found a nice jogging suit type outfit with pants and a top. I bought a set of every color they came in. Mom liked them and it was harder for the NH to lose them. They were fairly easy to identify if they ended up in someone else's room too.

I live in SW Jersey. My Mom was in a local NH. Moms home put tags in all of her clothes. Socks and underwear too. They could only remove the tag by reversing the process. At Moms NH, they washed daily. The turn around is 3 days. For your Mom I guess if they change PJs everyday she will need more.

When my Mom went into the Nursing Home I took pictures of all her clothing. I found some of her clothes in her roommates closet. If something was missing, I showed the Laundress a picture of the clothing and it usually showed up in the next day or two.

I would talk to the laundress. Ask if they tag the clothes. Ask the turn over time. Do they wash per person or in bulk. Laundry is a big problem in a NH.

Reading your question made me laugh. My dad has been in ALMC for the past 2+ years. With COVID I have not been able to visit him thus video conference once a week was the solution. The point being every time I see him he is wearing shirts which I know are not his. I live close enough that I can drop new clothing when needed and I make certain that if my siblings send him clothing gifts they are marked with my dad’s name. Regardless of the effort and diligence I found out that he has in his laundry basket underwear which are not his and clothing which are not his, about 50/50.

Speaking with families with LO at this community and other communities found that they were encountering the same situation. My solution was to not purchase expensive clothing and accept that LO in AL have community wear. 😊

In caring for my dad and his health issues I need to pick my battles and clothing is at the bottom of the concern list for me.

I have exactly the same problem. And I took the same precautions. My husband was always a very careful, conservative dresser. Only Brooks Brothers suits, shirts, ties. He went into his Alzheimer's facility eight months ago, with five pairs of trousers, yet I recently got a note that he needed more trousers! For god's sake, at home he would not possibly have gone through them. They evidently wash them all the time, "for control of germs," but I am sure it is excessive. He is also wearing other people's clothing often. But he is totally unaware of it, so I have to tell myself that it does not matter.
I too am very happy with his situation in general, so I had to realize that I am powerless. I fear you are too.

here is much that has to be researched and regulated with care for the elderly in this country. Same with internet control.

One thought could be about where to write mother’s name. If it’s on the garment label, it would be easy to cut off. Brand new clothing in the mail could be a temptation to someone! It doesn’t look as nice, but marking on the cloth itself might help.

First, discuss this with management so you have a good understanding on how they do each residents laundry.

Mom's AL would do each resident's laundry individually once a week. Unfortunately they would only do 2 loads, one linens, one clothing and would dry everything on high heat! So I had to buy everything a few sizes too large.

Dad was in a different facility where all laundry was dumped together and sorted after. I learned to go to the laundry room and find his clothes, and go through his closet to remove someone else’s.

We learned not to buy nice things because the parents really didn’t care.

Nothing you can do, even the permanent marker does not help. It's been a problem at every nursing home since the beginning of time. They don't pay attention to that , and just roughly give a certain amount of clothing to male and to female, no regard for what belongs to them or size even unless its too really too small.. Even if you are close and do the laundry your self sometimes when they get changed then will go in the main laundry anyway, and then good bye to that nice sweater. Advice- so don't send expensive clothing..

Dealing with 2 different nursing homes and a group home. For my dad they would lose things even though his name was in a label inside (some kind of super sticky iron or sewed on thing the nursing home provided). As someone said they could possibly remove the label somehow. That nursing home was actually a little better about keeping up with clothes than the one my mom went to, but we still found things that definitely didn't belong to him in his closet and since he was a rather simple person he wasn't worried about a few misplaced items. I think the hearing aides were lost in a facility transfer. For my mom, we managed to lose a nice blanket and pillow. I remember being more upset about the pillow disappearing than the blanket or any clothes. The only way to try and have more control is to live nearby, and though I did live nearby and visited as much as I could even after returning to work, these things still happened. I got to the point that I didn't care so much about the stuff I was just worried that they were cared for properly. I think talking to people is important. Even some of the other nursing home residents tell you things if you hang around long enough. I learned to not be too trusting of people but I figure they steal for a reason. Like another person posted the residents with dementia may enter others rooms at odd times and could possibly even take things. I believe one if the nurses warned me of that and said be careful not to leave anything of value as it would likely disappear. In the group home we signed a list of my dad's items that seemed pretty accurate. At the end of his stay I was totally over any personal items I did pick up some of them but if they could use any for someone else I left that. Despite a story for another day about the manager, I think his care was better there and he was able to relax more. As I said he was a simple man and really didn't have much. I miss him a lot now that he is gone, and I didn't mind having to buy him a few items that he either didn't have much of or it went missing. Hope you can have some peace as long as your mom is being taken care of and has no complaints on the staff, that is most important!