THOUGHT you were fighting a never-ending battle against your family’s laundry basket? Then spare a thought for Zoe Sullivan.
Appearing on ITV’s documentary series 31 Kids & Counting, mum-of-11 Zoe revealed how she has to do four loads of washing everyday just to stay on top of it all.
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Zoe and her RAF Engineer husband Ben live in Lossiemouth, Scotland and share children Elizabeth, 15, Olivia, 13, twins Isabelle and Charlotte, 12, Noah, 10, Eva, eight and twins Leah and Erin, four, three-year-old Agnes May and Joseph, two.
Giving cameras insight into their supersized family’s day-to-day life, Zoe said: “There is so much housework to do – all-day, everyday.
“You’re always tidying up. I do about three or four loads of washing everyday and if I fall behind then suddenly I’ve got 25 loads of washing to do and I don’t know where it’s come from.”
But while he might not be all over the cleaning, Ben does his fair share of the childcare and gets up at 5am daily to get his 11 kids ready for school.
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“You have to be on it from the minute you open your kids,” he said. “Zoe will go upstairs [and get the kids dressed] while I finish breakfast and hopefully by the time it’s 7:25, we’re in a good position for me to go ‘alright, I’m going to work now.'”
“The mornings in our house are crazy,” the couple’s daughter Charlotte said. “We’re all trying to get ready at the same time and trying to get in the bathroom as we only have one.”
Unsurprisingly, raising a family with 11 children costs a small fortune and over half the couple’s weekly earnings are spent on food.
Explaining how they spend four times as much as the average family, Zoe said: “Shopping is our biggest expenditure – it’s over £1,000 a month.
“[The weekly shopping] is meant to be £320 but the amount of milk we get through, we need our own cow!
The weekly shopping is meant to be £320 but the amount of milk we get through, we need our own cow!
MuZoe Sullivan
On top of their mammoth food bills, the couple also spend £300 a month on the family’s phones and iPads too.
Reflecting on how they ended up with so many kids, Ben said: “It wasn’t a conscious decision to have this many children, we just did.
“I’m the eldest of five, I’ve got two brothers and two sisters. I always knew I was going to have a large family.
“I didn’t know we were going to have 11. We just never said stop.”
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But despite the non-stop housework she faces a stay-at-home mum-of-11, Zoe is still keen to add more children to their brood.
“The house is quite full,” the mum admitted. “But there’s always room for more!”
Admitting that she’d like to have 20 kids, she added: “I can fit more in. Easy. There’s space in our room.”
However, having so many children means the couple rarely go out just the two of them and holidays are a rarity.
Addressing her husband, Zoe said: “Me and you don’t really go out – partly because we can’t afford it and partly because we can’t be bothered.
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“But we don’t really have holidays and I’d really like to be able to take the kids on holiday. I really would.”
Instead, the couple spent three months’ savings of £600 on a day-trip to a local wildlife park – which involves hiring a mini bus, packing it full of food and spending £200 on tickets alone.
“Big days out can be really expensive,” Zoe said. “But I don’t want the children to miss out on them because their friends might go to many more places than they do because they haven’t got so many siblings. It means that little bit more to them because we don’t do it that often.”
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