Judging by the photos and the number of guns laying around this does not appear to be a family particularly concerned by mess or accidents waiting to happen.
No one, in my experience, no matter how tidy or untidy, soaks clothes unless they absolutely have to because no one wants buckets of water slopping all over the place.
Maybe she didn't have enough washing to make up a load? I think it was quite normal then to soak items stained with blood anyway, remember that they didn't have things like Vanish then.
Once clothes are soaking, you have to wash them as soon as possible, say, the next day, don't you? Considersatins such as sufficient clothes to make up a load are entirely secondary once buckets of water are slopping about on your work surface or you're tripping over buckets on the floor. It's all so horribly evocative of those vile, ecologically ethical terry nappies too, isn't it? That's if you used these.
Probably, although I'd be more likely to just throw them away. I certainly can't recall sniffing them though 
Can I take it that the above reply means yes? Because you would recall the smell if was as strong smelling as the clothes in the bucket that AE came across, wouldn't you?
So, you agree that clothing stained with menstrual blood, once steeped in water - so that the hormonal content is washed out and the hormones and blood are highly diluted - does not smell of blood.
I am not suggesting that AE sniffed the water and contents of the bucket/s. Under the circumstances, indeed in any circumstances, that's the last thing anyone would want to do.
What I am suggesting is that it would be fair to conclude, wouldn't it, that as AE would not actively sniff the bucket/s and contents, that the smell of the contents of the bucket/s was presenting itself to her?
It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the contents of the bucket/s was/were quite high.
