So, let’s be honest: Some of us love making use of the “smell and evaluate” test which prolongs you from washing your clothes as often as you should. However men are extremely skilled at using the “smell and evaluate” test.
Guilty of putting off a trip to the laundry when you know that you should go to the laundry mat, you’re probably letting all the nasty bacteria that you acquired during the day pile up on your favourite pair of jeans.
Exactly, how often should you be washing your clothes? A video by Brit Lab tries to figure out when is the correct time to bite the bullet and go get your clothes soaked.
No matter how many times you shower or how much cologne you splash yourself with, all human beings are pretty gross. Take a second and think about it; we are constantly secreting peculiar substances and shredding layers of skin. To be exact, we shed up to 500 million skin cells and secrete one litre of sweat each day.
Sweat on its own is not smelly. It’s the bacteria living on your skin, which is broken down into amino acids in sweat. It creates a similar type of smell that you would find in stinky cheese.
Apocrine sweat would be the worst sweat that we humans brew, found mainly near the genitals, breasts, under arms and surprisingly your eyelids. According to Medical Daily “Apocrine sweat glands mature at puberty and lead to the smelliest of smells.”
Where does it all go to? Your clothes, but with the smart invention of modern detergent which makes use of surfactants that make stains water soluble and easier to rinse away. However, the question still stands as to how often should we wash them away?
According to Medical Daily “That seems to depend on the clothing item. Articles of clothing that are closer to those areas where apocrine sweat is active, like t-shirts, underwear, vests, and socks, should be washed each day. Towels, which also tend to grow bacteria because of their damp environments, should be washed at most, three days after use.”
Your pyjamas should be washed more often than you think too; as a professor from the London School of Hygiene and Topical Medicine said you need to put your pyjamas in the wash after a week of wear in order to prevent the possibility of infection.
But what if you have a really cool pair of jeans that you do want to fade? That would be entirely up to you, whether you prefer style over cleanliness or vice versa? Although if you are into skinny jeans that tend to cling to most parts of you, then I would advise you to watch them regularly.
Sources: Medical Daily, Brit Lab
Alice Paulse