In the morning, most wake up, find an outfit, and start their day, but others may change outfits multiple times a day.
Whether you go to college, work in corporate America, or just like to play dress-up, we humans wear many different clothes. But how often should you wash your favorite shirt? Not knowing how often to wash your clothes can cause problems, regardless of whether you wash too infrequently or too frequently.
Viral TikToker Allison Delperdang triggered a recent social media debate about how often one should wash their pajamas after posting a video.
“When I was younger, my parents always made us wear pajamas … multiple nights in a row because they weren’t dirty, and I still do that as an adult,” she said. “I need to know if, like, as adults we’re still doing that, or should I be literally making dirty clothes every single night?”
Manal Mohammed, a senior lecturer of medical microbiology at the University of Westminster in London, told CNN that sometimes people recycle outfits because it’s easier:
Wearing the same clothes back to back as Delperdang does, Mohammed said, is “linked to avoiding decision fatigue, hence wearing the same clothes involves less decisions to make and less stress every morning.”
Washing your clothing too rarely can put you at risk for skin infections.
Dermatologist Dr. Anthony Rossi of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City told CNN that some clothing items should be washed after every use, like underwear and socks.
Those items are “on a part of our body that just has a lot of natural bacteria that lives on our body, like our microbiome, (yeast) and bacteria,” Rossi said. “Then from day-to-day activities, we sweat. That just breeds moisture and an environment where this bacteria can overgrow.”
According to Rossi, washing frequency should be based on lifestyle and personal preference.
“As far as your pants and your shirts, I think it’s all a level of comfort and how much you’re perspiring throughout the day,” Rossi told CNN. “A lot of people wear undershirts. The undershirt would be something to wash, whereas your top shirt you don’t really need to wash.”
Other outerwear, like jackets or coats, can be washed less often, Rossi said, because they don’t come into contact with your skin.
Still, “If you’re wearing it every day, probably [wash it] every two weeks,” he proposed.
Whether you should wash your jeans — and if so, how often — has also long been a matter of debate.
Rossi told CNN that he doesn’t wash his jeans unless they are sweaty or visibly dirty.
Mohammed suggested to CNN that washing your jeans on a monthly basis is a safe rule of thumb, but recognized that it’s variable based on how and where you wear them.
So, underwashing clothes can be bad for your skin, but what about overwashing them? Washing clothing too often can shorten its lifespan by speeding up wear and tear.
As CEO of Laundryheap Deyan Dimitrov told The Sun, too much washing can result in rips, shrinkage, or buildups of detergent and other products in your clothes.
Deyan recommended washing clothing aside from underwear every third wear.
Rossi told CNN that societal expectations of how often you should wash your clothes are affected by culture.
“People tend to over wash and ‘over hygiene’ themselves, because especially in America, we have a luxury of being able to do all that stuff all the time,” he said.
The way Americans do laundry has been criticized in the past.
A big topic is Americans’ use of dryers. The dryer was invented by J Ross Moore in 1938, and by 2009, dryers were found in 80% of American households. According to Real Simple, dryers are harsh on clothes, and places like Britain use more energy-efficient alternatives like drying cabinets.
