How long can you wear clothes before washing them? Save water and energy by checking labels

Laundering your clothes in a washing machine isn’t all that environmentally friendly, and dry cleaning uses even more energy

To minimise your impact on the environment, use gentle detergents, avoid bleach, use cold water and only launder clothes when they really need it

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How often should you wash your clothes? It depends on the fabric, and how close to your skin you wear them. Washing machines use a lot of water, and dry cleaning a lot of power.

Published: 5:00am, 28 Jan 2020Updated: 6:31pm, 28 Jan 2020

There’s something alluring about the scent of clean clothes – perfumers have even tried to bottle the smell over the years – but a recent study by appliance maker Bosch in Britain revealed that not everyone is enamoured with fresh laundry.

Men admitted to wearing underwear two times, while women wore their bras an average of eight times before throwing them into the laundry basket.

And more than half the participants surveyed revealed that they have no problem with other people re-wearing items multiple days in a row, despite feeling dirty if they do it themselves.

Evidently laundry is low on the list of priorities for some, but the study does raise an interesting question: just how often should people wash their clothes?

How often should people wash their clothes? Photo: Shutterstock

Fashion designer and environmental advocate Stella McCartney said in a recent interview that she wasn’t a fan of dry cleaning – or any cleaning for that matter. Back in 2014, Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh declared that he had never washed the pair of 501 jeans he was wearing at the time.