Be honest. How often do you wash your jeans?
Unless I get a stain on them, I wash them maybe every 2-3 wears.
Is that gross? I dunno, let me live my life 🙂
A fellow named Josh Le decided to take this question and make it into an experiment. I remember hearing about this before but forgot the details so I looked into it again.
Back in 2009, when Josh was a student at the University of Alberta, he wore his jeans for 15 months/330 times without washing them!
Did they get a tad smelly? Yep. Instead of washing them, he would put them in the freezer overnight.
So after the 15 months pass he asked a professor to help him test them. They swabbed the jeans and then washed them. Josh then wore them for about another 2 weeks and then tested them again.
They found that “There did not appear to be differences in the bacterial carriage depending on whether the jeans had been worn for 15 months or only 13 days. The bacteria present on the jeans came mostly from Josh’s skin and was not harmful.”
I don’t think I will begin only washing my jeans every 15 months but I feel much better about my every 3 wears habit now!
