Laundry Confessions: I Almost Never Wash My Clothes, Here's Why You Shouldn't Either

It feels like only yesterday when you were last loading the washing machine with a huge pile of laundry, and yet here you are again. It's an exhausting weekly chore that feels as though it never ends. Basket to washer, washer to drying rack, drying rack to bedroom drawers. Over and over again. But does it really have to be this way?

Well, no. A few years back, I changed my approach to laundry. Friends are often shocked when I tell them how rarely I load the machine, but I always ask them: do my clothes ever look dirty? Do I ever smell dirty? Would you have been able to tell how little I use the washing machine if I hadn’t told you? Invariably their answer to all three of these questions is no.

According to a 2018 survey, most people in Britain will wear their T-shirts only twice before washing them. Plenty of people I know seem to wash them after only one wear. How many wears before I throw them in the machine meanwhile? Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. It depends on a whole range of factors – what the weather is like, whether I’m doing any strenuous exercise, or whether I spill a big dollop of spag bol down myself at dinner. If I’m not sure if a T-shirt is clean enough to wear, I rely on a method as old as civilisation itself: the sniff test.

I sniff my clothes every morning. A delicate, hesitant sniff isn’t good enough. You have to really go for it; really inhale the armpits of your T-shirts. Only then will you have the evidence you need. If the T-shirt stinks, of course I throw it in the washer. But if it smells neutral, or even carries just the faint whiff of deodorant, it’s safe to wear again.

Too many people up and down the country are washing their clothes after one or two wears just out of habit. But I prefer to think of laundry like you might think about washing your car. If your Fiat 500 seemed clean, you wouldn’t take it to the car wash, no matter how long it had been. You’d wait until it seemed a bit mucky. Why should your shirts, blouses and dresses be any different?

Doing laundry always carries risks too – according to a 2021 study, 95 items of clothing will be ruined over the average adult’s lifetime as a result of accidentally washing colours with whites or running the machine on too high a temperature. But even if you never make these errors of judgement, you’re damaging your clothes gradually every single time you run a cycle.

“Washing clothes regularly wears down the fibres and can cause them to degrade more quickly,” explains independent clothing designer Cath Fleming. “Dyed garments can lose their colour through over-washing, cotton often shrinks in a 40-degree wash, and wool is its own fussy beast.”

Despite these factors, you’re going to need to wash your clothes eventually, but limiting the amount of times you do so can extend the life expectancy of your garments – and help save the planet.

Shockingly, a massive 42% of Britons don’t think about the environmental impact of our laundering habits. Reflective of this is the fact that a quarter of the washes we do each year aren’t full loads, while half are spun at a temperature of more than 30 degrees. It’s true that sometimes these higher temperatures are needed – maybe you’ve been at spin class – but right now, 76% of people UK-wide use the same washing machine setting every single time.

Approaching each garment differently is also important. As Cath explains, jeans should “be aired instead of washed, or washed only after every ten wears, to preserve the fibres and indigo wash of the denim”. But what about when, on day one after washing, you spill a splash of ramen on your favourite flares? For this, she suggests spot cleaning with a toothbrush. Meanwhile, another trick I’ve learned for removing food stains from any item is to use dish soap – because it’s designed for cleaning pots and pans, it works wonders on anything oily.

Now the summer months have arrived, we can use the weather to our advantage too, not just when it comes to drying clothes, but also cleaning them.

“Leaving clothes in the sun is often as good a way to fade a stain or refresh their smell as any spin cycle,” Cath recommends. “And when you do use the machine, it’s important to think about why you’re washing your clothes – is it because they’re dirty or smelly, or is it because that’s just what you do?”

Clearly there are limits to the sniff test lifestyle. I wash my underwear after every single wear – I’m not an animal. And my gym gear gets washed just as often. One side effect of this is that I’ve had to spend a little more on pants and socks than other people to accommodate the infrequency of my laundry loads. But elsewhere, I’m saving money, spending less on water bills and new clothes.

At first I didn’t tell anybody about my lifestyle – I walked through the world ashamed, nodding along sheepishly as other people complained about how full their wash baskets were. But then about a year ago, I was at a party, and after a few drinks I confessed my sins to a high-end fashion designer.

To my delight, she affirmed my new way of life – and I’ve never looked back.

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