The no-wash movement: would you wear underpants for a week without cleaning them?

Do you need to wash your T-shirts after every wear? Probably not. What about your knickers? That depends. But more and more people are eschewing detergent to save time, money and the environment

When Tim, like many of us, started working from home during the Covid pandemic, he developed a more relaxed approach to dressing. This made him consider the time and energy that washing his clothes was costing him. “It was around the time we had our second kid, so I was totally overloaded with things,” he says. “Anything I can cut out of my life I see as a challenge, so laundry was just one less thing to do.” He had already been doing less than many people – a load every week, or sometimes every two – but then he went for an entire year without washing his clothes in the machine.

These days, Tim, a software engineer, does a wash every six months or so. “Seeing as I don’t have to go to the office any more, I don’t really have a need for clean clothes,” he says. “It doesn’t matter.” On video calls, “people only see me from my head up, and half the time I don’t put my camera on anyway”. He looks clean, if fashionably scruffy, when we speak over such a call. “If there’s some important social event, I’ll make sure I’ve got something nice to wear, but day to day it doesn’t really matter.”

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