CLEVELAND, Ohio — If you’re washing your pants every single time you wear them, you might be wasting time and money.
In fact, you could probably wear those pants three times or more without washing them.
Some of you read that and were appalled. Some were going to do that anyway. And many of you are asking “How is this saving anyone money?”
The short answer is fast fashion: Your clothes probably aren’t made to last. And over-washing them won’t do you any favors.
“It’s meant to fall apart so that you’re required to buy more,” said Noel Palomo-Lovinski, a professor at Kent State University’s School of Fashion.
Fast fashion, oversimplified, is the business model of taking high-fashion, trendy designs seen at fashion shows and creating low-cost, mass-produced versions that get to retail stores as quickly as possible.
The idea is to have new and affordable clothes every time a customer comes back to the store, Palomo-Lovinski said. Instead of the four traditional clothing seasons — spring, summer, fall and winter — new clothing appears on sales floors about every two weeks.
Planned obsolescence is baked into this model. You can’t buy more if your closet is full.
Admittedly, I am nowhere near qualified to talk about fast fashion or anything that’s remotely fashionable. But I’d imagine that my jeans from Walmart and Target or the stuff I bought at Sierra and T.J. Maxx aren’t always high quality, either.
Low-quality clothing generally has a finite amount of washes it can go through before falling apart, Palomo-Lovinski said. Washing and drying clothes, especially in hot water or on high heat, will make the fibers weaker causing pilling and holes.
You may say “buy more high-quality clothes.” It’s not that simple.
Palomo-Lovinski explained that if you don’t have a background in clothing, finding the high quality stuff is hard. Manufacturers do a good job of making low-quality feel nice.
She said this is done with coatings that make the clothes feel nicer than they are. Those coatings, which are often plastic based, wash away.
“Price has nothing to do with it, unfortunately,” Palomo-Lovinski said. You can’t necessarily just go out and buy pricier clothes to fix the issue, she says.
Avoiding fast fashion is easier said than done.
“I have fast fashion pieces, even though I teach sustainability and talk about how much I don’t like fast fashion” Palomo-Lovinski said.
So, how often should you wash your clothes?
How many times should you wear a piece of clothing? Hard to say. I’ll often wear the same pair of pants again and again. I’d rather not know if people have noticed or not.
There are a countless number of articles online, many of them much longer than this one, explaining how and when to wash your clothes.
But Palomo-Lovinski’s advice is simple. How does it look? Does it smell?
She said she does not wash clothing every time she wears it, but it depends. She examines the garment, smells it and sees if it still looks clean.
“If I have a stain or if something needs to be cleaned, then I clean it,” Palomo-Lovinski.
Something that makes direct contact with your skin and catches sweat, like an undershirt, may need to be washed every time. A sweater seldom needs to be washed.
The spectrum has underwear on one end and jackets on the other. Everything in the middle is up to you.
If you want guidelines, the American Cleaning Institute says this:
- Wash after one wear: T-shirts, tank tops, bathing suits, leggings, tights, underwear and socks.
- Wash after two-to-three wears: jeans, pajamas and bras.
- Suits can be worn three to four times before dry cleaning. Bath towels can be hung to dry and used three to five times.
- Whites and silks should be washed every wear. So should anything anything with a stain.
The next question I had for her was “Where do you put it?” I often feel weird putting clothes I’ve worn back into a dresser drawer.
I often see memes about “the chair.” (If it’s too dirty for your dresser, and too clean for your floor, it goes on the chair.) Or you may hear about a “re-wear pile.”
But something like that might be a good test. If you don’t feel comfortable putting the shirt on your “clean” clothes, it may be time to wash it.
Some people put the clothes back but do so inside out, so they know it’s been worn.
How should you wash it?
Palomo-Lovinski said it’s best to wash clothes with cold water and to line dry them. You can hang them inside or outside — but if you do it outside and in direct sun, turn it inside out because the sun may fade the clothing.
Separate light and heavy garments. Do full loads of laundry, not a few items at a time.
So, why do a column about re-wearing clothes? Because it’s kind of a taboo subject that I think everyone — not just fashionable people — should discuss.
People often talk about re-wearing jeans. But when it comes to suits, shirts, pants, etc., it is hard-to-find definitive answers. And it feels weird to ask someone “Hey, how often do you wear that before washing it?” Some people find it gross.
Maybe it isn’t taboo for you. This idea came-to-be because I live with a former fashion student grad who, with her coworkers, were discussing what to do with their re-wear pile.
One of the projects in Palomo-Lovinski’s sustainability class is having students catalog their wardrobe.
They write down how they use a piece of clothing, how they take care of it and how often they wash it. Many people wash things less than you’d imagine, she said.
“It’s a really good reflective practice,” she said.
Taking care of your stuff will make it last longer, even if you buy high quality clothes. How much money will that save you in the long run? Hard to say.
Me? I’ll admit to nothing. But I’m running out and buying a second pair of black jeans, just to give myself some plausible deniability.
A version of this column published earlier.
Saving You Money is cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer’s column about saving money. We want to know how we can help you save money. Send your questions and comments to smcdonnell@cleveland.com.
Read past columns at cleveland.com/topic/saving-you-money/.
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