How often do you actually need to wash your bed sheets?

A study revealed almost half of single men wait four months to send them through the wash.

Sometimes the thought of washing the sheets is too much to bear. Image: Bridget Jones

Gremlin mode, activated.

Washing the sheets is one of those tasks that easily falls by the wayside. You’re tired, ready for bed, and the idea of stripping the sheets and pulling and contorting a fitted sheet around the mattress is just not the one.

However, it’s also one of those things that at some point, we decide we can go no further and need to take action. For some, this may take just one week, and this is the timing that experts told the BBC they recommend. Two weeks at most.

Maybe you stretch it to three or even four weeks when you’re busy, but four months?!?

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That’s the amount of time nearly half of single men told a recent study it took them to wash their sheets. 12% admitted they don’t remember the last time they washed them, which is even more cesspit-y.

"That's really not a good plan," chartered psychologist, neuroscientist and sleep expert Dr Lindsay Browning, told Radio 1. "Sweat goes into the sheets making them not only smell disgusting but also become quite clogged up.”

Single women fared better, with 62% saying they clean their bedding every two weeks and couples tended to do it every three weeks. Dr Browning says we can be a little more lax during the winter months, but during a sweaty summer refreshing the sheets is essential.

Image: iStock

While some may think that showering at night is the key to keeping the sheets clean for longer, Dr Browning warned that you still shed dead skin cells in the bed and breathe over your sheets each evening.

Laura Baillie, an associate lecturer in social sciences at the Open University, recently told VICE that she believes the divide in changing the sheets comes down to something called ‘weaponised incompetence’.

“Weaponised incompetence generally refers to men pretending to be helpless in order to do less things in the home,” she explains. “The idea that if you pretend not to know how to do something, that she will get frustrated and then take over the task for you and won't ask you to do it again.”

She added: “Personally, the men I have slept with who have had disgusting sheets have always relied on others to look after them: a mother, a previous partner, etc.”

Image: iStock

While some hypothesise that a laxness in home duties, like washing the sheets, could be due to the male mental health crisis, statistics from Beyond Blue suggest that men are less likely than females to be experiencing depression and anxiety.

Their data shows that 12.2% of Australian males aged 16 to 85 have experienced an affective disorder in their lifetime compared to 17.8% of females.

Oh the flipside, men are much less likely to seek help for their mental health condition, which can cause it to worsen. So, it's a murky link between these trends and the likelihood of someone changing the sheets.

Image: iStock

There does appear to be some element of how much one cares about personal hygiene. The study found that men on average took a week longer than women to determine sheets as 'unhygienic'. It also took them a week longer than women to call sheets 'disgusting'. It suggests some difference in the standard of cleanliness expected from each gender. 

Again, it is important to remember that these figures are based on averages. There are certainly many men who would clean their sheets regularly and many women who wouldn't.  Either way, the average human loses an average of 1.5 grams of skin each day according to the Daily Mail, which is essentially building up in your bed sheets overtime.

So, just wash the damn sheets.

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Originally published as How often do you actually need to wash your bed sheets?