I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t do my laundry as often as I’d like. I might wash my towels twice a week, but somehow I always still have an impossibly full laundry bag that takes more strength than I really have to get down the stairs to the basement laundry machines. And just forget about washing my sheets often enough. Every time I know it’s coming around to the two-three week mark, I know that I really do need to wash my sheets even if I dread pulling them off the mattress and somehow getting them back on without falling off my bed.
With the constant struggle just to get on and off the bed, it doesn’t really seem realistic to be washing your sheets once a week, but according to NBC News, that’s how often you really should be washing them. At a minimum, you should be washing those sheets every two weeks, but I know that on this campus, a lot of us are lucky to wash them just a few times a quarter.
The number of times something should be washed also depends on the use. Towels should also be washed once a week if they’re used for dishes, but bath towels should be washed every other day. And I happen to think that with minimal air circulation in the dorms, we should be paying attention to the fact that our towels may not be completely dry every time we take them off the towel rack and down to the showers.
I feel that as we focus on our studies, we tend to forget to do our laundry or put it on the back burner for a couple weeks during our seemingly endless midterm season. But just a reminder from the American Cleaning Institute and Real Simple to wash tops, socks, underwear, swimsuits, workout gear and whites every time you wear them. Wash sweaters, scarves, hats, gloves, dresses, shorts, pants, suits and pajamas every few wears. Wash skirts and sweatshirts approximately once a week. Wash jeans and shoes when they seem dirty and coats once or twice a season.
As we do our laundry, we should also concern ourselves with how often we should be vacuuming our floors because I know that in my dorm, we aren’t borrowing the RA’s vacuum as often as we should. It doesn’t hurt that it’s almost always out of order either. But according to NBC, we should also be vacuuming our floors and rugs weekly, possibly more often considering that we are squeezing so many students into such a tight space.
No one enjoys doing laundry. It’s always a struggle to fit all your clothes into the laundry machines or carry your dirty clothes up and down a few flights of stairs. It’s not fun to lug all your clothes down just to find all the machines full and a wait for the next open one. It’s not fun if you ever have to deal with holding your wet clothes as you wait a half hour for a dryer to become available or if someone takes your stuff out of the machine if you’re running late.
But just because we don’t all enjoy doing our laundry doesn’t mean we don’t need to do it. So please, do your roommates a favor and don’t be the one to wait a month before you finally toss that load in.