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How long can you postpone changing your bed sheets?

bed sheets
After this amount of weeks, it’s really time to change your bed sheets

While it doesn’t even take that much time, changing the bed sheets is a chore a lot of people (us included) really don’t like. Yet we also know that changing our sheets regularly is much better for our health. So, how often do you really have to do it?

Can you postpone it at all?

Every week

We once wrote that you should really change your bed sheets once a week. After a week, you’ve left behind so much sweat and other filth that a bit of cleaning really wouldn’t hurt. When you’re asleep, you lose a lot of moisture. This moisture is full of skin flakes, dirt and oils, which gets in your sheets. And that’s not all: poop residue, urine and spit also nest in your sheets. Yet a lot of people don’t change their sheets every week since they feel it’s too soon. So, we wondered on behalf of the lazy people among us: how long can you postpone changing your bed sheets?

Maximum

The Cleaning Lab of the Good Housekeeping Institute reveals that you can postpone changing your bed sheets, but that you shouldn’t wait any longer than two weeks. The lab emphasises that it really is better to change the sheets every week, but that if you really do want to postpone due to any reason, you shouldn’t postpone it any longer than two weeks. “Launder bed sheets and pillowcases in hot water. Dry them using the antibacterial cycle or the hottest temperature your dryer offers,” one of the lab’s researchers explains. This way, as few bacteria as possible are left behind on the sheets.

Read more: Clean it or bin it? This is what you should do with the 6 grossest items in your home

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Source: Good Housekeeping | Image: Pixabay