How often should you wash your blankets and all things bedding?
You open your eyes in the middle of the night and realise you have just had another bout of night sweats. Your pillow case, bedsheets and blankets now share something in common with your gym towel after a hot yoga class! Nothing too much to worry about - sweating in your sleep is a pretty normal occurrence. You get back home and toss the gym towel into the dirty laundry basket but unlike the towel how often do you wash your blankets and your bedding? Full disclosure the next bit may gross you out…
Aside from the sweat, there is a build up of general dirt, body oils, seminal fluids and skin cells on your bed which forms the perfect ecosystem for a dust mite colony which feed off these byproducts. These eight-legged opportunists can only be seen under a microscope, so don’t even bother looking for them. If you do happen to see some crawlies in your bed, those are most likely bedbugs, and that’s a whole other issue. Dust mites feed on your dead skin cells, and a mattress could have anywhere from 100,000 to 10 million of these critters using your bed as their bathroom. In fact, by the time you’ve had a pillow for two years, up to 10 percent of its weight could be comprised of carcasses and their fecal matter. Still got the stomach for it? If so read on.
A microscopic image of Blomiatropicalis, or the common dust mite, which is 300 times smaller than a strand of hair. Source: The Straits Times
Dust mites don’t bite but they are considered an allergen, and their presence can cause symptoms like hay fever, eczema, asthma, coughing, and more. Unfortunately dust mites aren’t the only things lurking in your bed sheets. There are plenty of bacteria, too! If you’ve got something contagious like the cold or flu, you’re also spreading all those germs around your bed, too. We won’t mention the pandemic but you get the idea. Furthermore, The University of Manchester also found 16 species of fungi in pillows in one of their research studies. "We know that pillows are inhabited by the house dust mite which eats fungi, and one theory is that the fungi are in turn using the house dust mites' faeces as a major source of nitrogen and nutrition (along with human skin scales). One last thing for the mental coup de grace, another research study by the University of Nottingham found that the main species of fungi, aspergillus fumigatus, found on bedding could be having SEX! The scientists did not report at what point in time these microscopic mushrooms decided that asexual preproduction was boring but there you have it 🤮
Common fungi, Aspergillus fumigatus, under the microscope. Source: Alunos Online
Now that the context has been established, how often should we be washing our blankets and bedding items? Experts at CHOICE recommend, on average, washing your bedsheets and pillow cases on a weekly basis. To make this more manageable have a second set of sheets, pillow cases to change out whilst cleaning the other set undergo the laundering process.
How about blanket, doonas, comforters and pillows? These items don’t need to be washed nearly as frequently because you’re not sleeping directly on them and making full-body skin-to-skin contact. Still, a lot of people overlook cleaning these items altogether. It is recommended these items be washed every 2-3 months throwing them into the dryer first on high for 10-15 minutes to eradicate the creepy crawlies and the fungi forest. Pillows should be washed 2-3 times per year but be sure to read their individual care instructions as many of the modern memory foam pillows can’t be thrown into a washer. Generally, a wash can help improve the pillow’s fluffiness and prolong their lifespan. If you use a mattress protector, you can wash it every 2 months although you can clean it more frequently if there’s an accident or spill.
We hope that this post inspires you to rethink your current laundry routines at home before you go and fact check if fungi have sex on Google 😂. Flow Laundry is here to assist you in managing your laundry routine and freeing up more time for you to do what matters. Our large commercial machines are resource efficient and are able to accommodate bedding items of all sizes. There’s no fuss when you Flow with us.
