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Today's question:

Dear Expert's Panel,
How often should I do laundry? I am also curious, how many times am I allowed to wear a pair of jeans before it's officially "dirty?"

Thanks.

John Elderbridge,
A concerned college student.



Thanks for your question John. The "when" of doing laundry is something single men have struggled with for thousands of years. Aristotle helped shed some light into the problem with his scientific writings on laundry in 310 BC. The dialogues of cleaning of cloth were revolutionary for their time. He writes: "How can the body taint both an inner tunic and an outer tunic? Does not an outer tunic become tainted from the outside and an inner tunic become tainted from the inside? Therefore, a tainted outer tunic cannot blemish a clean body so long as an inner tunic is provided." The concept of inner and outer clothing helped reveal some fundamental secrets about laundry philosophy that is still widely accepted today.


The next great breakthrough came in 1872 in the wild wild west. Miners in California needed a fabric that could be used, thrown on the ground at night, and then considered clean the following day. Strauss answered the call with what we now know as jeans. Many believe incorrectly that jeans were invented to be able to last in harsh working conditions, but in reality, historians are confident that the innate properties of daily cleanliness, also known as cleanliness-ish played an important role.

Letting history be our guide, the Experts Panel has decided on several guidelines based on limiting factors. A limiting factor is simply the type or class of clothing that needs to be washed while other classes still have clean laundry available. Simply put, limiting factors prevent you from going another day without doing laundry. Examples of legitimate limiting factors include gym/workout shorts, boxers, and socks (but only during extended periods of non-sandal permitting weather). Non limiting factors include jeans, and shirts. Theorists have proposed that if a person did not own more shirts than boxers, t-shirts could potentially be a limiting factor. This has never been observed in nature however, and it is unclear as to whether it is a physically possible situation.

In recent years, the laundry debate continues to rage. Most noticeably is the unanswered question of, is it possible for shoes, the ultimate non-limiting factor, to smell so badly that require washing?

-The Experts Panel