How often should bed linen be changed?

Sleeping linen and bed

Different subtypes of laundry have their own characteristics when cleaning and washing. This section isn't just about bedding—cleaning the bed itself is just as important from a hygiene standpoint. It is advisable to synchronize the “big wash” of all bedding in the house once every few months to ensure that you get rid of possible insects or fungal problems.

Even clean-looking underwear can harbor parasites.

Video - Rules for caring for bed linen

Sheets

The biggest problem that arises when changing sheets infrequently is increased humidity. This is especially noticeable in summer and in hot climates, where it is advisable to change the bed every three to four days.

To care for your sheets, you need to remove the blanket from the bed every morning and ventilate the room to get rid of evaporation and unpleasant odors. You need to change your sheets at least once every ten days, and when washing, set the temperature to at least 60 degrees to destroy the larvae of dust mites.

Find out how to sew a sheet with an elastic band onto a mattress with your own hands in a special article on our website.

Mattresses

Surprisingly, the mattress is one of the easiest bedding items to clean. To clean the mattress you need to:

1. Vacuum the upholstery.
2. Remove it if possible. Vacuum the inside.
3. Clean the inside of the mattress by hand using a cloth, cold water and a small amount of soap/shampoo.

This procedure must be repeated at least twice a year. In specialized stores you can purchase a special cover that will protect the mattress from dust mites and dirt.

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Mattresses

Pillows

Besides the obvious change of pillowcases once a week, you need to wash the pillows themselves. Similar surveys have not been conducted in Russia, but in Australia, for example, more than a quarter of residents have never washed their pillows. Hygiene doctors say that after a couple of years, an unwashed pillow contains a combination of mildew, dandruff, and live and dead mites. This mixture leads to chronic rhinitis and allergies, as well as eye infections.

To maintain cleanliness, pillows should be washed every three to six months. Feather filling requires dry cleaning; synthetic materials must be washed at 60 degrees or higher. Every two to three years the product needs to be replaced with a new one.

Feather pillow prices

Feather pillows

Blankets

The same risk group: constant contact with skin, sweat, high temperature. A dirty blanket is the most common carrier of mites after feather pillows, and the difficulty of washing due to its large size means that many people do not clean their blankets for literally years.

The hygiene rules are the same as for pillows - wash together once a quarter; blankets with down or any other natural filling are sent to the dry cleaner. Except that the service life of blankets is longer, up to five years.

Find out how to get rid of the smell in your washing machine at home in a special article on our website.

Prices for bed linen

Bed linen

Changing bed linen in kindergarten

Just imagine: your child “caught” such an unpleasant disease as conjunctivitis. For children, it costs literally nothing to bring this extreme infection into the home. You go to the hospital with your child, diligently treat him, while trying to protect all family members, and perhaps you get sick with him... And now, healthy and rested, you return to kindergarten, and after 2 days you again find signs of conjunctivitis . How is this possible? Very easy. The child simply slept in the kindergarten in his crib, on which the linen had not yet been changed. So, after such situations, a logical question arises - how often do bed linen be changed in preschool educational institutions?

To answer this question, let’s turn to the legislative document base; “Sanitary and epidemiological requirements for the structure, content and organization of the operating mode of preschool educational organizations” will help us with this.

Excerpts from the document describe in detail the algorithm for the provision and operation of bed linen in kindergarten:

1. Each child has an individual bedding set, which includes 3 sets of bed linen, 3 towels, 2 mattress covers.
2. Each set of bed linen is marked in a special way.
3. The schedule for changing bed linen varies depending on the degree of soiling of the products, but linen must be changed at least once a week.
4. During each general tidying, bedding such as a mattress, pillow, blanket should be ventilated in the open fresh air.

   

Dependence on seasons

The recommended frequency of changing linen depends on the climate and weather outside.

The usual change of linen once a week is not enough to close the issue. The vast majority, nineteen out of twenty respondents, either wash their beds irregularly or do it on one convenient day of the week. This is not entirely the right approach - at different times of the year the human body produces different amounts of sweat, and the amount of skin lost also differs.

Important! The washing times here and below are given for people who shower daily before bed and regularly change their underwear. If a person ignores personal hygiene, then the bed needs to be changed one and a half to two times more often.

Winter

Thanks to low temperatures and switching to the heat retention mode, the sleeper produces much less sweat than under normal conditions. Microbiologists estimate the period by which linen changes can be reduced to two weeks. Of course, this does not apply to athletes and other people exposed to high physical activity every day.

Spring

The period of flowering and love, as well as the dark months for all allergy sufferers. If you have problems with allergies, then your underwear should be changed as often as possible, ideally once every five days. This will help calm the receptors at night with the absence of unnecessary odors and irritants. Sexually active couples should not delay changing their bedding - for them, changing once a week will be the necessary minimum.

Summer

Summer is a critical period, especially in the absence of air conditioning and in hot climates. Sweat, dirt, and skin particles accumulate on the bed and create an environment favorable for microorganisms. Here, fabric care is individual: somewhere in Sochi, sheets and pillowcases can be changed at least every three days, while in Vorkuta ten days will be quite enough.

Autumn

The only problem with cleaning clothes in the fall is dirt. Frequent rain, dust and slush place special demands on hygiene, so those who do not like to wash every day should wash more often. Autumn is the “hottest” period for the appearance of insects, so if there is any suspicion of the appearance of ticks, you must immediately take the entire bed to the dry cleaner.

For simplicity, you can use the following formula - we count the number of days after which you need to change your underwear in the summer, then multiply it by one and a half for spring/autumn and by two for winter. So, if in summer the bed becomes dirty after five days, then in winter it usually lasts for ten, and in the off-season, washing can be done every week. For a calendar, it is convenient to wash every 4-7-10-14 days, so as not to get confused in complex routines and complete the cycle every two or three weeks.

We replace bed linen more often

There are several factors that influence changing bedding more frequently. Namely:

1. If a person sweats a lot (usually this happens in the hot season), then the laundry becomes dirty much faster

2. If there are small children in the house, then you need to be more careful about the cleanliness of the house. Firstly, kids love to get everything dirty, and even from an aesthetic point of view, sleeping on underwear with a stain from a felt-tip pen or plasticine is not very pleasant. Secondly, children should live in cleanliness. Don't put their health at risk.

3. Pets also cause frequent changes of bed linen. Cats and dogs love to climb into their owners’ beds, and accordingly they stain and spoil the appearance of fabrics. What remains is fur, paw marks, and drool. If you want to minimize the risk of contracting diseases that are transmitted from pets, then wash your bedding every 3-5 days.

4. Allergic reactions. You must carefully monitor your health. Remember that dust, hair and dirt that collect on fabrics can cause serious allergies. Moreover, if you already have allergies, then you need to change your bed linen to clean and fresh ones as often as possible.

When purchasing linen, give preference to natural fabrics. They are more pleasant to the body, do not cause irritation and allow the skin to breathe.

Replacement features

Linen for sick and elderly people is changed every few days or daily.

Sometimes, the bed needs to be changed much more often than in standard cases. So, in case of colds, the linen must be changed to dry constantly, and after recovery, the entire bed goes into the wash. There are a number of important factors in which linen should be changed every five days:

• For people with oily skin, excessive sweating or dandruff problems;
• For those who watch TV in bed or eat there;
• If the bed is rarely made for the day, remaining in a disassembled state.

Athletes also have their own schedule. Accelerated metabolism and sweating leads to the fact that the bed becomes dirty a couple of days earlier. This is especially noticeable during the period of intensive preparation for the competitive season. Here, the desired “every week” often turns into the obligatory “every three to four days.”

Pets shorten the cycle to five days: the dog/cat's fur remains on the pillow, and the pet itself can be a carrier of any of thousands of diseases. At a minimum, dirt and vermin should cause replacement as often as possible.

Cleaning is required after the linen has been used by a guest. It also needs to be carried out after any large-scale procedures and rearrangements of the house - after repairs, even fine dust settles on well-closed pillowcases.

How to wash clothes correctly

Options for markings on the bed linen label.

Note! The washing algorithm depends on the material and properties of the laundry itself; care details can be found on the label of the product itself. The following is general information that should not serve as a guide to action. An incorrectly selected mode can ruin a set of laundry, tearing it or destroying the color.

Video - How to wash clothes in a washing machine

Washing particularly dirty laundry begins with soaking. This can be done either manually, leaving the product in a container with soapy water, or using the soaking mode in the washing machine. Before you start washing, the laundry must be turned inside out.

The optimal temperature for washing white laundry is 60 degrees: this will kill most insects and clean even the most serious stains. There is no need to boil bed linen - this will cause it to lose strength and quickly tear. Colored linen is washed at a lower temperature of 40 degrees. In the process, it is advisable to use special washing powders for colored laundry.

Silk and other luxury fabrics stand apart - they are washed in a delicate mode or by hand, without squeezing. Silk linen requires special washing conditions and deteriorates quickly, so you should use it as little as possible.

Important! Don't forget to wash your laundry immediately after purchasing. This will not only rid it of the dirt that has accumulated during the journey from the manufacturing factory, but will also wash away the special exhibition composition. This composition is used to give the fabric rigidity and presentation. After the first wash, the laundry will become softer and ready for use.

When washing clothes in a washing machine, it is necessary to take into account its average weight.

Table 1. Average weight of bedding sets

Table 2. Weight of cotton linen individually

Weight depends on the size of the product and its material. Typically, a five-kilogram washing machine is enough to clean the entire set of bed linen, towels and pajamas for two people.

Prices for popular models of washing machines

Washing machines

How to starch laundry - step-by-step instructions

Fabric soaked in starch not only becomes more tensile and looks brighter. Starch also protects the fabric from dirt, and most stains disappear during washing, being applied to a solid film.

In addition to its beautiful appearance, starched linen is also more hygienic.

The procedure itself is divided into three types, soft, medium and hard.

Table 3. Step-by-step instructions for preparing the starch mixture

For medium starch, take a tablespoon of the substance; for hard starch , take two tablespoons and add a teaspoon of borax.

Clean bedding is soaked and rinsed in the resulting liquid. Then the item is wrung out and straightened so that there are no wrinkles on it. There is an easier way - the mixture is sprayed onto the fabric with a spray bottle.

Other types of linen

When touching on personal hygiene issues, one cannot ignore towels, pajamas and underwear. They may not directly relate to the issue of bedding, but they are very, very close.

Towels used after an evening shower should be washed regularly.

Underwear

One of the dirtiest items of clothing. Even visually clean panties contain up to 10,000 bacteria and microorganisms. If you don’t change your underwear within one day, a couple of zeros will be added to this number. This applies to all types of clothing, from thongs to boxers.

Doctors recommend changing underwear every day, and completely replacing the item once a year. When washing in a machine, use a temperature of 30-40 degrees using bleach or any similar additive. If one of the family members is sick, it is better to wash at a temperature of 60 degrees - this will destroy most microorganisms.

Pajamas

Many people do not consider pajamas and dressing gowns as underwear, washing them much less often than they should. Anonymous surveys say that pajama lovers wear them for more than two weeks before putting them in the wash, and women are even more dirty in this case: 17 days without washing versus fourteen for men.

It should not be forgotten that pajamas require cleaning at least once a week, with washing machine settings identical to underwear. Of course, as with underwear, the washing cycle depends on the manufacturer's recommendations on the label.

Towels

It is towels that remove most of the dead skin cells from our body. They are the ones who collect bacteria and microorganisms from the upper layer. The warm and humid atmosphere of the bathroom ensures that skin viruses and fungi have their chance to become infected.

Microbiologists say that a towel should be washed immediately after three uses. The overall service life depends on the frequency of replacement, but with active use it is advisable to purchase a new towel annually.

Attention! Never allow strangers to use your towel! Even boiling does not always guarantee complete cleaning of the product.

When cleaning, high temperatures are required (60 degrees and above) , as well as the additional use of antibacterial agents.

Parasites in bed linen

The main difficulty in caring for laundry and doing weekly laundry is convincing the person that he needs it. After all, billions of people don't wash their pillowcases once a week and humanity still hasn't gone extinct, right?

Parasites living in the bedroom

Bacteria

The US Microbiology Association decided to conduct an experiment by randomly collecting 50 pillows from students in dormitories at 25 colleges. The sample was quite representative: from students of elite institutions to ordinary colleges. The results surprised even the researchers themselves: on average, each pillow contained about 300 thousand bacterial foci and more than 90 thousand fungal accumulations.

This is what professional mattress disinfection looks like

The most popular pathogens in the hit parade were:

• Bacteria from the nasopharynx, which cause bronchitis and lung diseases;
• Fungi that provoke an allergic crisis;
• Dysentery stick.

Despite the fact that women turned out to be a little more careful than men (the number of pathogens on average was one and a half times less), a “gentleman’s set” was also found among them. The record sample was a student's pillow with more than 150 million bacteria and fungi.

Under normal conditions, most of these harmful agents are not dangerous—the immune system successfully fights them. But as soon as he weakens, permanent illnesses will not keep him waiting.

What to do? Heat treatment is good for getting rid of bacteria and viruses - simply ironing clothes will destroy almost everything that can be found inside.

Dust mite

Enlarged image of a dust mite.

If lazy people who don’t like washing and ironing have now given up and thought “oh, I have excellent immunity, this will do” - then in the picture above you can see the second scourge of dirty bed linen, the dust mite.

The tick loves the bed itself most of all, living in the mattress, blankets or pillow. These parasites are invisible to the eye and affect a person indirectly, intensifying his current diseases. Ticks can cause the following diseases or their complications:

• Allergy attacks;
• Diseases of the nasopharynx, including chronic ones;
• Skin diseases, irritation, itching;
• Cough and runny nose.

In addition, ticks will become a problem in cases of serious lung diseases, such as pneumonia or asthma.

Fun fact : According to a study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology, ticks prefer red underwear because of a biological program embedded in them. Blue linen, even if only slightly, will reduce the number of these parasites in your bedroom.

Ideal conditions for these parasites: relative humidity above 60%, high temperature, dirt. During her month-long life cycle, the female will give birth to up to 30 cubs, and the male will leave deposits 200 times larger than himself. It has been observed that in just a decade the weight of a mattress will double if not used carefully due to dust, mite remains and feces.

What to do? Regular wet cleaning, maintaining a dry atmosphere in the apartment and cold will help against ticks - just a few hours on the winter balcony and most of the ticks in your favorite blanket will die, and the rest will hibernate.

Fungus

The fungus, having settled in the bed linen, eats into it tightly.

Fungal diseases are among the most common on the planet - about one and a half billion people suffer from mycosis of the extremities. The easiest way to become infected with fungus is in common areas: swimming pools, saunas, gyms. Next, the microorganism spreads through your laundry to the rest of your family members.

At risk are people with weakened immune systems, diseases of the cardiovascular system and vitamin deficiency. It is impossible to completely protect yourself from fungus, but to reduce the likelihood of illness, do not use other people's things and change linens as often as possible if you have to share the bed with a sick person.

What to do? Fungi, like all microorganisms, love warmth. At the same time, it survives well in the cold, so the method of taking things out into the cold will not work here. In order to get rid of fungus on things, you need to use washing in combination with boiling. In extreme cases, wear socks everywhere, including in bed.

What determines the frequency of changing bed linen?

Alas, there are still people who believe that bed linen should be washed only when it gets dirty - visually dirty. In fact, we cannot see most of the pollution, especially dangerous to humans. Moreover, they appear much faster than those that are visible to the human eye.

So, here is a modest list of the treasures hiding on your sheets:

• dust (you can’t even imagine in what quantities);
• pet hair, if any;
• sweat;
• secretions of the sebaceous glands;
• dead skin cells;
• dandruff;
• dust mites. If you have carefully examined your bed and did not find any swarming insects there, you should not hastily rejoice that these creatures have passed you by. Dust mites are microorganisms; they do not bite and are not in themselves dangerous to humans. But the products of their vital activity greatly affect the human condition.

All of the above points create a favorable environment for the proliferation of microbes.
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During sleep, we are in close contact with bedding: we breathe all its contents (from banal dust to dangerous fungi - these are the most advanced cases), and also collect all these riches with our skin.

What consequences await the owner of this fauna in his sleeping place?

• Acne – simply put, pimples. One of the main causes of acne is bacteria. So, if you've tried absolutely everything, but your face is still plagued with acne, try changing your pillowcase more often. Just think about it: lying on a pillow, you press your face into a whole jungle of parasites with daily approaches of 6-8 continuous hours. Should we later wonder where the new hated pimples come from?
• Dermatitis is another skin disease, but it is caused by an allergic reaction and manifests itself on absolutely any part of the body in the form of inflammation and crusting. All this beauty comes with an itch as a gift. Allergies are caused by the secretions of linen mites and dust.
• Allergy - in its broader sense, which is accompanied not only by inflammation of the skin: here you have watery eyes, sneezing and nasal congestion - the whole set.
• Rhinitis – in other words, a runny nose. If you don’t suffer from allergies or have a cold, but still wake up with a stuffy nose, it’s time to urgently organize a big laundry day by updating your bedding set.

Surprisingly, the presence of all these diseases is determined simply by how often you change your bed linen.

The following points no longer look so scary, but there is little pleasant in them either:

• Difficulties with washing: the longer you put it off, the more difficult it will be to remove stains (especially grease) and the living creatures you already know. Result: ugly, yellow, discolored laundry.
• Unpleasant odor from bed linen.