How often to change the beds?

[dalziel1]

I saw a news article recently that said that about a quarter of people "admit" to changing the beds monthly. I do that and I didn't realise it wasn't nearly enough!

How often are we supposed to wash the pillow cases, sheets, duvet cover etc? The article implied weekly was about right. But in my case that would be around 3 more loads of washing every weekend.

That can't be right, can it?

Threadwords are not rare at all! They affect 40% of children at at given time - sometimes with no symptoms and will go from person to person in a family in a flash, having very scant respect for adults. I have had them several times even though I am a frequent hand-washer etc. Surely the ideal is for better hygiene all round to resolve it, rather than pumping our bodies full of chemicals by treating with tablets? The other things is that for girls in particular they can be harder to get rid of as they don't just live in the intestine - they can spread very easily to the vagina.

Bedding - between every 10 days or every other week depending what else I've got on and how busy I am.
As for washing towels after every use, that is bonkers. Sometimes I shower twice a day and rest of family shower every day, that's a lot of towels - what is the problem with a clean towel that is drying a clean body?! I wouldn't dream of washing after every use - how on earth do you dry them?

Threadworms do seem horrible, but if there are none in my home, then why would it matter to anyone else how often i launder my bed linen, or at what temperature?

We've never had that other childhood scourge either (viz lice) but I do think it disgusting how often we get letters home from school to say there is yet another outbreak in the classroom. I think it must be the girls passing it between themselves. There appears to be an invisible wall between the boys and the girls where they take care not to even accidentally brush against each other!

With threadworms, your arse end itches like hell at night. Small children are well able to scratch in their sleep and then suck their fingers, thus perpetuating the cycle of infection. This is why I always went down the tablet route. Lice, on the other hand, can be combed out without recourse to pharmaceuticals.

Parasites.

I think you are missing the point mehsmum.
Unless you also washed the children's bedding and deep cleaned their rooms , then they would perhaps be taking their threadworm eggs to school under their finger nails and infecting other children.

How do you think people catch them if not from others?

All the instructions in the packets of tablets tell you to carry out hygiene measures at home as well as swallowing the medicine.

And one extra thing.. I'm talking about dust mites... NOT bed bugs

www.mumsnet.com/how-to/threadworms-treatment

I do change our bedding's weekly.

Thank you, CocktailQueen - I think you're the only other person who picked up on that comment (plus the lunacy of washing everything at 65 degrees, towels after one use, etc). I must admit I'm shocked, and even a bit sad, that most people don't seem to realise/care what an impact their, or indeed other people's obsessive (dare I say selfish) washing habits have on the environment. And as I mentioned, I'm by no means an especially concerned environmentalist (I wish I was). It just seems like basic common sense to me - fewer washes, lower temperatures, no/little tumble drying is one of the few things that EVERYONE can do to make a difference to the environment. There are no excuses, really.

I don't have a 65° wash on my washing machine. A 70 will have to do

Good point, pink: I will admit I hadn't thought of that...
Mind you, once purged they always stayed free for months and months (unlike the bloody lice), and the single dose always did the trick (though I always gave them two).

I only read about this recently... as well as water and energy use, there's another way in which using washing machines can be bad news for the environment. Though this would presumably be fixable with changes to the way textiles are made.

It's not just the environment. I don't believe humans are meant to be so clean! Our immune systems need a challenge or they start to misbehave.

I can't believe anyone would wash a towel after one use. That seems a horribly indulgent use of resources. What do you think happens to a towel after it had dried a clean body?

I'm not sure threadworms are so contagious. DH caught them on a work trip recently - he had them for a fortnight in our home before realising. No one else caught them despite my slatternly ways - and I share a bath towel with him that is only washed every 3 days! I do not have worms

How does a person know where they caught worms because it's not as if they need a boarding pass and have to go through security on a certain in order to take up residence.

And it is possible for worms not to cause and problems at all for quite a while and for a person not to know that they have them until they get urticaria for example which is one of the lesser known symptoms of them.

god, hoovering mattresses. Who has the time? And why? They can't get dusty with mattress protector and sheets on them can they? or is it to get rid of dead bed bugs - urgh!!
Since separating from my DH i have bought myself a gorgeous new super king size bed and lovely new linen sheets, and find I don't need to change the bedding nearlh as often as I used to. DH used to sweat profusely in the night, not helped by the fact that he would sleep with the duvet wrapped tightly around him like a caterpillar in a cocoon. Sheets were often damp in the morning, quite revolting. Anyway, used to wash them once every fortnight (or week if he was v sweaty) but now am finding once a month is fine - I swop the pillows around and turn the duvet around and that seems to work. But I absolutely hate the process of changing the bedding, and trying to get a superking duvet cover on your own is bloody difficult. I usually end up in aright old tangle.

Think of it this way. How long would you wear a t shirt? Do you put it in the wash after you've worn it for 8 hours because, well, it will smell sweaty? Or do you consider that because you shower every day you can wear that t shirt for a month?
How many hours do you spend in your bed?
You may not notice it yourself because people tend not to be aware of their own household smells, but if you leave bedding more than a week or so the bedroom will smell.

Surely vacuuming mattresses is only something you need to do maybe once every six months?

And washing at a high temperature? Well that's only when you have a build up of dust mites, not weekly, as some suggest.

Would it be fair to ask if some people are perhaps a tiny bit OCD about the cleaning?

It takes very little time to hoover a mattress.. just do it when hoovering the bedrooms. Or do people not do that for months as well?

And again it's dust mites.. We all have them. Not everybody has bed bugs.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_bug

See 2 different things. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House du stymie

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_dust_mite

But we don't all have the beds stripped at the same moment that the hoover is upstairs.

Yesterday I steam cleaned two of the mattresses. However, that's an annual (maybe bi-annual job). It took 20 mins to do, but then I had to thoroughly clean the frames, under the bed, behind the headboard etc

It actually took four hours, including washing all the bed linen.

One in a while, yes, absolutely. Weekly deep cleans are not an option, unless I want to devote my life to cleaning the house.

Weekly here

I don't really care who hoovers their mattresses but it doesn't take long when you're In the habit. I certainly don't spend all day cleaning.

We always shower right before going to bed so our sheets never get very dirty. We wash them every few months. I love fresh sheets but my husband prefers them when they soften from use and do not smell of washing powder. If money was no object I would wags them more frequently.

Our baby sleeps in a sleeping bag and is never sick so her cot sheet is usually washed about as often as ours.

We do about 2-3 loads of washing per week for 2 adults and 1 baby. Before the baby it was 1-2 loads per week.

I do towels and our bed weekly, the DSs' beds fortnightly.

I'd prefer to do ours less often, but after about four days dh's pillow is all greasy and oily. It starts to smell when it's oily, however much I air the room. I have no idea why they get so oily, as he does wash his scalp hair daily, a lot more than I do! So I flip his pillow over then it gets all oily on the other side, then it's time for a change. I've also noticed that ds1's pillow stinks after a fortnight now too.

I think I might start changing all the pillows and sheets weekly but just airing the duvets and doing the duvet covers every two or three weeks. After all, when people used sheets and blankets I'm sure they rarely washed blankets and bedspreads etc.

I wash towels and bedding at 60c on the eco low water setting, most other things are washed at 30c.

We use pillow and mattress protectors, pillow ones are washed maybe 6 times a year, mattress protectors once, twice or as needed.

Towels weekly, bedding 1-2 weeks (weekly in summer, fortnightly in winter). I need to get better at hoovering the mattress