London, Jan 3 (IANS) Wearing a pair of jeans for months without washing them won’t make you smell that bad after all!
A team of 30 volunteers in Australia agreed to wear a pair of denims five days a week for three months without going anywhere near a washing machine.
And when the well-worn garments were put to the smell test, researchers came up with a sweet-smelling discovery — the jeans didn’t actually smell that bad, Daily Mail reports.
Melbourne University student Tullia Jack, who devised the experiment for her Masters thesis, concluded: ‘You really don’t need to wash clothes as often as you think. Stains come and go, they just wear off.’
Jack acknowledged that some of the garments did show evidence of spills, from motor oil to tuna, but did not smell ‘socially challenging’.
The jeans were donated by a local label and the volunteers – equally split between men and women – ranged in age from 18 to 56. They were regularly interviewed during the three-month test.
Jack also discovered that men appeared more conscious of their own odour and went to extra lengths to make sure undergarments were clean – which perhaps explains why their jeans were no more pungent than female volunteers.
And while many longed to throw their jeans in the wash at some point, by the end of the experiment half were content to continue wearing their garments without a visit to the laundrette, the Mail reported Tuesday quoting the Australian website news.com.au.
