While shower practices can differ depending on the person, most people would agree that changing your underwear on a daily basis is a pretty standard basic rule of hygiene, which is why one woman went looking for advice when she discovered that her husband often repeats wearing the same pair.
One woman took it to Reddit to share that her husband goes a few days before changing his underwear. When she confronted him about it, he told her that he doesn’t need to change his underwear everyday.
She titled the post: ‘My husband says he doesn’t need to change his underwear daily. What are the usual rules for male hygiene routines?’
A market research firm Mintel states that “one in every five males do not change their underwear on a daily basis“. Another research by Marks & Spencer, the UK retailer, found that almost a third of guys change their underwear only every two to three days.
Lastly, a poll by American bleach manufacturer, Clorox, found that one in every eight guys will wear their underwear twice or even three times before washing it.
Considering underwear is an intimate garment that is not always shown, and the fact that probably the respondents to these surveys have no reason to lie, the somewhat disturbing assumptions made by these studies should be accepted without reason for doubt.
As much as we’d like to think it’s the opposite, single males have normally low chances of showing their underwear on a daily basis. Thus, for some males, changing underwear is usually saved for special occasions, not for everyday wear. The fact that men have not been traditionally raised to do their own laundry, accounts for this issue as well.
The act itself of buying underwear is another factor that comes to mind for this type of behavior. Men don’t do their own underwear buying until they are in their twenties or late teens.
The conduct of washing or buying underwear is often learned at a later age, almost by accident and guided more by improvisation than by experience or knowledge.
For these reasons, too many guys go out there with a fraternity-boy mentality when it comes to their personal grooming.
For them, if there simply is no motivation to wear a different pair of underwear, why bother doing the cleaning or everyday changing?
Five Steps in Underwear Maintenance
1. Change your underwear after intense physical activity and before going out for social events, right after shower, that is.
2. You should change your underwear on a daily basis, period.
3. Consider fully replacing your underwear once a year.
4. Stained underwear should be thrown out immediately. You don’t want to give the impression that you have poor sphincter control.
5. Try to add some spice to your personal life by buying underwear at least once a month. You could try getting a pair of pouch underwear styles, or even more sophisticated cuts like bikinis, thongs or jockstraps.