don't wash your jeans

so, now you don't have to worry about running a washing machine off your solar panels


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/21/levi-ceo-dont-wash-jeans_n_5364909.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjXhe2qVKgE

Levi's CEO Chip Bergh: 'Don't Wash Your Jeans'

Apparently, part of the Levi's mantra includes not washing your jeans.

Chip Bergh, the CEO of Levi Strauss, recently spoke out about his laundry habits at Fortune's Brainstorm Green Conference.

The conference, which challenges those highest on the corporate ladder to "take the corporate sustainability movement to the next level," was the perfect place for Bergh to showcase his company's fashionable take on living an eco-friendly lifestyle: "We are the ultimate in sustainable apparel," Bergh said. "If you buy [our jeans] they will last a lot longer than most people's waistlines will."

Berg is making good on his advice, as he hasn't washed his own jeans in over a year. While his statement is making waves, in reality, the company has been living up to such practices since 2011. According to the New York Times, Levi's began "featuring stone-washed denim smoothed with rocks but no water" in 2011 while also encouraging consumers to wash less.

In a more radical call to action, denim environmentalists also suggested putting jeans in the freezer if they started to smell. Anderson Cooper and Tommy Hilfiger are other interesting figures spotlighted in the "no wash" movement, although stylist and fashion consultant Stacy London has argued that a few washes per six months is probably healthiest.

This is one of those mantras I've lived by for most of my life. I'll roll around in the dust in them. I'll jump into a pond with them on. I'll even leave them out in the sun for a day or two. But I don't wash my jeans. They last forever. I still wear jeans I had in middle school. That was a decade and a half ago.

I do wash my jeans occassionally. Anywhere from twice a month if they get really dirty to 6 months or more for my nicer jeans that I don't wear while playing in the dirt. The people I tell think it is digusting, even though no one else has any idea. I'm glad to have some vindication!

- nothing turns a small 3-corner tear into a large square hole faster than washing ! Nothing !!!

After I got my B.D.U.s To the proper vintage to include ''school glue''-ing the pockets down, flat crease on top of flat fold on top of flat fold,
the garrison sets rarely got washed once a month !

And I still have issues with the way my wife Cavalierly Melted my PolyPro long johns But they HAD to be washed after every time they were
worn ! Big AL !

I usually have a set of yard bibs that I wash only when the begin to chaff, but my other work cloths, well I am a service plumber. My own stank is one thing, other peoples excrement is quote another.

I had a pair of jeans get pretty crusty with salts once from all the sweat. I find work jeans naturally tie dye.

Probably should've written that in the recent 'something embarrassing' thread Jennifer set up.

O brother, you folks obviously don't work like I do. If I didn't wash my jeans regularly, I'd have to beat them into submissions with a baseball bat in order to put them on! On my homestead I get down and dirty.

Just watched the interview. It's pretty interesting. Levi is a pretty gigantic company, and does use a whole lot of resources. But the quality of product is also pretty tops. I know I have levi pants I've been wearing the hell out of for a decade. Carharts too. I've often dreamed of getting a Carhart like pattern or three made out of some serious hemp sail cloth. I wonder what exactly Levi's means when they talk about 'the best cotton'. I know monsanto is heavy into that market

Su Ba wrote: I'd have to beat them into submissions with a baseball bat in order to put them on! On my homestead I get down and dirty.

I defiantly beat the heck out of my pants every few days and release record dust storms and I usually rotate between a couple pairs when I work.

I find it hard to believe that a lifetime of my washing does more environmental harm, then the toxic gick they use to grow the cotton.

In fact, I make sure to wash my jeans BEFORE I wear them. I will stop when levi starts using organic (or eq.) cotton.

The washer does harm but the dryer is the scourge of laundry longevity in my experience. My work jeans just got washed for the first time in over a year because I was directly and copiously urinated on by the youngest in the family. Elimination communication fails sometimes!

The women's jeans I see for sale out and about, the kind my teenage daughter wants, have increasing amounts of spandex and such junk in them. They are pretty comfortable but they fall apart quicker and don't have that great "conform to your body" feel of a well worn pair of work jeans. And don't get me started on "distressed denim"

- the All-time, number one rule to make sure that your sweat pants and sweatshirt continue to have that great 'loft' and 'warm fuzzy feel' is to always Line Dry
these two articles , nothing else takes off 10dF or 20dF of long term personal warmth faster than running them trough any drier !

The bible speaks about not putting a patch of new cloth over a tear in 'old cloth', a patch made that way will increase the hole in your clothes not shrink them
and always, always, always make the patch before the clothes are washed !

Spoken by the guy that ran the local neighborhood laundry/ washing machine franchise! For the Good of the Craft ! Big AL

I've been doing this for years. I only ever have one active pair of jeans, and one pair of shorts. Jeans last me about two years until disintegrating to a point where I could get fined for indecent exposure. I like once my jeans get a little skin oil sheen on them and they start having their own Will-shaped form.

My last pair of shorts lasted 7 years- boys' size Winchester camo pants that i cut into shorts. Never washed since I picked them up at Goodwill. I wore them every day in warm weather and fished, hiked, gardened, went on tour with my band at the time, and they never got washed. I had to dump dirt out of the pockets every so often. Once the crotch goes, that's the end of pants though.

Matu Collins wrote:The washer does harm but the dryer is the scourge of laundry longevity in my experience.

What's this 'dryer' of which you speak? Dryer than what?

A little bit of a side note off denim, but I have an Ibex wool vest that I got at a "tent sale" in New Hampshire 6 years ago that I can count on one hand the number of times that I've washed it. It's something I've worn in the rain and while sweating working, but it just doesn't seem to get "dirty." I can't explain it, but why wash if you don't have to!

Every time I read a new post in this thread this song goes through my head.....just had to share...one of those very profound songs from the late sixties

Topher Belknap wrote:
I find it hard to believe that a lifetime of my washing does more environmental harm, then the toxic gick they use to grow the cotton.

In fact, I make sure to wash my jeans BEFORE I wear them. I will stop when levi starts using organic (or eq.) cotton.

I agree...when i was weaving full time I started checking into the cotton yarns I was using and tried to find out how the cotton was grown. It worried me because I tended to use natural unbleached yarn but at the time not organic and I was breathing a lot of the lint that floated around while weaving. It took a little investigating and browsing a couple 'Progressive Farmer " magazines to see what was popular on cotton fields in the US...a lot of bad stuff. Even the indigo dye is a synthetic now. I think that is another plus for thrift store clothes, they have been washed plenty usually. We actually did the unwashed jeans thing back in the seventies...they would get a kind of waxy feel to them. We did rinse them in the creek some and hang them on the garden fence for some airing pretty often

Su Ba wrote:O brother, you folks obviously don't work like I do. If I didn't wash my jeans regularly, I'd have to beat them into submissions with a baseball bat in order to put them on! On my homestead I get down and dirty.

I was kind of thinking the same thing...I can maybe get a week, at most, out of a pair of jeans before they are absolutely filthy and smelly..I don't know maybe it's just another case of YMMV..

Judith Browning wrote:

they would get a kind of waxy feel to them.

this is my favorite part of not washing my jeans! losing that waxy sheen is what originally kept me from washing them more often and now I don't bother at all.