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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Ok a little tabloid-y but definitely piqued my intellectual curiousity. Not that given how much I can sweat anyone will thank me for not washing but still it's interesting to see such a simple ingrained idea (wash clothes) being challenged with some degree of rationality - it reminds me of the question what taboos are so engrained in our society we simply don't see them

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It's the old way of doing it though. Pre washing machine clothes wash tended to be underwear only, and brush and air the rest. Partly because washing was a more brutal process - boiling, wringing etc that the outer layers couldn't handle.

Eh? Maybe it was different in the West but in India everyone without washing machines would still have their clothes hand washed.

the climate is much hotter and more humid in india.

Even in northern india, where it's cold. Majority of the people still hand wash their clothes. Although not at the same frequency as southern people.

I spent a few months in northern India. Unless you mean way up in the Himalayas northern india is still a lot hotter and more humid than Europe and almost anywhere in North America.

There weren't man made fibres, so cotton or wool, silk if wealthy, was used for underwear. Trousers, jackets, dresses, and the rest were mostly wool. Many people only had two sets of outerwear - one of which was kept for outside work and for church: their "Sunday best". Dyes were often non-colour fast.

Wool and silk doesn't like being boiled or wrung, or even heavily agitated. Underwear didn't need to stay in shape, outerwear did. Cotton is far more tolerant of violent washing.

India's climate would, no doubt, see far less use of wool and multiple layers, far more of lighter weight cottons than Europe. Southern Europe probably somewhere in between. :)

Yeah, that makes sense. Wool also seems to have strong antimicrobial properties so it doesn't really need frequent cleaning.

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