A recent U.K. survey revealed the average bachelor only changes his sheets four times a year.
The biggest offenders of sheet neglect were young men between the ages of 18 and 25, the Daily Mail reported. About 71 percent of those who washed their sheets once every three months were male.
British couples were significantly more diligent, changing the sheets approximately once every two weeks. Single women put fresh sheets on the bed every 2.5 weeks.
The survey found when it came to couples, women were in charge of the laundry 81 percent of the time.
The cleanest folk, who washed their sheets about once a week, tended to be between the ages of 35 and 50 with 62 percent being female.
Most people who only washed their bed linens every three months did so because they felt this was an "acceptable gap," according to the Daily Mail.
Twenty-two percent of those surveyed couldn't think of a good reason to change them more frequently, and about a fifth of participants claimed they "didn't care."
Seventeen percent of the male participants said a romantic partner had been perturbed by the state of their bedding , only two percent of females admitted to the same.
A minority of 32 percent of those surveyed said they habitually changed the sheets after a guest spent the night. The rest said they didn't make the bed with fresh sheets until "several guests" had slept there.
On average, men owned one set of bed sheets and women owned three.
"Unclean bed sheets contain the tens of thousands of dead skin cells that we shed every night, and by going months without cleaning them you're risking some distinctly unpleasant consequences every time you go to bed," Jed MacEwan, a spokesman for ErgoFlex, the mattress company that conducted the study, told the Daily Mail.
"Dust mites would find a perfect habitat in such unhygienic bed sheets, and it's well documented that they can cause allergic flare-ups, asthma, rhinitis and other physical reactions," he said.
MacEwen also brought up the issue of bedbugs.
"[This] could prove to be a high price to pay for simply not washing your sheets more regularly," he said.
How often do you change your bed sheets?
