Nothing is more comfortable and casually chic than the perfect pair of jeans. They’re also a bit tight after washing and drying.

Minimize the showdown with the zipper, spend time doing something other than laundry, and help the environment with this easy tip: wear your jeans five times before washing them.

Many of us wash our jeans after only one or two wears, but rarely are jeans genuinely soiled enough to require this (consider the original purpose of denim: to withstand days of panning for gold in mud and muck). A definitive denim study from a French environmental organization found that simply skipping a few washes a week will have the same energy savings as turning off 4,000 standard lightbulbs for an hour. We just like the thought of an extra day of stretch.

- via Treehugger
- Image: fxp