![]() ![]() Jay Flynn, a Silvon representative, says that’s why the company decided to walk back some of its early rhetoric. Read: The decline of the American laundromatīut anyone who’s used hand sanitizer knows that there are still plenty of reasons to regularly wash your hands the old-fashioned way, which is a limitation that extends to so-called self-cleaning fabrics. In the case of silver-infused textiles, “clean” means bacteria-free it’s the Purell of fabric. In most cases, it just refers to an arbitrary, implied naturalness that doesn’t tell consumers much of anything about a product’s safety or effectiveness. The word is an of-the-moment marketing term that’s used to describe everything from food products to skincare ingredients. It’s not totally clear what being “clean” means when any particular brand promises it. All these companies make similar claims: Their products eliminate acne- and odor-causing bacteria so your stuff stays cleaner, longer. Mack Weldon lines its men’s underwear in silver-infused fabric. ![]() Lululemon launched its Silverescent line of antimicrobial workout gear in 2014. Skin Laundry, a brand of skin-care products, recently added silver-washed pillowcases to its lineup. Miracle also makes silver-infused bedding and towels, with a promise that you’ll do two-thirds less laundry. Silvon is one of a cluster of businesses that have incorporated similar technology into their products in the past five years. It now makes both bedding and towels that use one of the oldest, most reliable antimicrobial technologies known to man: pure silver, woven into 7 percent of the company’s thread, ready to kill any bacteria that might scurry off your person while you’re passed out or drying off. ![]() When the textile start-up Silvon launched in 2014 under the name Sleep Clean, it promised to bring one of the most consistent pleasures of luxury hotels to everyday life: perennially fresh sheets without personal effort. Most experts recommend you swap your bedding once a week, but for a family of four, that means stripping, laundering, and remaking three beds every weekend. That’s why fresh sheets feels so good and old sheets feel, and sometimes smell, so gross: They accumulate a lot of gunk, and very quickly. Under ideal circumstances, humans spend a full third of their life wrapped up in their bedding, which means people shed a lot of dirt, oil, dead skin, hair products, sweat, and (sorry) drool onto it while they’re asleep. When it comes to cleanliness, beds are a nightmare. But their products still have limitations that portend something different: Living a human life is generally kind of gross, and the work required to keep filth at bay probably can’t be eliminated. A new crop of start-ups promises to make laundry a little less burdensome with textiles that resist getting dirty. That doesn’t mean some tech companies aren’t looking for marketable solutions to America’s cleaning problem. Read: Emasculated men refuse to do chores-except cooking Jeff Bezos wants to put his wealth into space exploration because he says he can’t find anything else to fix, but maybe that’s because he hasn’t recently tried to use a vacuum. But so far, people (and usually women) are still left with a ton of work. In theory, technology should be able to relieve the burden of household labor by making it more efficient, and increased productivity is one of Silicon Valley’s most common promises. For the most part, the only way to opt out is to pay someone else to do your chores for you the chores themselves don’t go anywhere. Many Americans feel suffocated under the necessity of balancing their job, their family, and daily household and personal maintenance. When it’s divvied up sloppily, it can do enormous harm to the health of a marriage. Consumers pay top dollar for front-loading washers that let them stuff more things into a single load so they can just get it over with.Ĭleaning, in general, isn’t most Americans’ favorite activity. Store shelves are lined with products that promise to make doing laundry more effective and less time-consuming. Evidence suggests that person’s in the minority: Dirty bedrooms and wet towels on the floor are canonical parental grievances. The spectrum of human joy includes some truly depraved activities, so someone out there must enjoy laundering bed linens, or even towels. ![]()
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