Fadzayi Maposah
Correspondent
There was a discussion in one of the social media groups that I am in. I have realised that there are some people who rarely say/text anything in some groups.
They are in the terraces, seeing what is being posted, reading or viewing and not commenting at all. One can post something and think that people have not yet seen it as they are offline only to go to the information and realise that there are people who have read the message, there are people who have had the message delivered, while others are still to get the message delivered.
Then there are those who are always online, always ready to respond to messages as soon as they appear on the groups. I wonder how these people get to do this given that messages are posted at different times, but they are always among the first to respond, all the time.
Since one can tell when a message was posted and when the responses were posted, I have questions, do these people ever get to rest? Someone said the people who respond during the night could be on night duty, but then during the day are they not supposed to be making time to rest.
In some very active groups, one can go to bed with a few messages on the group and wake up to hundreds of them. One either commits time to read all the messages or they get to catch up as they read them.
This is not a post about social media, but about a post that was on social media that ignited some discussion and will form the basis of this article.
The question on the group was: Do you wash bras when you bath, or as part of the laundry?
As I have grown older and been interacting with other people from different backgrounds, I have learnt that people have different ways of doing things.
I have also learnt that it is important to also learn why people do the things the way that they do. I am sure that you know that even serving sadza has many ways that it is done and we may not have been exposed to all the ways that people use when serving sadza. Sadza story, for another day.
There were some who responded that when they take off their bras, they put them in the laundry basket and then the bras are washed as part of the laundry. I noted that there are some like me, who responded that they wash the bras when they bath. One even went further to explain that as far as she was concerned, bras are part of underwear and she does not feel comfortable keeping dirty underwear in the laundry basket and then washing as part of the laundry.
When I was growing up there were items that my mother, never wanted to see in the laundry basket. She told us that such items had no place in the basket and that as soon as they were taken off they had to be washed. My mother’s list then and even now had panties, bras and socks.
That lesson has stuck with me. As I bath, I make sure that I wash my underwear and then find a space to hang them to dry. I am yet to try keeping my underwear until a laundry day.
If hand washing, bras can be soaked for a few minutes in soapy water as one takes their bath if they are on the team that washes as it baths. If on the laundry team, on the wash day, the bras can be soaked for a few minutes when it is washing time.
The soaking enables the sweat and the dirt from bras to be easy to work off. As one washes the bras they should rub more areas such as the band and the underarms.
When the bra is really dirty, one will see that the soapy water changes colour and has thick bubbles. The bra should be rubbed very well and then hung out to dry. The bra should be hung by the centre between the cups.
Hanging by the straps may make them loose and affect the shape it then has. Growing up I remember my mother and aunts, putting their bras out to dry and then looking for a head scarf to cover it with so that people would not see the bra.
It is important for one to study the environment that they stay in and then decide if they will leave their bra uncovered or hang it behind a towel. Others have no challenges just hanging the bra to dry without anything over it. The other question that comes to mind is after how many wears should one wash their bra?
If one is out running or exercising it is advisable that one washes the bra after one wear as there will be a lot of sweating.
It is important to wash the bras frequently. Think about how close the bras are to our bodies. The bras rest on our skin, as we sweat, the sweat quickly gets to the bra.
The longer one takes wearing the bra and not washing it, the more sweat it collects and the more odour it has. If it is light coloured, it has dark lines of dirt. Others opt for dark colours so that they can wear the bra more before it is washed.
Dirty bras trap sweat and create a warm and wet environment that can result in infections. Some may not have infections but the odour from sweaty bras are not pleasant to the other members of society that we interact with.
Next time you choose to keep wearing your bra before washing it, remember that your bra is always very close to your body and your body needs to be treated well.
#Pinktober Breast Cancer awareness month.
