Mila Kunis & Ashton Kutcher Say They Bathe Their Kids “When You Can See The Dirt”

How often do you wash your baby? Most parents would agree that it’s not exactly an easy feat. Bathing little people who truly do not care about being clean and flail about with their delicate new limbs and such. It’s a bit of an undertaking and two celebrity parents recently admitted that they don’t really stress about bath time with their little ones. In the newest episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher shared that they bathe their kids when necessary. Specifically, when they can see “the dirt on them.”

Kunis and Kutcher are parents to their 6-year-old daughter Wyatt and 4-year-old son Dimitri, both of whom clearly survived not being bathed a whole bunch as newborns. “When I had children, I also did not wash them every day,” Kunis explained to Shepard and his co-host Monica Padman during a discussion on showering and hygiene in general. “Like, I wasn’t the parent that bathed their newborn. Ever.”

And to this day, Kunis and Kutcher don’t really bother washing their kids all that often. “Here’s the thing,” Kutcher chimed in, “if you can see the dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there’s no point.”

Shepard, a dad of two daughters with wife Kristen Bell, agreed with the idea of not washing the kids too often, arguing that the body has its own natural oils that are affected by too much soap and water anyhow. “We only [gave our kids a bath] because it was part of the nighttime routine, we could care less about their cleanliness,” Shepard explained. “We just put them in there because it was, like, Pavlovian.”

The Mayo Clinic doesn’t even think you should wash your newborn baby every day, rather suggesting three times per week is enough. “Bathing your baby too much can dry out his or her skin. If you're quick and thorough with diaper changes and burp cloths, you're already cleaning the parts that need attention — the face, neck and diaper area,” the Mayo Clinic explains. As for toddlers, Healthline suggests parents aim for a bath three times per week for the same reason. Kids can go a long time without washing themselves or their hair and it’s more common than you might think.

Now that Kunis and Kutcher’s children are bigger and more mobile, it’s a good thing that their parents are bathing them when necessary. Particularly since Kunis told Extra in a February interview that the family uses trash for crafting. “We've now allocated trash as crafts… so we have a thing called Happy Trash. Happy Trash, when you run out of things to do, you give your children a bag of happy trash and it's like recyclables and they can make a robot out of it, or a fort, or a town or a city,” she explained.

Creative crafting and limited bathing. Sounds like Wyatt and Dimitri are pretty much having the best childhood ever.