The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: thatbrowncat on January 28, 2015, 06:04:10 PM
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This may seem random, but I couldn't help but wonder how many bath towels do other people have, and how often do they use them. I share a bathroom with my mom, and we have 15 bath towels lined up for the week. I only use 2 of them (one for my hair and another for my body) which I hang after use. Those towels are good for 2 days' use.
I am tempted to dispose of the other towels, But I can't since my mother might freak out.
*Sigh* I feel it's unnecessary to have so many towels...
So how many towels do you have?
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We have two, extra, extra large towels (3ft by 5ft!). Dh and I share the same towel after every shower. We shower 3 times a week, and use the same towel for... Uhhhm... Until it smells funny, and then a little more. Maybe 2-3 weeks?
Not sure if frugal, or just lazy. :')
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I've used the same towel for a week before so I'd personally only need like 2-3.
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We have two per person I learned whenI counted them. Not sure how often they are washed but it's every few showers so every other week perhaps.
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17 maybe a few more. I had some, my wife moved more in, then some gifts. I use 1 for a week or two. We have a towel closet, it's got room to spare. Eventually towels wear out and we'll repurpose them.
Are the towels in your way? Are they in poor shape? That's usually my criteria for disposal.
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I had the correct amount of towels a boy should have (one) from when I graduated high school until my first serious courtship of a girl. Now I have three. Is this what the 1% feel like? I need a whole bathroom drawer just for towels.
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We are a family of 4 with about 6 bath towels.. I think. I wash them once a week, and they all hang on the back of the door in the meantime. I feel like there are one or two more in the closet..
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A bunch - maybe 12? But we use towels for a week or so between changes. I have more than I need. I also only buy white towels so that they all match and can be replaced as needed w/o having to get a whole set. I still have some unopened that I ordered at Black Friday for like $2 each. I am not a huge fan of doing laundry, so I like to have enough towels that I will have clean one on hand no matter how lazy I am being about getting the others in the wash.
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For two people and three dogs (that also need to be dried), I think we have four.
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The DW and I have 10-12 towels that we rotate through with an additional 4-6 guest towels in the guest bathroom. Oddly enough... this post prompted me to think how many pillows do you keep on your bed? Let's save that for another post...
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Husband and I have eight, which we never even get close to exhausting, even in the hot, sticky months. In winter, we maybe change out once a week. In summer, once every 2-3 days.
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6. 2 each per person and 2 additional for a guest.
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Family of 2. We probably had 6-8, but I guess they were looking kind of dingy, because my parents came to visit me recently and wah-lah! Suddenly brand new towels appeared in our bathroom closet. I felt kind of bad about it - were my parents afraid of my old dirty looking towels???
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We have two, extra, extra large towels (3ft by 5ft!). Dh and I share the same towel after every shower. We shower 3 times a week, and use the same towel for... Uhhhm... Until it smells funny, and then a little more. Maybe 2-3 weeks?
Not sure if frugal, or just lazy. :')
+1
Love the giant super soft towels! Only we each have 1 of our own out and I have a regular sized bath towel for my hair. And we have a lot of extras but they're just things that we brought into the relationship/house or things we were given. And we use them for um, "awhile" as well xD
I did buy some (3 or 4?) special dog "bath" towels from Dollar General -- they're bright pink and we often have to wipe lots of giant muddy paws, so I don't really like the idea of sharing with them. I got the obnoxious color so my husband would remember that they're the dogs and not ours, lol. I also keep one on top of an aluminum oil drip pan for underneath their water bowls.....so much slobber!!
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8 towels for 2 people here, but we live in a basement suite so I like to have the extra on hand in case of flooding. I have used them for that purpose about every 2nd or 3rd year when people upstairs do leaky things and we have to deal with it. We had more than twice as many and all in great shape, but I gave them away even though they were nearly new wedding and wedding shower presents. I don't want to store that many, and I would rather they be in use by someone who needs them. I seem to remember my sister-in-law told everyone to get us towels because we refused to do a wedding registry and "you can never have too many". Nope, can't say I agree.
I also refashioned a gifted embroidered hand towel that was awkward to actually wipe your hands on, or launder. Now it is a cover for a home-made heating pad (The embroidery on the end got cut off to make the transition).
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We got 6 for our wedding 10 years ago. I also still have, I dunno, 3 or 4 from college/early adulthood. Family of 4.
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I have maybe 10 towels. Dh and I share. We change out once a week.
I have so many because I like to people spend the night. They are all white so I can bleach.
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We have one towel each in use, plus one towel each in the cupboard. Plus beach towels and towels for visitors.
On washing, we change out towels about once a week. In winter if they don't dry out fast enough, or it I have two showers (or a bath and shower) in the same day, I will grab out a new towel. But usually a towel lasts a week.
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I used to have 2, one for me and one for guests
Then my parents brought one because they thought I needed another
Then my roommate left one when she moved out
Now I have four and I don't know where to keep them all
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Those towels are good for 2 days' use.
I use towels for 2 weeks each. Except for my face, I wash my small hand towels once per week. I wash my face towels more often because I am prone to getting acne and want to make sure bacteria doesn't collect. If you think about it, you are drying off clean water from your clean body with clean towels. How dirty can they actually get?
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We have, roughly, a bazillion.
4 nice super big towels for my husband and I to use for the bath. 4 back up decent towels for adult baths, formerly the good bath towels but downgraded due to smallish size. 8 older but usable towels in case of dire bath towel need, with bleach spots, holes, etc. 6 hooded/cutesy towels given as gifts to our 2 children. 8 frayed and thread bare towels used for the dog, wrapping yogurt in the crockpot, etc.
These towels span from a year old to 20+ years old. I can't be the only one who has a regular need for lots of bath towels...kitchen floods, washing machine issues, child who decides to empty bath tub on to the floor, etc...when not attending to floods, we wash our towels every week to every other week, I usually use them to fill out loads.
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Three.
One per week, and then wash them on the 3rd week.
And then I have a floor towel (which gets changed like, never), and a mini-hair-wrap towel thing.
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We have a shitload of towels, which is completely irrelevant. I'm answering this question because I can't believe you wash your towels Every.Other.Day.
******Facepunch!!!******
Hang your towels on a bar so they dry completely between uses and wash them no more than once a week. You'll save money and your towels will last longer.
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I think 7-8? I had 5 and bf had 4 or 5, not sure. I think the individual amounts made sense (esp since we stayed over, plus some for guests), but we don't need that many now. We gave 2 of mine away to my parents when we moved in together. Not that they have dire need of towels, typically, either, but we tend to run out when 7 of us are sharing their supply over the holidays, so it seemed like a better place for extras! (I may also have been hoping some of the older ones would get demoted to floor towels/rags...) Oh, and we wash/replace once a week.
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In the bathroom I keep 1 body towel, 1 hair towel, 1 towel for the floor after showers and 1 smaller hand towel.
I have 4 beach towels, 2 back up floor towels, 10 good body towels, 4 not so great body towels and 4 other hand towels. I also have 12 face towels
I have a whole bunch of rags down in the basement too. Usually anything fabric ends up in the rag pile being used in the garage, for dog messes and house cleaning.
Really I have a shit ton of towels and Ive thought about getting rid of them. In the end I just figured I have enough towels to not have to buy for years and years.
I wash them once a week-ish. I have two dogs that create tumble hairs in my house. The hair more than anything is why I wash them. I could also never share them. Grosses me out. When I lived at home I never kept mine in the bathroom as I was always finding it on the floor. My brother would use it to clean the floor after his shower and then hang it up for me to use. Ew lol
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We have a ridiculous number of towels (more than we can fit in our big bathroom cabinet). I think for a while my MIL was giving my husband towels regularly, before I came along. We haven't bought towels in the 8 years we've been together and I don't see us buying new ones any time soon, even though ours are looking pretty disreputable. They still get us just as dry. And we each get a towel a week.
We do go through hand towels at an incredible rate, but that's because we have small children who make regular bathroom messes. Even going through more than one a day I don't think we've ever run out.
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We have a shitload of towels, which is completely irrelevant. I'm answering this question because I can't believe you wash your towels Every.Other.Day.
******Facepunch!!!******
Hang your towels on a bar so they dry completely between uses and wash them no more than once a week. You'll save money and your towels will last longer.
+100
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Three. DH and I share one or two, and the third is a spare ready for guests!
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Three nice towels per person.
Unknown quantity of old, worn-out towels for things like outside clean-up.
Plus beach towels.
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2 per adult, 1 per kid, 2 extra guest towels, and a few old ones in the basement for messes and projects.
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Huh, no one else has asked about the circumstances of living with your mother. Did you take her in to care for her and she insisted on bringing a bunch of towels with her? Are you a minor who'll probably move out in a few years? Are you an adult staying with mom to save rent? I'm not judging any of these circumstances in and of themselves, but it would affect how I felt about the towel question.
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My husband and I each use 1 towel for the week and it gets washed at the end of the week. If I'm lazy and they don't smell, every other week.
There are also 2 towels hanging in both of our other bathrooms.
So we have 6 good towels, that are about 8 years old each.
Then we have really old towels (more than 15 years old) that get used for the dog and to dry the cars. There are probably 5 of these.
So we have about 11 bath towels. I don't find that they take up that much storage room at all.
We have 6 beach towels too, but you asked about bath towels.
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We have 4 large towels and 2 face/hand towels for two people. We wash them when they start to smell (every 2-3 weeks). The 2 extra large towels are mostly for the rare times someone comes to visit for a weekend. I tried to buy two extra face/hand towels when I bought the two extra large towels and my boyfriend talked me out of it, saying that was silly. He was right. That was like, two years ago and I haven't thought about needing more face towels since.
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I use two daily, keep another two as backups when the first pair is in the laundry, plus another one reserved for the boyfriend when he stays over.
But isn't it a good problem to have an abundance of towels? You don't have to buy any new ones for a long, long time.
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We had a BUNCH. It was crazy. Our linen closet was unmanageable.
Now 2 per person.
You only need to use one at a time - then one extra for laundry day. This leaves plenty for visitors on the rare times we have overnight guests. This also leaves plenty for when kiddos get sick in the middle of the night.
My linen closet thanks me and I love how sparse and organized it is. (I've also taken this approach to sheets. One set in use - only one set in reserve. So freeing!)
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My wife and I have six, I think. Four would probably be plenty for most of the time. We only approach the bottom of the stack when we have guests over. Like others have said, if you hang them to dry you really don't need to wash them very often. I wash mine less often than weekly for sure, likely once every two weeks. If it smells fine, it's still good!
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I have four good ones and probably ~15 cheap ones for pool use.
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We're a family of 3, and have 6 bath towels. It was 4 until my sister-in-law came to live with us for a year a few years ago - she would bathe once, dry herself off, and throw the towel in the wash! We don't do that. Two towels are in use for the three of us until I do a load of laundry that goes through the washer *and* the dryer - about twice a month - and then the two in-use towels are washed and dried. Towels are the only thing other than my husband's work clothes that I don't line-dry - his work clothes because I refuse to iron, and the towels because my family hates scratchy towels (we make do with scratchy washcloths).
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I have no idea.
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5 (+1 beach towel used for the beach) for our family of 3. We use our towels about 3 times before they get washed.
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I was going to say go me - I only have 4 towels for two people! But....that's not really true...
There are 2 guest towels....
And 5 car wash/dirty stuff towels...
And 2 beach towels...
And a yellow towel that was my husband's in college and doesn't match anything but doesn't really seem like it should be a "dirty stuff" towel. It never gets used.
HMMMM ..... 14 TOWELS FOR TWO PEOPLE! Apparently I have a towel problem.
Note: None of these have been purchased for at least four years, as 6 of the 14 were wedding presents and purchased then. The others predate that, with a nice, flower-y, green pattern from probably the 70's on one of the "dirty stuff" towels.
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In case this thread isn't entertaining enough for you, we had another (also) entertaining one last year:
http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/how-often-do-you-change-the-towel-you-use-to-bathe/ (EDIT -- it has a poll as well)
For the record, I'm in the "use it until it smells" camp. Which varies by season, but is around 4-6 weeks. I have no idea how many total towels we own though. Somewhere between 6 and 30 is my guess.
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Those towels are good for 2 days' use.
I use towels for 2 weeks each. Except for my face, I wash my small hand towels once per week. I wash my face towels more often because I am prone to getting acne and want to make sure bacteria doesn't collect. If you think about it, you are drying off clean water from your clean body with clean towels. How dirty can they actually get?
I definitely use mine for about two weeks, so I am in agreement with you; however, I do think that some consideration of climate and season needs to be taken into account. In the summer where I live, it is pretty hot and humid, and as a result, I end up needing to change my towels a lot more frequently (more than once a week) or they start to smell, in the three months of summer. The rest of the year, though, is dry. This makes me think of MMM's "stop showering so much!" blog, where people freaked the hell out because he was suggesting that daily showers weren't necessary. I would agree that that is generally speaking the case, but for me, in the hot months of summer, I sweat so much (especially because I don't have central AC and hate air conditioning in general) that I could never go more than a day without a shower. That doesn't mean that I disagree with MMM, though -- it just means that I understand conditions in lovely dry Colorado are slightly different than the humid bog that is Minnesota in the middle of summer.
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I grew up in a house where we used a different towel each shower, just how I grew up.
Once I started having coin laundry on my own though that went out the window... but I still have about 8-10 towels just for myself. I'll typically have one home towel a week, and one gym towel for when I shower there.
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I have two large bath towels, my wife has 12 Japanese-style towels (the size of a standard American hand towel). She uses two small towels per day, so to compensate, I use the same towel for two weeks. My wife is from Japan, a country where cleanliness is akin to religion and most toilets have a dozen separate buttons/knobs/functions, so her towel use is not something I am ready to go to battle over, plus she is also more frugal than me for most things. Besides, I like using her almost-clean towel to wipe my sweat when I do my daily workout.
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Lots and lots.
We were given lovely towels when we were married 13 years ago. We've been given towels when my Dad downsized and moved. And more towels when a relative sold their holiday house. These are all looking decidedly worse for wear, but are still completely functional.
I did buy 2 beautiful towels last year when we had our house on the market so I could 'show home' the bathroom.
I plan to not buy any more towels for a good decade :) When they get holey and frayed at the edges, I just repair them.
I do a washing load of towels once a week. I don't keep track of how often my kids shower (aside from sending them to wash when they are covered in visible filth), but they each have a hook in the bathroom for their towel, and they know to re-use that towel all week.
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One 'bath sheet' each, one for guests, a hand towel and a 'dirty things' towel (objects not people!). I was going to say just two until I started thinking about it properly!
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Haha! I probably have just about every towel I ever bought and I'm 61! We have a cottage and all the old towels from long ago are there and we probably have about 15 or more, plus lots of beach towels. I probably have 15 around our house and when they get too bad, I use them for the dog's bath towels. They have to be thread bare and torn before I actually throw them away, and then hubby will get them out the trash and put them in the garage!
Miss Prim
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I think we have six without holes or stains and an unknown number with. We mostly use the intact ones for bathing, but not always. For floods, dropped cups, and cold, wet dogs, we use whatev's closest. I try to take older towels camping.
Washing happens when they smell funny or when they've been used on floor or dog, whichever comes first.
It's been at least twenty years since I bought towels. I do think there's been one gift set in that time, though.
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We've got 6 big ones -- 4 white ones that are fairly new and 2 gold ones that are a little ragged -- and half a dozen normal sized towels of various colors.
My husband is a big bather, and very sensitive to the funny towel smell (he smells it when I don't) so he gets the 4 white ones while I'm a bit grubbier/don't care so I use the gold ones. He is Scottish, and his family is all very tidy so like someone posted above, there's no point in trying to change him to be grubbier like me... He's a grown man and can use as many towels as he wants in a week, as long as it's four or fewer. :)
Before I came up with the idea of each using our own color, we did at least two load of towels per week because we'd lose track of whose was whose and throw the whole lot in the wash. Now since the color scheme, and since I took over laundry duties, we are down to one load of towels every ten days or so. <champion pose>
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For two people and three dogs (that also need to be dried), I think we have four.
What, no sharing with the dogs ;)? My husband and I each have one towel and I wash them once a week. We also have a set of guest towels, which I keep in the guest room. The dog has her own towel as well, which sometimes gets commandeered as a clean-up mop. Poor dog.
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Boy oh boy, we have tons. I had a pile. Spouse had a pile. My mother bought us some. We got some as packing material when my siblings mailed me some of my parents' stuff. I have a towel that my sister took to summer camp in the 1970s. My mother bought very high quality towels, and they just don't wear out. I definitely don't need them all, but it is nice when I have to clean up cat barf, engine oil, and that kind of stuff, wrap something fragile, etc.
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Allll right; I'll come clean ;)
We have 8 bath towels for the two adults and teen, plus 2 baby towels for my daughter. Plus a guest set of 3 towels. PLUS 6 towels that we use as rags/for the dog. PLUS 5 beach towels. I consider myself as moving towards minimalist. But, I guess I never questioned the towels....24 towels!!!!
I think this weekend I'll pack of 5 of the 6 rag towels (we had an old dog who peed all the time that we needed them for, but she's no longer with us), at least one of the beach towels, and the 3 guest towels (guests can share whichever of our 8 that are clean). And in the next year or so the two baby towels can go too and DD can share ours.
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I have six bath towels. I frequently change towels for cleanliness purposes.