How often do you change the towel you use to bathe?

[simonsez]

Based on the thread linked below, I have made this poll since it was brought up that perhaps those that use a new towel everyday would be embarrassed to admit.

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/bathing/

Feel free to discuss the humidity where you live or anything related to the frequency of new bathing towels.

[tipster350]

I posted this in the bathing thread:

Advice on frequency on my google search ranged from 3-4 uses to once a week.

"Whenever you use a washcloth, hand towel, or bath towel, skin cells slough off your body and stick to the fabric. Those cells serve as food for bacteria, Tierno says. Plus, bacteria thrive in the damp, densely woven material, which has lots of nooks and crannies for them to hide in."  http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/fight_household_germs/printer.php

[marty998]

Mens Health must have been advertising towels that day.

[GuitarStv]

[GuitarStv]

I'm most interested in the last category of this poll.  Without using a towel what do you do?  Run around naked to air dry?  Shake like a dog?  Squeegee?

[ruthiegirl]

I'm most interested in the last category of this poll.  Without using a towel what do you do?  Run around naked to air dry?  Shake like a dog?  Squeegee?

When I travel, I just use the t-shirt I was wearing to dry off.  But then, I am a dirty hippie. 

[simonsez]

It was more for completeness of choices.  I suppose some don't shower.  It wouldn't surprise me if Jamesqf came on here and explained how he takes a dip in the river and air dries in the pristine mountain air after a good bit of rearing like the horses in those old Busch commercials used to do (hell, he would probably be surrounded by his horses while doing this) and then goes on a rural-is-better-than-urban-esque rant.

In all seriousness, in college, there was this guy I knew that would shower and not use a towel afterward.  He would finish and just put on his gym shorts and go back to his room soaking wet.  Funny to see him in the hallway.  I never understood why you would want to experience the feeling of wet shorts for a relatively long time compared to the seconds you use by drying via towel.  Weird dude.

[Russ]

I'm most interested in the last category of this poll.  Without using a towel what do you do?  Run around naked to air dry?  Shake like a dog?  Squeegee?

I almost always use a towel, but sometimes it just feels right to run around naked and air dry.

My dream home has central compressed air with a hose in the bathroom so I can just blow off.

[James]

I posted this in the bathing thread:

Advice on frequency on my google search ranged from 3-4 uses to once a week.

"Whenever you use a washcloth, hand towel, or bath towel, skin cells slough off your body and stick to the fabric. Those cells serve as food for bacteria, Tierno says. Plus, bacteria thrive in the damp, densely woven material, which has lots of nooks and crannies for them to hide in."  http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/fight_household_germs/printer.php

What they don't do is finish the train of thought and ask the obvious question, are those bacteria harmful… we have bacteria living on our skin people...


If your towel stays wet for a significant period of time then it's going to smell, so my suggestion is to use the smell test, and wash when it either smells or looks like it needs a bath. :D


I love the air hose idea Russ…

[fauxjargon]

I shower once in the morning every day and again in the evening after my run 3x/week.  I shower at the gym the other 3 days a week and use their towels.  I have 3 towels that live in my bathroom, and are rotated through (so at most a towel is used every 24 hours).  They get washed once a week, maybe a bit more often in the depths of summer when it is more humid and critters can grow faster on them.

[OldDogNewTrick]

I have 4 high quality over-sized attractive bath towels and that number is just fine unless we have guests. In which case I reach into a back cupboard and pull out a couple of older frayed towels. Our two towels are washed each Monday with our jeans. Instead of washcloths we use the nylon shower ball scrubbie thing. Those last forever. I have a dozen hand towels that live in a small basket next to the sink. Those I've had over 10 years. Wash those with the dish towels and pot holders every 2 weeks or more.

[RMD]

I'm most interested in the last category of this poll.  Without using a towel what do you do?  Run around naked to air dry?  Shake like a dog?  Squeegee?

I have long hair, so I used a towel for that, but the rest of me I air dry.  I use my hands to kind of squeegee off the excess water while I'm still in the shower, then I do the teeth brushing and combing hair and that stuff.  Generally, I'm dry in about 15 minutes and at that point I'm ready for clothes. It takes some getting used to...

[iris lily]

I have a terrycloth robe that pretty much absorbs all of the wet stuff.

I never understand the obsession with "clean" towels--when we get out of the showers we are clean. What is making them dirty, exactly?

[chicagomeg]

I have to change mine at least once a week because there's no exhaust fan in my bathroom, so it stays a bit damp, so they start to smell sort of funky. My mother changes them every other day, which I will never understand.

[hybrid]

I have to change mine at least once a week because there's no exhaust fan in my bathroom, so it stays a bit damp, so they start to smell sort of funky. My mother changes them every other day, which I will never understand.

+1  Same bathroom situation, and Virginia is a humid state.  I typically get 5-6 days from a towel before it needs to be swapped out. The moment it starts to smell anything other than clean I swap it out.

[greaper007]

Wow OCD people, who actually tracks when they wash certain things?   I use a towel until it starts to smell sort of mildewy.   That could be one day if it gets packed in a gym bag, or a week if it hangs on a rack.   I wear my jeans until the crotch starts to smell like ass.    I do laundry when there's enough on the floor of the laundry room to put in the washing machine, not on some certain day.    Anymore than that and I get backed up with line drying it in the winter.   It takes a good 14 hours to dry in the basement and I only have enough line for one load.

With two young kids who don't have the best toilet hygiene, I'm usually doing a load everyday.

[Zaga]

I posted this in the bathing thread:

Advice on frequency on my google search ranged from 3-4 uses to once a week.

"Whenever you use a washcloth, hand towel, or bath towel, skin cells slough off your body and stick to the fabric. Those cells serve as food for bacteria, Tierno says. Plus, bacteria thrive in the damp, densely woven material, which has lots of nooks and crannies for them to hide in."  http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/fight_household_germs/printer.php

What they don't do is finish the train of thought and ask the obvious question, are those bacteria harmful… we have bacteria living on our skin people...


If your towel stays wet for a significant period of time then it's going to smell, so my suggestion is to use the smell test, and wash when it either smells or looks like it needs a bath. :D


I love the air hose idea Russ…

I use the smell test.  We have something in our closet, I don't know what, that makes our towels and linens smell.  So I tend to wash and reuse the same towel/bedsheets and use them again right away.  Also, towels need to be dried on high or they have this smell even clean.  It's gross, I wish I could figure out a way to get this smell out of the linen closet.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't like drying off with a stinky towel!

[rudimentsofgruel]

Every 2 weeks at best. We basically just use the smell test, unless we look at the towel and think, 'wow, I can't remember ever not using that towel'. Then it's time to go. Once we start our long bike trip, we'll be carrying the little quick dry towels and will hand wash those whenever we have sun to dry them on the panniers.

Jeans? I have two pairs and they will wait at least 2-3 laundry cycles (2-3 weeks) between washes. I change my underwear daily and am not crawling around in the mud, so I just wait until they feel dirty and wash them. It helps that I'm still stuck in the office wearing slacks most days. Once I'm outta there, I'm sure they'll be washed way more frequently.

[ender]

I probably change mine once a month. I actually use a hand towel sized towel and not a bath towel, too.

When I shower, before leaving the shower, I wipe most of the water off with my hands like a squeegee- this takes maybe 1-2 minutes total. As a guy I can dry my hair pretty well just by quickly running my hands through it. By the time I use my towel I'm generally pretty dry already, which has the added benefit of not soaking the bath rug.

[RMD]

Wow OCD people, who actually tracks when they wash certain things?

We do have a laundry day.  Not OCD at all..but since we work, we do laundry Friday night/Saturday morning and run our weekly errands...groceries, post office, hardware.  We call Saturday our "taking care of life stuff" day.  I cook lunches for the week and DH tracks our receipts...that kind of stuff. It's a system that works for us and it really isn't as rigid as it sounds!

[NinetyFour]

During the work week, I shower at my work place.  I can keep using the same towel for 2 - 3 months, since the locker room is kept fairly warm and is not generally humid.

I rarely shower at home, so I do not switch out that towel for weeks or months at a time.

[libertarian4321]

Since I usually do the laundry since I work from home, I would estimate that I usually switch out the towels 2 times per week on average, but there is no set schedule.  It's pretty much whenever I get around to it.

[golden1]

I can't even imagine changing a towel every day...the amount of laundry would be astronomical!

[dragoncar]

No, I don't wash the towel. The towel washes me. What am I gonna do? Wash the shower next?! Wash a bar of soap? You gotta think here, pal!

http://youtu.be/gGycFQZt54c


Seriously, I also use the smell test or the "room in the washer" test, whichever comes first.  I usually use the towel to dry off the shower a bit in the places where water stands and then hang it up such that it dries out really well in my non-humid environment.  I only do laundry every few weeks anyways, so if there is room in the load I will wash the towel.  If no room, and towel doesn't smell, I don't wash.  If towel starts to smell I wash.  I have never gotten any skin diseases from this method.

[Squirrel away]

I wash my bath towel about every three days I would think, but the hand towel get changed daily.

[homehandymum]

body towel when it starts to smell - maybe every week to ten days

facecloth/flannel/washer cloth - new one every day

hand towel by the basin - new one every day (5 people in this house - 3 of whom are children who think the towel is what rubs the grime off - not the soapy water beforehand)

[Milspecstache]

Nords will love this comment if he sees it but I noticed on submarines that due to the super low humidity I could use a towel for a looong time before it would get stinky.  All because the low humidity rapidly dried the towel before it could grow bacteria and smell.

[lexie2000]

We dry off and hang our towels which dry rather rapidly.  I throw them in the washer whenever I have extra room in a load - probably about once a week, but I never really keep track.   

[kkbmustang]

We generally wash the towels once per week to ten days unless they start to smell or someone rolled in mud before the bath and the Towel had to work a little harder that time. Each person has a different, color coded set of towels, so we know.  The rest of the towels are reserved for guests or  wiping up accidents.  This happens frequently with two kids and two dogs.

We have poof sponge things in the showers for body washing. Wash cloths for faces.

EDITED for typos.

[Nords]

Nords will love this comment if he sees it but I noticed on submarines that due to the super low humidity I could use a towel for a looong time before it would get stinky.  All because the low humidity rapidly dried the towel before it could grow bacteria and smell.

Heh-- not to mention that the showers might be secured for half the time, and laundry wouldn't be open unless we were underway for at least two weeks...

[Nudelkopf]

We have poof sponge things in the showers for body washing. 

A poof sponge?!

I change my towel & facewasher every Saturday. (But I save them up and wash them every 3rd Saturday, because I live in luxury and own THREE bath towels :D )

[1967mama]

@ saga:  We had this problem once with a different washing machine. Do you have a front loader? If so, it could be something like this:

http://www.today.com/news/your-washing-machine-growing-hidden-mold-6C10671363

and here's a way to help solve the problem:

http://wholelifestylenutrition.com/articles/learn-this-tip-say-goodbye-to-bad-smelling-he-washer-machines-forever/

[Squirrel away]

I don't use washing powder in my washing machine. I usually just use a squirt of washing up liquid and some vinegar instead. It saves money and my clothes get wrecked almost as soon as I put them on with my cats and dogs jumping up on me all day anyway.:)