Towels

That's pretty mental.

I change ours once a week. There's only 2 of us, and we each have our 'own' - ie don't use the towel the other person is using that week.

Those people must have to do craploads of laundry. I don't think it's worth it.

Wow, that is crazy. On Sundays I go around the house and replace all the towels in the house with fresh ones. It is one of the few routines that I have instigated in the house that I actually carry through with every week.

I also wash towels separately from everything else so that I can dry them with no dryer sheet; that way they are more absorbent.

If I washed towels after every use, I'd spend my entire life washing towels. It's not only wasteful, but I'd be crazier than I already am.

if aired and dried properly it should be used maybe 5 times? no more than that really though. less than 3 times is wasteful, yes.

When I was growing up I used a different towel every time I showered - we had big stacks of them and I never even thought about it. My mom apparently didn't mind doing laundry all the time.

Nowadays, I hate laundry more than any other household chore so I wash mine whenever I do a load, like every week and a half. As long as it keeps drying me off and doesn't seem nasty, I'll keep using it. I do live in a very arid place so this helps.

OMG I was going to start a thread about this too! Someone told me they changed their towel after every use: I'd never heard of such a thing! I change mine ~1x a week, or right after I've cut my hair (hair gets stuck in the towel). I used to have to stretch them out a mite longer when I knew we wouldn't have laundromat transport or $$$ to do so. Fortunately we have about 14 towels & two people in the house.

i think there has been a thread on this! i remember cos it made me feel like such a dirtbag.

Sometimes I'll spread some towels on the walk-in closet floor for the guinea pigs to play on, but the pigs have their own special towels that we do not use for obv. reasons. Those get washed a lot more frequently: usually just washed by hand & dried on the outside chairs.

i do my laundry every 2-3 weeks so, yeah, that long.

Yeeps. I launder every week without fail, including bathroom and dish towels. Indeed, I just put them all in the wash.

I've gone as long as 8 weeks between laundry, but certainly not of my wishes! Febreeze t-shirts + hand-wash undies/socks until the blessed day comes.

how many times do you use yr bath towel before you wash it?

i'm guessing people that wash them so often have washing machines in their buildings. who is so ocd as to lug a bag full of used towels to the laundromat each week?

Can anyone explain this towel to me?

http://www.bookofjoe.com/images/16255_2.png

Apparently this man is a sagitally divided buttface?

http://funideas.com/images/products/bathroom/buttfacetowel.jpg

Here it's divided by gleeful Aryan gender?

http://www.brightlife.com.au/store/images/48500.jpg

This one seems to imply the back half of the human skull is your ass.

This guy doesn't even have a face.

This guy, he is the butt without a face: he's got no human grace.

http://images.findgift.com/Graphics/Gifts/140/PR_28052.jpg

wau.

i change my towel abt every 5 days
i do not do laundry this often though. i just have many towels.

i think one can manage to maintain butt/face towel contact separation just by hanging towel up by part you dry face with, right? but those people are so happy about their towels! it is workign for them!

They're a bit snorgish

my mom seems to give me a new towel every christmas. plus dish towels. and, like, mr clean eraser sponges and jay cloths.
xpost

the face/butt towel girls/guys are crazy!

i guess you dry your BUTT with only the brown half and then can safely dry your FACE with the white half

but he's clearly violating this in the first picture

Eek sorry for not searching before posting!

Those people are so happy, you're right R. I wonder if buttface towels hold the key to all our happiness.

BTW - We wash ours about once a week.

yeah this towel is actually rong
it should be vertically separated

this is actually kind of annoying me!

not really

Was just reminded about my friends who moved in together last year and had an unfortunate towel incident. T had put handtowels in the bathroom which she sometimes used to wipe off her face after washing. A couple weeks into the move T noticed that they smelled funny and asked K if he'd noticed the funky hand towels. Hand towels - what do you mean? Turns out he didn't know they had a designated purpose (?) and had been using them to wipe his balls. Why his balls were still ripe even after a shower, I never bothered to ask . . .

lllllllolllllll

If they're still together, it must be love.

They're getting married!

Why would you grab a small towel especially to wipe your balls after a shower!?

a similar MO to the face/butt towels?

srsly
i mean ball towels? really?
dude

boys r gross

I must say I have never heard of ball towelz

because they don't exist!

Yeah, I'm pretty sure ball towels only exist in K's little world. If you knew him, it would make more sense. If that's possible.

haha. one of the things i love about people is how these weird quirks are totally normalized in one's mind. we all do it. and yet to other people these quirks can be very wtf.

but yeah, i understand: face towels, hand towels, hair towels, body towels, bath mats, maybe foot towels
but if you're gonna have a ball towel you should probably have BALLS written on it. everywhere.

haha i would totally give him an embroidered "balls" towel for christmas

i think i've fulfilled my quota now for that word

HAHAH awesome!

http://funideas.com/images/products/bathroom/bfsoapdisp.jpg

They make SOAP of this too...I think this one makes more sense (except that I never use soap on my face).

http://ixpats.com/bestoftheweb/wp-uploads/52toweldog.jpg

The towel that requires feeding, walks, hugs, luvvins, but only very infrequent washing.

It's grossing me out that the butt soap is brown. OMG puppy!

Oh my goodness:

http://store.pridestore.com/shopimages/products/thumbnails/BLACKRAG.JPG

Not safe for people who don't like to look at towels with cartoon sperm on them all aproned out over a man's cargo shorts

http://www.woodka.com/wp-content/stuff/42_towel.jpg

42/TOWEL NEVER FORGET

http://www.theflagpole.com/images/eagle_cry_white_baacckgnd3.jpg

"I just got some onions in my eyes, jesus."

Surely, the cum rags should be white.

I know! Impractical!

BLACKRAG.JPG

I only wash towels maybe every 2 weeks. Living in a humid place, I really want one of those towel warmer/dryer things. But also, though we own lots of giant towels - Do Not Want butt/face towel!

I used to date a girl who insisted on being very conservative about washing our shared wipe-the-sex-off-after-humping towels. I'd be like tossin' it in the hamper, and she'd be all like, hold up, dude. That cum rag is good for a few more sessions.

I'd be like tossin' it in the hamper

I found your problem.

waste not want not

Oh my, no. Thrift and frugality have found a new line at which they become Too Much, and that line is made of crusty terrycloth.

Surely if you wash towels too often they go all scratchy and horrible though.

Um. not that I am defending unwashed jizzcloths. I just meant in general.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/43/115157018_c35738b99e_o.jpg

From The Eagle (Chicago) - Take note of the right side of this ad.

This is not a joke. I have a friend who has a couple free Eagle cum rags (small hand towels with "The Eagle" written on them).

I have a friend who is super OCD about drying herself off - the tag on the towel marks which end is used for the face and which is used for the butt. I saw that towel before and figured that it was invented by someone as neurotic as her.

I joked about ripping the tags off all her towels and she seriously freaked out and swore she'd never forgive me.

Do people really dry their butts that thoroughly? I'm more concerned about which end gets foot action because 1) I dry my feet more thoroughly and my ass just gets a pretty cursory superficial swipe, and 2) my feet have more of a chance of being dirty when I dry them since they're on the bathmat and floor whereas my butt remains pristine from its recent scrubbing.

Surely if you've showered properly, then the skin on your bum should be as clean as the skin on your face? And if you're digging around in there with your towel, then you should be washing your towel every single day.

I stayed in an apartment in Amsterdam recently and the guest book had several people complaining in it about the lack of bathmats. There were at least ten clean towels! Couldn't they just use one of those?

My towels get washed when I clean the bathroom. Which is when I get around to it.

I am so glad to see that, now we've got around to discussing this a second time, sense is prevailing (with the exception of the inventor of the buttface towel). Mine get done every Friday night or Saturday morning, depending on my social life that weekend.

Mister M's mother was telling me yesterday that her other son uses each towel only once before leaving it to be washed. Our most recent electricity bill was €75. Hers was €380.

that's insane! wow.

i like to use a towel a week, but since i only do laundry every other week and right now i only have one towel, this is not happening. (i suppose i *could* do laundry weekly if i wanted to, as the place i'm living now has a free washer, i just am in the habit of avoiding doing it more often than absolutely necessary because it was expensive and annoying in dorms.)

I stretch my towel out and let it get really dry.

I even re-use my gym towel, but I take precautions, like using a hand towel for my feet, and keeping it off the floor, and wrapping it in a separate bag. And setting it on a radiator or fan when I get home.

I like to use mine two or three times. But my boyfriend drives me nuts by always using mine after he showers. Never mind that it's probably damp and he should remember that he didn't use the green towel last. I toss them in the dirty clothes then b/c I have no idea what he dries and don't want to take my chances.

We have way too many raggedy towels. That and our mismatched dishes make us look like we're college students putting our household together from the salvation army. After I get my car and have a bit more cash I plan on tossing all that stuff and getting a nice set of Fiestaware and new, matching towels. (Except he'll have his color and I'll have mine. He'll know not to touch the pink ones under threat of death.)

YES colored towels are necessary. I have a bunch, rotate about once a week, love it that way.

But here's the controversial bit: I really like scratchy towels! They tend to absorb better, for one thing, cos the fibers are open and dry and frayed, or as they say in the industry, "thirsty". Haha. Plus you get a good circulation-improving body scratch out of just drying off! I love that.

I'd say we switch them out once a week. I just learned last week though that after years and years of assuming Nick was using his own towel, he has just been using whichever one he grabbed first. I kind of freaked out on him. I realize this is a bit irrational.

I don't think it's irrational at all! I think even the people you love, respect, and possibly sleep with, you don't nec want their damp shower residue saturating a big damp cloth than you're going to apply to your face.

Plus towels need time to dry out, esp in summer or rainy weather. Do Not Want mildew euurgh.

Once a week seems reasonable to me.

Our towels have been getting mildewy lately. This morning I realized it was probably b/c our bathroom has no vent (bad design!) and we've been keeping the door shut to save A/C. Not anymore. . .

Okay, now...colored towels, or plain white ones?

We talked about this on the "how do you shower" thread, but if you manually brush off the majority of the water that clings to your body post-shower but pre-towel, then your towel will dry a lot faster and will harbour proportionally fewer bugs for a longer time.

Colored towels, definitely.

I quite like white ones but practically, coloured makes much more sense.

White looks too antiseptic and institutional to me, most of the time

i have no white towels!
yellow (x2), pink (x3), light green, dark green, dark blue, brightly coloured stripes (x2), blue & white stripes (x2)
plus hand towels and wash cloths

ok i have just realized i'm kind of uptight about this towel business
i would freak out if a boyfriend or whoever told me he'd been using my towel. i mean, it's not like i don't have enough towels; you are not wasting a towel or saving water or i don't know.

also my towels have not gotten scratchier at all through all that washing! except for one cheap-o one from v long ago that is only a gym/hair towel now

My favorite towels are the old ones. They get softer in my experience.

whoa there are towels made of bamboo! and they are apparently 'softer and more absorbant than cotton'!

Bamboo fabric is showing up everywhere these days.

Bamboo yarn/fabric is soooo soft.

hair towel

Now that I'm letting my hair grow out long (it's longer now than it's been in 25 years - jr. high), the absolute necessity of the hair towel is apparent. When my hair was short, I'd use a separate hair towel and feel decadent (unless I'd just colored it, then separate towel = u&k). Now, it's critical.

Also, I use what might be termed a toe towel, though it is really a washcloth. So, hair wrapped in hair towel, body and limbs dried with giant slightly scratchy bath sheet, meander over to the bed for sitting down to thoroughly dry toes (also, and I never really thought about this before, sitting on the bed completes the butt drying action).

Hahaha ohh the more personal points of drying.

It's to true. I let the squishy cotton bath rug dry my toesies but YMMV of course.

Our bathmats are all too old for proper toe-drying squishiness I fear.

Our bathmats are too filled with animal hair. As are most things in our house.

I also must have a hair towel. Too much hair to do otherwise.

It seems to me that towels become more absorbent the more they're washed.

Wow a *hair* towel! I would never have thought of this. Though I guess now that I am thinking about it, I have seen women put one towel on their torsos and one in a turban on their hair.

I'm with Laurel--scratchy towels are kind of nice. My mom's towels are the scratchiest (she hangs laundry outside when she can) but unfortunately they're also very thin. The magic towel is the one that is thick and fluffy, yet scratchy as well.

http://www.linenplace.com/prod_images/280x280/83.jpg

";-)"

A discovery: leaving your fluffy bath towel draped over the radiator for 15 minutes makes for a warm bath towel, and is nice when you get out of the shower. Leaving it there for 36 hours gets it very very hot, multiple times, and makes it smell ever-so-slightly like burnt plastic. Since it's likely made of plastic, anyhoo, this makes sense to me now.

Anyway. Do: warm the towel on the radiator. Do not: leave it there.

i once stayed at a hotel that had towel warmers. I don't think I've actually seen one anyplace else.