Do you re-use your bath towels?

[Trek Girl]

Well, if this thread is any indication, you are in good company.

I was only speaking for myself when I said I was spoiled and selfish. But I only say that because I know for a fact that it's why I don't reuse my towels. I would never presume that everyone else here who doesn't reuse their towels is spoiled and/or selfish. They may have perfectly good reasons for doing so, such as medical reasons. But essentially, I don't know, really, because I don't know them.

 

[pooh4evr]

Wash everything (except sheets, coats, jackets) after each use. Including towels, both bathroom and kitchen. Other things like bedding, bath mats, and coats jackets worn to school, once a week. Even DH's dress shirts are washed after every day wear (he is an MD, so I feel like his clothes are crawling with germs and yuck!)

 

[SaraJayne]

I literally had no idea that there are people who use a new towel for every single shower.

I had no idea people used the same towel for a week or two without washing it.

We both learned something.

 

[Momvic5]

Wash everything (except sheets, coats, jackets) after each use. Including towels, both bathroom and kitchen. Other things like bedding, bath mats, and coats jackets worn to school, once a week. Even DH's dress shirts are washed after every day wear (he is an MD, so I feel like his clothes are crawling with germs and yuck!)

I do the same thing.....if my dh wore it to work or my kids wore it to school or just out of the house for the day, it gets washed after one use - including jeans and jackets. We live in Texas so our jackets are usually light and easily washed.

There are five of us, and I usually do two loads of laundry every day. Between our day to day wear, our workout clothes, and towels, we produce a lot of laundry. If I let one day go without doing at least two loads, I feel over-whelmed by it. I wash towels after two uses (clean towel after night time shower and reuse for morning shower). I have a full load of hots every day when I throw our towels in with our socks and underwear. The neat freak in me can not stand to have clothes piled somewhere waiting to be washed.

 

[kt_mom]

I've been on both sides of it. I grew up using a fresh towel each time. My parents and sister still do the same thing. And they are constantly washing and folding baskets of towels.

As an adult with my own household now, we have a mixture. DH and I each use the same towel for about a week. We change our handtowels as needed. Mine gets changed more often because DS likes to sneak in the bathroom and play in my sink and my towel usually ends up soaking wet or on the floor being stepped on or something.

DD and DS get a fresh towel for each shower/bath. I'm not really sure why I don't hang DS's towel up after his bath but I always drop it in his basket after I carry him back to his room. I need to have a talk with DD about reusing her towel. But she rotates between showering upstairs in her bathroom and downstairs in ours and that may be why she has been in the habit of tossing her towel in the basket each time. But they both only take a shower or bath every other day so its still not that many towels a week.

I probably change my dish towels out every other day or so depending on how much we've been home and how much they've been used.

 

[mikehn]

just like everything else, I give my towels the sniff test

 

[Mouse House Mama]

You sound like an expert! Maybe I could hire you to teach the people in my house. It's not rocket science, but you'd think it was based on my DH's facial expressions when I explain whites vs colors vs sheets, etc.

See, now everyone here (the kids) think it is fun to do the laundry. Give them a few years and I bet the party will be over. Thankfully my DH is a huge help.

Living in NYC, having to walk two blocks to the laundromat, and having to pay about $7 each time I do laundry, it would never occur to me to not use it more than once. That would be insanity here.

I was lucky, when I lived in the City we had laundry in our building. Pop a load in and then work out or watch tv. It was actually not too bad.

 

[SaraJayne]

just like everything else, I give my towels the sniff test

You must be a guy ~ or a teenage boy.

 

[Robbi]

Our towels, pjs, etc are all washed after each use.

 

[ashley0139]

I was lucky, when I lived in the City we had laundry in our building. Pop a load in and then work out or watch tv. It was actually not too bad.

That is lucky. Still a lot of money though.

 

[BeachLove]

I use a new towel for each shower. Its just the way I've always been. I also have three bathrobes and will usually use a new one every 2 or three days. Pj's are used once and its tossed in the dirty pile.

 

[1001 Ghosts]

It's easy to tell that this thread is being discussed in January.

12 pages, and not a single poster has commented on the inability to get your towels dry enough to re-use during the humid months.

And with that......discuss!

 

[1001 Ghosts]

Living in NYC, having to walk two blocks to the laundromat, and having to pay about $7 each time I do laundry, it would never occur to me to not use it more than once. That would be insanity here.

If you hang tight, a poster with MUCH better knowledge of NYC than everyone else on the planet will be along and tell you how to do it.

 

[declansdad]

If you hang tight, a poster with MUCH better knowledge of NYC than everyone else on the planet will be along and tell you how to do it.

 

[monarchsfan16]

We have a well for water. The question is not how much we are willing to spend on water ($), the question is how much water do we have.

Having grown up with a well, I never knew people washed towels after every use. The concept of using one towel for hair and one for body was foreign too. We use 1 towel per shower, and throw the towels on the laundry pile 1-2x/week. PJs get worn for 2 nights (I shower before bed, so I'm clean when I put the pjs on), and sheets get washed every week-ish.

 

[CanBeGrumpy]

For those who don't reuse, where do you put the wet towels before they get washed? Do they sit around in a basket? To me, a big pile of wet towels sitting around grosses me out way more than reusing a towel that's been hung up to dry! And there is no way I am doing laundry every day! Needless to say, we are a family of re-users.

 

[tzolkin]

I cant understand the "touched your privates" angle.

It is CLEAN. IT is your OWN body..

I was thinking the same thing.

Maybe I'm not drying myself properly, but everyone else is making it seem like they're "digging around" down there or something.

I never gave much conscious thought to it before this thread, but did a casual study and found that my natural drying procedure is as follows: dab my face once or twice with the center of my towel, then use the two ends to dry each leg from ankle to upper thigh, wrap the towel around my shoulders where it absorbs most of the water off my upper arms/back, and then flip my hair over and wrap it up in the towel. So, really I don't even use the towel to dry my "privates" and if does happen to brush by there it would be a different part than I use for my face.

ok so clean towels, but you sleep naked on the same sheets for a week

We also sleep naked but we reuse towels.

OMG... what if I move around at night and my face touches a part of the sheets that was on DH's privates.



While we're on this topic-- I also don't get the two towels for hair thing. Until recently I have had super thick hair that has been to my lower back or bottom. I have never needed a second towel. I know it's very common and that's fine if someone prefers to use a second one, but I don't really see how they can say it's "necessary".

See my post above on my situation (we do many small loads) but even if I tried to combine most of our clothes together, I don't know how I could do make that work!

I have a large capacity washer / dryer and do not see how I could fit all of our darks in 1 load. I would say we'd have 2-3 loads.--- We often have 2 loads, 1 was my "low" week. We re-wear jeans so that probably factors into it.

If we reused our towels (say 2 - 3 times) and combined them with all our socks and underwear, we would still have at least 2 loads.--- We usually use our towels all week. I can easily fit 5 towels in with all socks and underwear for one hot water load. Often I will have room to add other white/light clothes.

Bedding - 3 loads.--- Same. To do all the sheets at once is 3 loads. My "low" week was taking into consideration that maybe I didn't get to the sheets that week. I don't have a set day, so sometimes it's every 10 days if that's when I have the time to do them all in one day. Or I might just get to one load with some of the kids sheets.

Delicates/other - There are just some things that have to be separated out. Examples: colors that will bleed (reds, the kids have some really bright blues), light colored clothing that cannot be washed in hot water with the whites or with the darks (I wash towels, underwear, socks, etc on "sanitary" which is extra hot), other blankets (bulky), kitchen towels (even on "sanitary" I cannot wash underwear with kitchen towels...just can't do it! So, say 3 "other" loads.--- I don't do any "other" loads. If it will bleed (red) or a new pair of dark jeans I will soak them in the sink and run them under water to get as much out as possible and then usually I will wait until I have a full load of really dark/black clothes and wash them then. After one or two washings I don't consider them to need any special treatment.

We'd still be at 10 - 11 loads. Not at all singling you out tzolkin, I honestly just cannot figure out how people have any less than this! Good for you though -- 10 is much closer to my 2-6 average than 18-21

Responses in green.

I don't limit our clothing use or anything, this is just how things naturally work for our family. Also, there are some times that I will do "regular" laundry and I wind up with a few sweatshirts or pajamas or something left over that didn't fit into the full loads I was doing. Those just go back into the laundry bin until I decide to do laundry again. I really don't ever wash just a few items.

Jeans: The director who works for Levis said she only washes her jeans once every 6 months. This one surprised me the most.....guess my 'once per week' jean wash isn't so bad!

This would be fine with DH. Fortunately he doesn't wear his jeans that many hours a day (he wears scrubs that stay at work), but I really have to steal them when he's in the shower and give him a fresh pair in order to wash them.

I should show this to my SIL. My brother does all the laundry and when they first started living together he had to have many discussions with her because he was doing 2-3 loads of just her jeans per week.

 

[zokaluse]

We each have our own towels & they get used 3 times at least before they go in the wash .. We each dry off with a wrung out damp flannel all over before wrapping the towel around & getting out of the bath/shower. The flannels go on
the bathroom radiator after rinsing in hot water & are dry within an hour to be used the next day for the same. Face cloths for the kids (we don't use them) get the dame treatment! Swimming towels get used once then washed!!
When we were 3 It was new towel after every shower/ bath, new flannel every day, new facecloth every day... Then we became 4!
I change the beds once a week or rather dh2b does as that's his job!

 

[PeterPanic]

I use a new towel for each shower. Its just the way I've always been. I also have three bathrobes and will usually use a new one every 2 or three days. Pj's are used once and its tossed in the dirty pile.

I don't even own a bathrobe or PJ's. Yes, I'm a guy. I wash my towel about every week or so.

It's easy to tell that this thread is being discussed in January.

12 pages, and not a single poster has commented on the inability to get your towels dry enough to re-use during the humid months.

And with that......discuss!

Never had a problem with it. I live in North Carolina and it gets pretty humid in the summer around here. Still my apartment is air conditioned and I have no problem with the towel drying between uses. It doesn't collect that much water unless you try and dry off while the shower is still on.
Use a towel rack, attached to the wall. Fold the towel once and drape it over the towel rack and it drys quickly. That's one of the reasons that they make them.

 

[ge0rgette2]

Heheheheheh at some replies on this thread. I use a new towel everyday but my husband and son would use the same one for a year if I let them lol

I'm a night sweater so I try and changed sheets 2x per week along with the pillowcases.
I have a tendency to forget to take makeup off at night time. It's a bad habit that I don't do it.

I often thought about how you clean areas but you are wiping it with the towel hahahahanna mind over matter I'm sure