The subject is towels...

[texaskj]

A few mentions here of not sharing bath towels -- does anybody use someone else's towel usually? Yuck, imho! I had a roommate once whose BF kept using my washcloth & towel -- that grossed me out completely. Kicked the slob out.

--- Laurie

OMG, JF, I had a roommate whose boyfriend kept using my towels. And we had to carry stuff about three blocks to the laundromat. I wanted to strangle him. And a week after she dropped out and moved back home he tried to ask me out; "Why do you think I always used your towels instead of Stacey's?" GA-ROSS

 

[partgypsy]

We don't have a strict schedule. We used to put bath towels in the hamper after practically every shower because I can't abide using a damp towel, so if I came across a damp towel I'd throw it in the bin (we live in a humid area). But we put in a towel warmer so we can use bath towels multiple times.

We use both cloth napkins and cloth tea towels in the kitchen. The completely fresh ones are in a basket, then they are moved to over the sink if they have been used. I simply replace as they get dirty, so there is kind of a constant recycling rather than a schedule. In the back porch we have "rags" which are used for dirty spills and are cleaned separate from the rest of the wash.

Sometimes I consider moving to all white napkins and towels because then they are easier to see if they are dirty, but I like using ones with different colors/patterns.

 

[partgypsy]

A few mentions here of not sharing bath towels -- does anybody use someone else's towel usually? Yuck, imho! I had a roommate once whose BF kept using my washcloth & towel -- that grossed me out completely. Kicked the slob out.

--- Laurie

OMG, JF, I had a roommate whose boyfriend kept using my towels. And we had to carry stuff about three blocks to the laundromat. I wanted to strangle him. And a week after she dropped out and moved back home he tried to ask me out; "Why do you think I always used your towels instead of Stacey's?" GA-ROSS

lol How - sexy

 

[PinkTower]

We are in a humid climate. Towels will mildew if not washed daily. Sometimes, in winter, we can use them an extra day because we use a towel warming bar, but the warming bar puts out too much heat in the summer.

 

[monarch64]

We use bath towels/hand towels several times before washing. Kitchen towels are used until they are pretty much visibly dirty. We have a meat-free kitchen (I don't even use eggs very often) so contamination is not a huge concern.

 

[Saoirse2]

Bath towels: once
Hand towels: twice
Kitchen towels: used to dry hands only 5 a week.
Paper towels for kitchen spills, etc. We go through two rolls of paper towels and 42 bath towels a week.

 

[hlmr]

Bath towels: once
Hand towels: twice
Kitchen towels: used to dry hands only 5 a week.
Paper towels for kitchen spills, etc. We go through two rolls of paper towels and 42 bath towels a week.

WOW!!! That is a lot! You must be forever doing laundry!

I change both bathroom and kitchen towels once a week. (I only dry my hands on the kitchen towel when they are clean).

And I do use paper towels for on the floor spills.

 

[lbbaber]

We use fresh bath towels/wash cloths after/with every bath/shower---NO exceptions.
Hand towels we use Kleenex's new paper hand towels (best idea ever!)...before that we used paper towels as hand towels.
Many many many rolls of paper towels in the kitchen....many many. I wash my hands constantly.
Bleach wipes for the counters.

 

[diamondseeker2006]

I was afraid to read this thread, but it looks like we are in the majority!

Bath towels...washed once a week

Kitchen hand towel....washed once a week and only used for drying hands after washing. We use paper towels for spills and wiping counter, etc.

 

[Saoirse2]

Bath towels: once
Hand towels: twice
Kitchen towels: used to dry hands only -5 a week.
Paper towels for kitchen spills, etc. We go through two rolls of paper towels and 42 bath towels a week.

WOW!!! That is a lot! You must be forever doing laundry!
I change both bathroom and kitchen towels once a week. (I only dry my hands on the kitchen towel when they are clean).

Everyone in the family enters through the laundry room therefore, washer/dryer are ON most weeknights to keep it neat. I normally have a helper or two folding with this obsessive momma

 

[Pandora II]

Don't you worry about the effect on the environment that using that amount of energy, water and detergents has?

 

[Karl_K]

before I got married:
bath: when it got too stiff to use and or could stand up by itself.
Kitchen towels: didn't own any, paper
hand towels: every 2 weeks or sooner if they got to dirty.

Married:
bath: 2 uses average
kitchen - 1 a day average, wifey4ever uses cloth towels I use paper towels.
hand - 2-3 days average, wifey4ever uses cloth towels I mostly use paper towels.

 

[AGBF]

before I got married:
bath: when it got too stiff to use and or could stand up by itself.
Kitchen towels: didn't own any, paper
hand towels: every 2 weeks or sooner if they got to dirty.

Married:
bath: 2 uses average
kitchen - 1 a day average, wifey4ever uses cloth towels I use paper towels.
hand - 2-3 days average, wifey4ever uses cloth towels I mostly use paper towels.

Cute...and almost undoubtedly completely true!!!

Deb/AGBF,
married woman

 

[kelpie]

This is going to sound so bourgey but.... since I got full time domestic help I'm on one towel per use. In my defense that only costs $154 a month and it's twice the prevailing wage so I've created a good position.

 

[MissGotRocks]

If I were wealthy and had maid service every day, I would insist on clean sheets and towels every day! It is such a luxurious feeling but in the real world, I generally get clean sheets once a week and clean towels every 2-3 days. It's not necessary in my opinion to do them any more frequently than that but it would be a great indulgence to have them clean every day. I find it interesting that in some hotel rooms you are now asked whether you want clean linens every day. Uh, yeah, that's part of staying in a nice room so you can bet your sweet patootie that I want them!

I don't use kitchen towels - bleh! I am a paper towel madwoman and while I realize it's wasteful, I think that papertowels would not take that long to break down in the environment. Perhaps that's my justification but I can't stand to think of using a dirty or wet kitchen towel.

Here's another HUGE, nasty no-no to me - men's handkerchiefs!! When I was a child, all of the men - uncles, whatever - had handkerchiefs in their pants pockets that they would use to blow their noses or whatever and put them back in their pockets!! I cringe everytime I think about it - ewwww! Thank goodness that is a practice that seems to have been left in another time. My husband doesn't own a handkerchief. The women could be just as bad with their hankies or Kleenex back in the purse - gross!!!!

 

[jlp86]

I am pretty close to the majority here:
Bath towels: use for a week then wash
Kitchen towels: washed every couple of days...depends on whats being cooked that week. All dishes air dry unless I need to use something immediately after washing...then I use a towel.

 

[AGBF]

The women could be just as bad with their hankies or Kleenex back in the purse - gross!!!!

Well, this is certainly a threadjack, but you landed on a sore spot between my "clean" daughter and me. She is mortally offended by used kleenex. She will never touch one. I have to pick every one up that ever falls from a waste basket in our home. (She threatens vomiting from exposure to used tissues.) If I am sitting at a funeral, crying, or at a Thai restaurant, my eyes running, I will stick a used kleenex back in my purse until I can dispose of it. What am I supposed to do...drop it on a church floor? On a restaurant table? My daughter's idea of keeping her immediate area clean is always to open a car door or window and to drop it out...something which leads to my screaming at her and telling her that I, the driver, am liable for a litterng ticket!

Oh...and, btw, I do have a garbage bag in my car!

AGBF

 

[Saoirse2]

Don't you worry about the effect on the environment that using that amount of energy, water and detergents has?

Not at all Pandora, we use .5 oz MelaPower 6x or Sun & Earth [citrus] in our HE washer.
Most loads are washed in cold/warm to save 90% energy. Where we live you pay a higher rate if you make laundry in the morning. We never use the dryer for one load, two loads each session to save energy by using already heated dryer that doesn't have to be brought up to temp each time it is used.
We don't use grid stations for electrical energy, we have solar panels, my electricity bill is $5 or less. I do worry about smells and germs in the laundry room though

 

[MissGotRocks]

The women could be just as bad with their hankies or Kleenex back in the purse - gross!!!!

Well, this is certainly a threadjack, but you landed on a sore spot between my "clean" daughter and me. She is mortally offended by used kleenex. She will never touch one. I have to pick every one up that ever falls from a waste basket in our home. (She threatens vomiting from exposure to used tissues.) If I am sitting at a funeral, crying, or at a Thai restaurant, my eyes running, I will stick a used kleenex back in my purse until I can dispose of it. What am I supposed to do...drop it on a church floor? On a restaurant table? My daughter's idea of keeping her immediate area clean is always to open a car door or window and to drop it out...something which leads to my screaming at her and telling her that I, the driver, am liable for a litterng ticket!

Oh...and, btw, I do have a garbage bag in my car!

AGBF

Bolded item is key. I'm talking about ladies in my past (or when I was a little girl) that had a whole pocketbook full of Kleenex. Some were used to blot lipstick, some were used for tears and some may have been used for nose blowing! They would offer you any one of these to dispose of chewing gum or whatever - but I never knew what they had initially been used for! Used Kleenex in a purse waiting for disposal is another whole ballgame as I would never sanction littering.

 

[Lulie]

IMHO, anything that gets soaked should be washed after every use.
Even if you just come out of the shower, the towel still picks up dead skin cells and oils making it dirty. If you take a closer look to an used 'air' dried towel it will have a 'different' texture at the bottom.....guess what that is.
I don't use kitchen towels for similar reasons, it takes too long for me to collect enough kitchen towels to sanitize a full load.

 

[lbbaber]

IMHO, anything that gets soaked should be washed after every use.
Even if you just come out of the shower, the towel still picks up dead skin cells and oils making it dirty. If you take a closer look to an used 'air' dried towel it will have a 'different' texture at the bottom.....guess what that is.
I don't use kitchen towels for similar reasons, it takes too long for me to collect enough kitchen towels to sanitize a full load.

Oh yes, SOOOOO true. Used towels make me cringe. I would rather "air dry" after a shower. Thank God my DH and I are on the same page here.
I have alwayss used paper towels for hand towels (the real towels are decorative only). Kleenex makes paper hand towels now though for the bathroom---love them!!

 

[lbbaber]

Don't you worry about the effect on the environment that using that amount of energy, water and detergents has?

No.

 

[AGBF]

IMHO, anything that gets soaked should be washed after every use.
Even if you just come out of the shower, the towel still picks up dead skin cells and oils making it dirty. If you take a closer look to an used 'air' dried towel it will have a 'different' texture at the bottom.....guess what that is.
I don't use kitchen towels for similar reasons, it takes too long for me to collect enough kitchen towels to sanitize a full load.

Oh yes, SOOOOO true. Used towels make me cringe. I would rather "air dry" after a shower. Thank God my DH and I are on the same page here.

These two quotations finally made me post! I have ambivalent feelings on the issue. On the one hand, I cannot use my own bath towel more than once without washing it (or the wash mitten or cloth I used in the shower). I bundle those up and bring them right out of the bathroom and downstairs with me to wash after a shower.

On the other hand, I am not a fanatic about hand towels in the bathroom and only collect the bath towels and wash cloths of other family members about once a week. (My father-at age 91-makes this easy. He showers six days out of seven at the YMCA when he uses the pool there!)

I also found it charming that my husband's family in Italy (35 years ago) had assigned cloth napkins for each family member. At each meal we would get the same, unwashed, cloth napkin back. No one got another person's napkin. On the other hand, there was no fanatic laundering after every meal! This makes me think of the theory that people nowadays would not last in an environment as rich in germs as those that existed in the past because we are now all too used to sanitary conditions and have no resistance to germs. I have no idea if that has scientific validity, bu it sounds sensible to me!

Deb/AGBF

 

[4ever]

Bath towels - usually once a week or more.
Hand towels - Every few days or when ever they don't feel very dry. Dirty hand towels freak me out.
Tea towels (kitchen ones) - every week or when they're dirty, but we don't dry dishes with them

 

[Pandora II]

These two quotations finally made me post! I have ambivalent feelings on the issue. On the one hand, I cannot use my own bath towel more than once without washing it (or the wash mitten or cloth I used in the shower). I bundle those up and bring them right out of the bathroom and downstairs with me to wash after a shower.

On the other hand, I am not a fanatic about hand towels in the bathroom and only collect the bath towels and wash cloths of other family members about once a week. (My father-at age 91-makes this easy. He showers six days out of seven at the YMCA when he uses the pool there!)

I also found it charming that my husband's family in Italy (35 years ago) had assigned cloth napkins for each family member. At each meal we would get the same, unwashed, cloth napkin back. No one got another person's napkin. On the other hand, there was no fanatic laundering after every meal! This makes me think of the theory that people nowadays would not last in an environment as rich in germs as those that existed in the past because we are now all too used to sanitary conditions and have no resistance to germs. I have no idea if that has scientific validity, bu it sounds sensible to me!

Deb/AGBF

They think this is one of the big contributers towards increase in allergies etc today. There are also suggestions that things like MS can be caused by having a low exposure to pathogens in childhood (or so my mother who has MS was telling me).

I don't have disinfectant in my house, if my daughter drops a biscuit on the ground then I just brush it off and give it back to her. Being 'too clean' is not a good thing and doesn't improve your immune system. 'Best before dates' on food are suggestions, not law - if it smells okay then we eat it.

My attitude may well stem from growing up in a country without electrical appliances, or shops where you could buy that number of towels, where drinking water was delivered by a lorry and I didn't own a pair of shoes till I was 9 years old. It's ludicrous how obsessed we have become about germs and everything being sterile and not healthy either. The human race has been around for hundreds of thousands of years and survived without Puril or Dettol.

I can count the number of times I have had a cold or stomach bug or general illness in the last 5 years on the fingers of one hand. My daughter is nearly 2 1/2 and has had about 5 colds and is yet to have antibiotics.

 

[Lottie]

These two quotations finally made me post! I have ambivalent feelings on the issue. On the one hand, I cannot use my own bath towel more than once without washing it (or the wash mitten or cloth I used in the shower). I bundle those up and bring them right out of the bathroom and downstairs with me to wash after a shower.

On the other hand, I am not a fanatic about hand towels in the bathroom and only collect the bath towels and wash cloths of other family members about once a week. (My father-at age 91-makes this easy. He showers six days out of seven at the YMCA when he uses the pool there!)

I also found it charming that my husband's family in Italy (35 years ago) had assigned cloth napkins for each family member. At each meal we would get the same, unwashed, cloth napkin back. No one got another person's napkin. On the other hand, there was no fanatic laundering after every meal! This makes me think of the theory that people nowadays would not last in an environment as rich in germs as those that existed in the past because we are now all too used to sanitary conditions and have no resistance to germs. I have no idea if that has scientific validity, bu it sounds sensible to me!

Deb/AGBF

They think this is one of the big contributers towards increase in allergies etc today. There are also suggestions that things like MS can be caused by having a low exposure to pathogens in childhood (or so my mother who has MS was telling me).

I don't have disinfectant in my house, if my daughter drops a biscuit on the ground then I just brush it off and give it back to her. Being 'too clean' is not a good thing and doesn't improve your immune system. 'Best before dates' on food are suggestions, not law - if it smells okay then we eat it.
My attitude may well stem from growing up in a country without electrical appliances, or shops where you could buy that number of towels, where drinking water was delivered by a lorry and I didn't own a pair of shoes till I was 9 years old. It's ludicrous how obsessed we have become about germs and everything being sterile and not healthy either. The human race has been around for hundreds of thousands of years and survived without Puril or Dettol.

I can count the number of times I have had a cold or stomach bug or general illness in the last 5 years on the fingers of one hand. My daughter is nearly 2 1/2 and has had about 5 colds and is yet to have antibiotics.

Absolutely this. My mother always used to say it was building our immune system when we dropped something and now I find myself saying exactly the same thing.

 

[April20]

Bath towels are changed once a week. Kitchen towels a couple times a week.

 

[TooPatient]

Bath towels & face cloths get washed after each use. I use 2 bath towels for each shower and FI uses one. After baths/showers, the towels are hung up so they don't sit in a wet heap during the day. If I have room in the load of laundry I'm doing that night, I toss them in otherwise they are dry so get tossed in the laundry bin until the next day. When I put out fresh towels in the morning, I keep in mind what other laundry there is already and select white or colored towels accordingly so they can go with the wash.

Hand towels in the bathrooms get washed 2-3 times a week.

Kitchen -- We use paper towels for 99% of everything. The few hand towels we use are just for drying hands after washing (still usually paper towels). I set them out to dry and then toss them in a bag with our table linens. Table linens & tea towels get a load of their own so it takes about a month before I have a full load.

Kitchen door has a special floor towel for the dogs to wipe feet when they come in and another for drying the dogs if they are wet. These towels are a different color from anything else (retired bath towels) and get washed once a week or so depending on weather. These towels MUST be washed alone -- NO mixing with other laundry. (I've recently started washing them with the bathmats so that it makes a full load)


I guess the breakdown for each week would be:
21 bath towels
14 face towels
8-12 hand towels
2 tea towels
5 bathmat/dog-dry towels


Do I feel bad about the environment? NO.
I used to use only one towel per bath and we'd use each towel (each of us our own towel!) for up to a week to cut down on water/electric use. All it got me was the spreading of a fungal infection and getting the starts of another rather serious infection. Not worth it. (doctor visits without insurance, missed work, and several weeks of an impressively potent medication -- I'd rather run the extra couple of loads of laundry!)

 

[ame]

Do you use a fresh towel every day or do you use the same towel after several showers before getting a fresh one?How about the towel in the kitchen when cooking and cleaning up in the kitchen...once a day change or several days before getting a fresh one? or do you use paper towels in the kitchen?Is it a luxury or just good hygiene to use fresh towels every day? I KNOW,ODD QUESTION...but im actually have a bet with someone on this question so i hope people answer it!

I don't use fabric in the kitchen, just paper towels. But I use my bath towel 2 times before I wash it.