I actually have about 15 bath towels for myself alone but normally I use only 3 to 5 in any given week. Towels dry fast when the humidity is low, so for most of the year I can get away with using the same one about three days in a row. When the humidity is high, as it has been here for the last two weeks, I need a fresh towel for every shower. They simply don’t get completely dry even after 24 hours and soon start to stink. On top of that, I often take two, or rarely three, showers a day during humid weather.
Alternate answer: one load of laundry, however big your washer is. That way you can wash all your towels at once, in hot water.
We have a ton: probably twenty for 2 people. There are several reasons for this:
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I am very sensitive to mildew. If I run the sides of an old book down my leg, it leaves a trail of hives that linger 2-3 hours. So I really, really prefer a clean towel each day. You may THINK it doesn’t mildew at all if you hang it up, but trust me, it does.
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I prefer old towels. We “upgraded” several years ago to some new towels, but they are cheap, and for all that they are big and fluffy, they don’t absorb as well as the old cotton ones–and I do mean OLD, as in older than me, and I am 33. Some are so thin you can see through them, but they really work well.
If you have only 2 ,you have to do the laundry too often. I vote for 7. Then laundry once a week is possible. You can’t toss towels in with other laundry. They lint your clothes and have a different drying time.
Using a towel only once before washing seems so wasteful. I generally say two per person who doesn’t have long hair and 3-4 per person who has long hair (and thus needs to use one towel for body and the other for hair).
You can’t? I put my towels in with my regular clothes all the time and have never had problems.
Same here. Towels (none of mine are white) get washed and dried with all of the other non-white articles, and everything gets cooked in the dryer together until it’s all dry.
I have two sets that I regularly rotate between, and one older set that serves as my backup. I usually change towels every weekend, but I think I’ve been using the set currently on my racks for a week and a half.
I said 4, though I have 2 bathrooms and like to keep a set of 4 towels in each.
I have four that I rotate. Each gets washed at least once a week.
Me neither, but …<shrug> everybody has their laundry habits, which are rules received directly from G-d. I’d sooner offer to wash a cat as do another woman’s laundry. I’ve done laundry for several ex-girlfriends, female roommates and one aunt; and I’ve *never *gotten it right.
A combination of lots of storage space, lots of guests and hating to do laundry leads me to about 6 towels per person. And we both go at probably 5 days average before a towel needs to be washed.
Washcloths? Double that. Really. Like Mando JO, I have a reaction to mold, but thankfully mine seems to be milder. In the winter, when washcloths dry really really fast, I can use one for quite a while. In the summer when it gets humid, I sometimes only get a day before they start smelling moldy.
Kitchen towels? I think we counted over 60 the last time we bothered counting. We buy bulk packages of plain white towels (think of restaurant towels), and we use them for everything. Drying dishes, cleaning countertops, wiping up spills, as a dish rag. They are white, so hot water and bleach gets them sparkling clean again. When we get a bunch of people over for a “hang out and talk” brunch, we can easily go through 30 of them. Spilled the OJ? Grease splatter from frying bacon? Need to wash and dry the frying pan so you can reuse it? Grab a white towel, use it, and toss it in the laundry basket I put over in the corner.
Three. I use any given towel for 3-4 showers before washing it, sometimes consecutively, sometimes concurrently. It’s been so humid lately that not only do I have to shower every day (in dryer weather I can sometimes skip a day), my wet towels are not fully drying out by the time the next shower rolls around.
I don’t have a washer/dryer in my place, so my boyfriend lets me do my laundry at his condo, but it’s not always the same day every week, so sometimes it may go ten days before I get clean towels again. Three towels generally covers all contingencies.
What I don’t get is why my boyfriend will use the same towel for a week at his place, and grab a new one every day at my place. My towels are a little smaller than his, but not sub-par in absorbency and fluffiness.
I said two but I clicked before absorbing the OP. I use 2 at a time, one for my hair, one for my body. I use them a couple of times before tossing them in the laundry and I do laundry as rarely as I can get away with so I would say we probably have 10 or so for each of us. This just means when we’re having guests I have to make sure they’re all clean before the guests arrive and then we have lots.
I don’t have a reaction to mold but I do find that washcloths don’t dry out as nicely as towels, probably because they’re more wet when hung up, so I use a clean washcloth each morning for my face and each night for my shower. I buy those in huge quantites and have a shelf just for them in my bathroom.
That’s my first instinct. But mostly because so many of you seem to be assuming one towel per day. I don’t generally think towels go bad that fast. You’re clean when you use them. As long as you hang them properly, they tend to at least have one more use in them.
i have 2 matching sets of towels for myself (set=one for hair, one for body). I am looking at buying 2 more sets so I have extras for guests. I have a few unmatched towels that I use for different things, but will likely purge most of those once i get the additional sets.
I tend to use a new wash cloth every time, but use my towels for several days before switching. My hand towels tend to be mostly decorative - I change those less often.
I didn’t vote in the poll because it confused me. I confuse easily when it comes to laundry 
I love how people are so willing to jump in on a mundane poll like this.
I know I said 3/person, but I suspect we might end up keeping a few grubby towels for things like defrosting the freezer (which I am doing right now, and why I suddenly realized it).
We definitely have a lot more washcloths & kitchen towels. I don’t count kitchen towels either, because I go through them quickly as well. Though I do wish I had basic, boring, bleachable ones. As these ones wear out.
Hoopy froods only need one towel.
Me, too. I would like to bump my answer up to three per man, and six per woman (I need a hair towel and a body towel).
I suppose it depends on how traumatized the user has been by staph bacteria, which lives quite happily on damp towels in warm environments.