If you’re a man, you only need one towel. When it gets stiff, you buy a new one.
- Single, female, paid for at most half of them.
That’s two hot pink striped bath sheet towels which are faded from frequent use (more than a decade). Two hot pink slightly smaller towels which are not faded because they are not used. I may have bought these on graduation from high school, or my mother may have, I no longer remember.
Two non-pink striped towels claimed from Grandma’s attic when she downsized.
Two non-striped towels recieved as Graduation presents, and mostly stored in the closet for the intravening years.
I don’t remember counting, but maybe 6 - 8 large bath towels for a 2-person household, 2 of which are rather threadbare and probably 10+ years old. Also a couple of smaller hand-me-down smaller bath towels, a couple of hand towels, and maybe 4 washcloths (which don’t get much use). 40 sounds like an insane number - I wouldn’t have anywhere to put them.
40? I don’t think I have enough room in the house to store that many bath towels! (mostly because the closets are all full of shoes… but that’s another story).
For two people, we’ve got six bath towels, plus another four reserved for camping and other odd jobs (read - raggedy, stained or otherwise worn-out ones we don’t mind destroying some more). None of them really match, either. 
I’m single, so I have 2 towels for myself, 2 guest towels, 1 hand towel and 1 beach towel…
40?! I don’t hav enough room for 40 in my apt.
Can I assume that most people are going to their linen closets and counting the towels? 'cause knowing offhand how many you have is just as weird as owning 40. No idea how many I have, but I just got some amazing, enormous Egyptian ones that were worth every penny. And there were lots of pennies involved.
I counted mine. That’s why the number is so precise; I actually thought I didn’t have that many.
Oh god I am so jealous. I don’t think you can have too many bath towels. Because I go a little too long without washing mine, and then I sniff one and it’s kind of whiffy, but I don’t have any clean ones. Imagine if I had 39 clean ones!
10 - 12. Family of 4. And we wash after every use or every second use.
I think I have six. For just me. Four were a gift, the other two I bought because they didn’t have flowers on them.
I live alone, and I have three for myself. I have another dozen for guests, but they’re the result of an in-joke with my dad. I don’t use them. Yet.
We have two sets of regular use towels for two of us (so 4 bath towels) plus one set for guests. We also have 3 beach towels and a few “rag” towels that aren’t too raggedy but that don’t get used in the regular bath rotation.
Okay, answering some questions-
We are a family of 5 (1 Mom, 1 Dad, 3 boys), and we generally ascribe to the use-once-and-wash theory of towel use, mainly. I’ve been know to reuse the next day the towels that I simply wound my wet hair up inside.
I did count them because I’m beginning to suspect they are multiplying, and they currently take up about 1/2 my linen closet space.
I’m leaning toward thinking I have a “not outlandish” number, though, considering the size of the family.
I probably have 8. It’s silly. We use two towels for about a week before we wash them. I never make my way down the stack.
There are a choice few that are “this far” from becoming shop rags.
We have 3 sets of towels for the parents (so, 6) and 2 sets for the kids (4), plus there are some extra guest towels. So about 12.
We probably have over twenty (family of 2), but that includes some really ancient ones–like over 20 years old. The problem is that we upgraded towels a few years ago and got 6 new mid-sized bath ones and another 4 smaller ones for hair. We’ve discovered, however, that they aren’t nearly as good as the old ones, so we never got rid of the old ones–we just cycle through more.
I do use two towels a day and wash them every time. I am VERY sensitive to mildew, and even a trace of it can start up serious hives.
Single. There are four full sized bath towels in my apartment. Generally I rotate three for myself and save one for guests. Any more would be overkill, I think.
Here is my current stack of rolled towels, and I think I have two or three in the hamper. So that makes maybe seven, at most eight.
I’m single and those three towels would probably be much more than enough since I only use one towel every 4 or 5 showers.
I’m not counting the extra half dozen ratty/perma-stained towels in the utility closet that are on standby for mopping up spilled Yoo Hoo or cleaning up some other big kitchen mess.
We (family of five) have about 40. Fifteen in rotation in the bathrooms, two in the guest room closet, the rest (former bathroom bath towels) demoted to use in/after the sauna.
Family of 5, and we’ve got 52 full sized bath or beach towels, not counting those that have been demoted to house cleaning. Counted them this morning. More than half are Disney character towels the girls have picked up over the years.