How long do you use the same bath towel?

Another vote for “one week” here. Every Saturday the bath linens get tossed in the hamper, whether they need it or not :D.

I have been flirting with the idea of shortening the interval somewhat, but have not been sufficiently motivated to do so yet. One week still feels “short” compared to the intervals I used to run before imposing some self-discipline - for the time being I can still feel proud of my cleanliness doing it like this…

I use mine about about a week, maaaybe 10 days. They get washed when I do all the other accumulated laundry, so it’s limited by how many pairs of sox I own. It tends to be more like a week in summer and 10 days in winter. I also change the bed sheets then too.

Daily clean towels are for people who have maids or spouses they treat like maids.

Heck, I buy nice towels and they’re worn out and ratty from washing after a year, which is about 25 washings since I have more than one set. I can’t imagine buying a new set of towels every 25 days. Talk about waste of $.

If you drop it on the floor and it snaps in half, it’s probably too late, huh?

Strange, isn’t it? Whenever you try and wash it, it gets wet, right? And how are you supposed to dry off on a wet towel? :confused:

:stuck_out_tongue:
I use once, then throw it with the other dirty towels.

Once a week. When I do all my laundry. Otherwise I bash off the skin flakes in the meantimes. :wink:

I use mine usually for a minimum of two weeks (depending on the time of the month, of course). :slight_smile:

My SO’s mom thinks that everything should be washed after one use. Including jeans, jackets! and towels.

He went through amazing numbers of jeans as a kid.

I have a hierarchy of one time use or more clothes:

Underwear: one time only (mine). His boxers can be reworn depending on previous use (sitting on the couch for eight hours doesn’t make them dirty in our minds, while running a marathon would)

Socks: only reworn if absolutely necessary or for cleaning kitchen floor, going outside quickly and the like.

Jeans: as long as they aren’t sentient, they don’t get washed. (I exaggerate a bit, but you know what I mean.)

Shirts: two catagories
T-shirts: one time use, two if worn only for a short time and not slept in.
Long sleeved shirts: when worn as a jacket over tshirt: until sentient, see jeans, above.

Towels: three catagories
dish towels, two or three days.
hand towels: whenever they become grungy (or my neighbor wipes her ass with them)
bath towels: see above.

Other: Use judgement on other cases.

I have enough underwear and socks to last me approximately three months, so I don’t do laundry very often… or until the SO complains. :slight_smile:

Could someone please explain to me the logic behind washing yourself and then smearing a dirty towel all over yourself?.
Towels are used 1 time and washed period.

unclviny

I can’t believe how much water and energy are being wasted on this board… granted, I live in an extremely dry climate (southern Alberta) and mildew in not a concern but once a week is quite sufficent for bath towels (although towels definitely fall into the hot water rather than warm or cold when washing). As for hand towels, probably 3 days (more chance of getting food matter or chemicals on them).

I guess I believe a few of my own dead skin cells aren’t likely to hurt me…

Dry climate here.

About a week for towels. My wife does most of the laundary (by her choice). So I’m not absolutely sure. Still, I have not had a towel attack me.

Undies socks and most shirts, after one wearing. Jeans for work, 2- 3 wearings. Work around the house jeans, depends a lot. I’m doing an addition now, and if I’m going to be home for a few days working on the house, I usually just where the same pair. Mostly, they would just get full of sawdust and stuff, so no big deal.

unclviny, (and other one-time towelers)

What makes you think a towel used to absorb clean water off a just-washed and clean body would be dirty? What exactly does “dirty” mean to you?

If I washed and rinsed a dish, then handed it and a clean towel to you, would you consider the towel “dirty” after having removed the clean water from the clean dish? Water exactly as clean as that used to rinse the towel when it was last washed?

I freely admit a human body is not a dish, but after my thorough scrubbing in the shower I doubt very much more oil or dead skin comes off during my comparatively gentle daubing with a towel afterwards.

Everyone’s choice is just that, a personal choice, and often far more informed by habit than logic. That’s certainly true for me.

But I must question the idea that a towel is “dirty” after having touched just-washed skin. How long after your clean shirt first touches your now-dry skin does it become “dirty”? 10 minutes? 30 minutes? two hours? Recall the towel only touched any one spot on your body for a couple of seconds at most.

A logically consistent response would be the shirt is “dirty” within a couple of minutes after you put it on and start moving around the room. Perhaps the one-use-towel folks also change shirts every few minutes, but somehow I doubt it.

Sorry if that sounds kinda harsh. That’s not my intent. I’m just astonished that very many folks think that way and I’m trying to get some insight into their thinking on the topic.

Bath towels get used once, and are then thrown in the washer. I don’t run the washer until it’s full (with both bath linens as well as kitchen towels). I have enough bath towels to keep me going for a week and a half without washing a towels.

Usually once a week. I have a heated towel bar, so it’s always nice and cosy when I get out of the shower. In the winter I cover one large bath sheet with another. I use the bottom towel (the top towel holds in the heat) and the top towel becomes the next day’s towel.

StG

Used to be I’d throw it away when it shattered.

Now my wife makes me use fresh ones every day or so.

At military school they went out once a week with the service (oh the joy).

Now at a real university I’m attending…mmm. Best not give any of you nightmares.

I used to wash towels once a week. This was pre-marriage. I now wash them every day/use. The reasons?

  1. d_redguy has a nasty habit of dropping a once-used towel on top of the (closed) toilet seat and leaving it there.

  2. He also drapes them over the (admitedly sometimes nasty) shower curtain.

  3. Hi Opal.

  4. If not left in one of the above-mentioned places, the towel hits the floor of whatever room he’s passing through. :rolleyes:

I am NOT drying myself with that.

Is there anyone out there who washes their towels every day AND has to pay for wash at a laundromat?

When I dry off I dry certain parts before other ones and until that towel has been washed and dried the cycle will not be repeated.
Do you seriously wipe your face with last weeks towel that you last used on your ass?, shower or not that towel is DIRTY!.
We have a washer and dryer here in the house (2 kids and 3 adults in the house).
I worked offshore (on oil rigs all over the Gulf of Mexico) for 10 years and the standard is to dry yourself and deposit the towel into the dirty towel receptacle (a cleverly disguised trashcan) so that they could be sent to the beach for washing/drying.
I have enough towels that I can do 1 load a week, I think/feel that this is reasonable.

unclviny

Good god. When I first saw this thread, I tried to predict the median time for washing towels. I thought about five days. I am shocked – SHOCKED – by the number of answers that say one or two days.

Me, I’d say about every two-three weeks, but after the first week, I keep thinking to myself, “I’m gonna get a new towel from the closet.”

Zoinks! I’m shocked at how many towels people are using too!

When I was growing up, the cleaning lady changed the towels and the bedsheets once a week, so we used towels for a week. I figured that was pretty normal. I intend to use towels for a week, but I’m not very good about hanging them up to dry properly, so I probably use about 2 sets per week–and I feel guilty about wasting all the energy and water for washing them.

I have to wonder how much laundry people are doing per week. How many loads? Or is the washer run every day?

And I can’t imagine what unclviny is doing with his towel to make it so dirty! Is he drying his colon? Geesh.

Only if you don’t wash your ass, obviously.
I use a towel until it becomes uncomfortably crusty (generally about 3-5 showers, I guess).