QTM says:
Well… Sounds like an energetic non-towel encounter to me. :eek:
Sorry.
I need to stop it. I’ll go get me a cheeseburger now.
We all use our own towels in my household. My niece and two nephews each have one, and their own hook on the back of the bathroom door. Their towels are all different colors. My sister washes them once per week. My sister and her boyfriend, I have no clue what they do. I don’t share a bathroom with them. But, I know that my OCD sister would never share a towel with anyone.
I have all my own towels. I have 6 or 7 large ones for my body and 4 or 5 smaller ones for my hair. I never leave my towels in the bathroom (which I share with the kids) because kids are nasty, disgusting, and incapable of not touching my stuff. I always hang mine to dry, in my room. I only use my towels for two days before they go in the basket.
If I have an overnight guest, they can use my towels but they always get a clean one and I never use it before it’s washed.
I also stopped using a shower puff because I got grossed out by having it hang in the shower next to the boys’ wash cloths. I just use my hands now.
I love living with my family but I can’t wait to get my own place so I don’t have to share a bathroom with children anymore.
You know, I love men, I really do, but y’all are just dirty. I’ve never had a skin infection or fungus of any sort that wasn’t directly attributable to a man in my life. And generally speaking they’d had the infection for some time, KNEW they had it, and done nothing about it at all. I think you all secretly view the ahtletes foot as a sign of virility. Either that or the microbes are your pets.
In short, DON’T touch my towel. It’s out here on the rack I installed outside the bathroom so that my towel would dry more quickly in the less humid air. And don’t even get me started on the urine and feces being carried through the air onto yours each time you flush the toilet.
My toothbrush is out here too. Yes, I saw the Mythbusters ep., no, I don’t care to return it to the vicinity of the toilet.
I dry off outside the bathroom a) because that’s where my towel is, and b) because it’s impossible to get dry when there air around you approaches 99% humidity.
Some of this may be due to the fact that I grew up in an extremely humid climate, and have very delicate skin; but my Mother says its simply because I “think too much” which can not be denied.
How often should you switch to a new towel? I don’t use a fresh one every day. However, I do put the towel in the dryer before I get in the shower, so when I get out, it’s all toasty warm and dry, so I’m never using a damp or mildewy towel, even if it’s been used several times. I know, not energy efficient of me, but it’s my one true vice, and I am saving energy by not washing 7 towels a week.
The only towel(s) we share are the hand towels, and on occasion we will reuse one that was just used on hair and tossed over the shower rod to dry. Otherwise, we all have our own robes and towels that we use after bathing.
I usually wash towels after 3 or 4 uses as well.
ARE NOT!
Well, okay, I’ve never lived with a man because they smell funny. 'Cept me, I smell good.
I know what you mean, though. Ever get next to some dude doing his laundry in a laundromat? Shew. Im glad I have a washer and drier. And I’ve had male relatives and a few friends stay a day or few. What is that granular looking stuff some men leave on sheets and toilet seats?
Maybe I got to being so sano from always having women as roomies.
mangeorge (no, not gay).
And THIS coming from the man who put semen in a pan? :dubious:
But it was my own. And cooked “well done”. Mine smells good, 'cause I’m pure. 
The doctors I work for say you can use them up to four times between washings. But always, always use a clean washcloth.
Ten Years.
Thanks for the party, everyone. 
A single person does constitute a household according to the Census Bureau.
No sharing towels around here. Yuck. But just on general principles, not because of any specific staph concerns. And towels are washed once a week when the cleaning woman comes. I can’t imagine adding another load to the laundry we already do.
I need a woman.
Thanks, I feel better now.
Forget the “woman” thing.
Which towel are we talking about? Both my mother and hers like to use the bidet: I’m not touching that towel except to take it to the laundry, given the kind of stains it’s been known to get (and I don’t wear gloves when I do so, but I do wash my hands - thoroughly).
Hands, hair, floor towel (to avoid slipping) have always been common in our house; we used to have enough “body towels” to at least rotate them (we’d leave the bathroom in a towel toga so the next person could get wet, as we only had one functional shower/tub for five people). Nowadays Mom has a bathrobe and I still like towel togas. Towels can go unwashed any time from mere hours (see “bidet” above) to a couple weeks (see “bathroom which is actually the laundry room”); most get washed once a week. And I also usually shower once or twice a week; Mom does it more often.
I don’t know what my parents did, but my sister and I always had our own towels. This may well have originally been merely a function of the labeling necessary for summer camp, and obviously you can’t very well use the towel with your sister’s name on it, duh.
And I imagine by the time I would have grown out of that I would have found it gross. Currently, as there’s no one to share a towel with even if I for some insane reason wanted to, I’ve got two towels, which get used for a couple days and washed every weekend, along with my bathrobe.
We each have a towel in the bathroom, although it is not the same towel each time. I seem to notice that my wife’s towel is usually the thicker, nicer towel; this is because she manages to get up before me and take the first shower and claim the nicer towel the day after wash day.
??? You only have two towels? Go buy more towels! Just go and buy a new towel every month or so for a year, and you will be able to have enough towels to be able to use a fresh one every time. Or save up and buy a bunch of towels in January, when the stores have their White Sales.
Y’all are making my skin crawl!
I live in a single person household (yes, we are considered households). I use a towel for a couple of days, then throw it in the basket. I use a clean washcloth every time.
Qadgop is right about damp towels being germ factories. I wound up with MRSA after a family holiday in which some towels may or may not have been shared. I take no chances. My towels are mine and mine alone until they get washed in hot water with soap and a generous addition of bleach. Hand towels I’ll leave up for up to a week though.
When I was in a family living situation, we each had a color of towel that coordinated with the bathroom that we used. They were washed two to three times a week. Washcloths were all white and single use before they went to the laundry.
To answer the other question: towel rack within reach of the shower because I like to dry off before stepping out. However, one of the benefits of being a one person household is being able to go anywhere outside of the bathroom (at least indoors; the neighbors might complain if I stepped outside 
) without throwing on a robe or wrapping up in a towel.
There it is: more than y’all ever wanted to know about my towel habits. 
I live alone, but I change my towel as soon as I can smell something on it after 24 hours of drying time. I have enough towels that I can do a wash load of them every 3 months or so. Although, after reading about staff infections :eek: from towels, I think I may replace them more often.
I close my eyes and use my fingers as squeegees. No need for an eye towel.
My SO and I have an over-the-door towel rack; he has his towels, and I have mine. His are dark blue, huge, expensive and ridiculously thick (so “lush” that I honestly don’t think they dry you off very well) and mine are smaller, cheaper, more colorful, and actually absorb water.
I’ve only used his when I have one “good” towel left and I’ve washed my hair and need two. (He’s aware of this because I warn him that I’ve “stolen” one of his towels.) If he’s ever used mine, I’m not aware of it, but I would be very surprised if he has. He’s a very organized and tidy creature of habit.
They get rotated out about every 3rd or 4th shower…generally he washes them because he has fewer towels than I do.
When I was growing up, we always used a fresh towel for every shower; in a family of four, it kinda blows my mind that my mother was OK with this much laundry.
As soon as I moved out of the house I started using every towel 3 or 4 times before washing it. The laundromat was far away and as a broke college kid I couldn’t afford a lot of towels. As long as the towel isn’t wadded up and gets a chance to dry completely before being used again, I don’t see a problem with “recycling” a towel.