I’ve came accross alot of people who will not use the same towel more than once, and in fact, says it’s not sanitary. Do you consider using the same towel more than once unsanitary?
I use it until the towel is able to stand up by itself without the need for the bar.
By any chance, are these people whose parents do the laundry for them? Or do they have maids or something?
Sheesh, it’s a towel. You use it to dry your body when it’s clean. Of course it can be used more than once.
I’m the one who does laundry. Heck, no.
(I’m assuming we’re talking home use here, right?)
Actually I know folks who do this–only use towels once–but it’s always struck me as distinctly obsessional. Once a week? Sure. Twice a week in summer, w/ more frequent bathing and humidity? Gotcha. But after every use?! What a waste of water, detergent and energy, human and mechanical.
My family had a term for that kind of finickiness: nasty/nice.
Veb
Towels get washed with the bed sheets every Saturday, whether they need it or not.
I always try to find a used towel to dry off with. The reason I do this is because I’m cheap.
I think I own a total of three towels. Damn straight they get used more than once.
That’s crazy. Laundry is my least favorite chores, since I don’t have facilities in my building. I own two towels and they get washed about every two weeks.
Agreed. If anything that nasty gets soaked into your towels from your skin when you’ve just gotten out of the shower, then you have much bigger problems than dirty towels.
I saw some scientist type on tv talk about using towels more than once. He claimed that it was perfectly okay to use towels more than once if you made sure to hang them straight out. He said anyplace that was touching was a breeding ground for germs. As in hanging on a hook or something. Look, there’s five of us and I don’t even care if I use someone else’s towel they’ve wadded up and left for dead. I’m too tired to care. I wash them when they start smelling funky.
Well, anyone who sees my car our house will know that I am no clean freak. I live with a lot of cats, a lot of hair balls. So anal-retentive I am not.
However, I don’t re-use a towel after bathing. For drying hands, yes, that’ll get re-used, but not bathing. The logic (taught by my mom) is that your dry skin is always flaking off, and who wants to keep drying yourself with a towel full of dry skin flakes? Ick!
No, I don’t like doing laundry. But it gets done. I also have a lot of towels. Also, where I work (I work with the developmentally disabled in a “group home” type setting) we clean bath towels after each use.
A bit of TMI: While I’m having my period, I sure as HELL am not going to re-use my bath towel. You do the math.
I’m a man. I only have one towel. When it gets stiff, I buy a new one.
I guess I’ll be the odd (wo)man out. I will not ever ever ever use the same towel more than once (nor will anyone else in my family). With 4 sons, a husband and two big dogs that love to hit the pool everytime they go out back plus an average of two hot tub trips per day it does make for a lot of laundry. Now, I will hang pool towels and reuse the same day. But I will not use them the next day without a washing.
I reuse towels - I have several though. There are the ones I use for drying my face in the evening. They’re smaller, and I have enough of those to go through a week without reusing one, so I never reuse those.
When I get out of the shower, one towel gets wrapped around my head - that’s the only thing I ever use that one for, so I’ll wash it every couple of weeks (more in the summer 'cause it doesn’t dry as well with higher humidity). Then there’s the towel that I wrap around my body. I have three, but only two that get used regularly. I wash at least one every week, sometimes both.
I figure they can’t be that dirty. And if they are, I don’t want to know.
I have four towels. A big beach one for my hair, and three others. The beach one gets washed every week, the others every third week.
How dirty do I get, anyway?
Count me in the “how dirty can a towel used to dry off a clean body be” camp. We change towels once a week.
I have a kind of system myself.
I use one towel for my body, one for towel drying my hair.
After I’m done, I put the towel I used for drying my hair in the dirty wash basket.
The next night I use last night’s towel to dry my hair and a new towel for my body. And so the cycle continues. 
My thinking exactly.
Of course, I often fall into the category that uses the towel until it’s stiff enough to hit something with. Mostly because I’m lazy about things like laundry. 
The towel?
For 30 years I used a new towel every time, because I learned in gym class to always toss the school towels in the bin before leaving for the day.
But then I got a place without a washer.
Trips down to the laundry room are trouble, and towels take forever to dry, so…
Now it’s a couple of weeks on each towel.