How (and How Often) to Clean Your Towels

if you're active and more so if using social gyms, then daily is a good idea especially if they lack towel warmers but at least spritz it down with a vinegar and tea tree solution before letting it air dry.

Towel cleaning experts?

I wash mine once a week.

And they last a very long time because I line dry all my laundry. And NO they're not crunchy/scratchy because they have never had excess detergent baked into the fibers by my dryer.

Think about all the lint you've thrown away if you use a tumble dryer. My towels retain these fibers much longer, doing their job of absorbing water from my body.

I change my towels every three days. I hang them up every day and don't ever let them pile up wet.

My towels are all white. I wash them in hot water with Tide liquid, 1/2 cup of baking soda, and some OxiClean. Occasionally I add 1/2 cup of white vinegar to the rinse water. I set my washing machine to do a double rinse. I dry my towels at a high temperature.

It’s the dryer—not the washing machine—that eliminates harmful microorganisms. High heat drying for at least 28 minutes is the most effective way to kill viruses. The high heat setting is key. Energy efficient, low-heat settings may not get the job done.

Here is a very informative (and sobering) article about how germs spread via the washing machine.

To whet your appetite:

[quote] Regardless of how assiduously he wipes, the average person has about a tenth of a gram of fecal residue in his underwear, says Chuck Gerba, a professor of microbiology at Arizona. If you’re washing that sick person’s underwear with your own, chances are very good that his sickness-causing organisms are going to make their way onto your clothing.

[quote] “We’ve found that one germy item in the washer will spread to 90% of the other items,” Reynolds says. And no, it doesn’t matter how hot you set the water temperature on your machine. “When it comes to molds that cause skin or respiratory infections, or organisms that cause colds, flu and stomach flu, most of them will survive the wash cycle,” she says.

About every three days at 30c or 40c. Light on the detergent, with a measure of disinfectant solution added when washing towels. My laundry is line dried, and dries quickly and soft. If the towels sat damp in the hamper for a week waiting for good weather, I use a higher temperature and wash time.

[quote]It’s the dryer—not the washing machine—that eliminates harmful microorganisms. High heat drying for at least 28 minutes is the most effective way to kill viruses. The high heat setting is key. Energy efficient, low-heat settings may not get the job done.

And yet people have been drying themselves on towels washed on Warm (the setting recommended by most manufacturers) and dried in mild sunlight for decades, with towel-related death still not a major concern for health authorities. Go figure. I'm assuming my fellow posters do, in fact, wash yourselves before drying on these towels?

If the dog's been sick on the towel, or someone in the family has a communicable disease, then sure, 28 minutes in the dryer on high. The rest of the time, just relax.

r7 yeast infections are what you're more likely to run into with a dirty towel... which, again, just a light spritz of water and vinegar with a dozen or so drops of tea tree oil can be helpful, especially if your gym lacks a suitable towel warmer. It's a frivolous buy for the home but good one especially if you live in a humid area where bacteria more easily sets in.. and nice on cold mornings, too... of course, one could just run a high heat hair dryer over their towels. (if you're the outdoorsy type, you might want to have one on your porn, they're good for bed bugs, ticks, chiggers and the like.)

^ it's not just urinary related yeast infections. It's surprising how few people are aware you have yeast infections throughout your body. The most common area is your navel (belly button) especially if you're an "innie" - - though, that's more the issue few people clean out that space well, if ever. . . of course, there's the groin, the pits, the arse, general folds and creases of the body (even on skinny bitches).. but it and a few dermatological infections can arise as well from a contaminated towel and transfer to other people. and of course, there's e. coli too. . .

[quote] you might want to have one on your porn

Porn? Porch?

I have a towel warmer and love it. It's wonderful to step out of the shower on a cold morning and wrap up in a nice, warm towel.

I have recommended that here as a good gift to give someone, but no one has ever seemed interested.

r10 I could have sworn I put in mud room, but then I thought that sounded pretentious, so yes, porch was the aim. But taking high heat dryer to your tricks would probably be recommended too.

Here is the one I have (the first one).

I change the towel I use about every six months (I think. It might be longer.) I sometimes just throw a towel out if it becomes too discolored. I keep it on the bathroom door knob and use it only to dry my hair or body after a shower. It dries in the 3 or 4 days between uses.

[quote] I change the towel I use about every six months (I think. It might be longer.) I sometimes just throw a towel out if it becomes too discolored. I keep it on the bathroom door knob and use it only to dry my hair or body after a shower. It dries in the 3 or 4 days between uses.

You sound like a real catch!

I use a towel Once then it gets thrown into the washer, yuk on using a towel multiple times.

Towel related death? You are aware that most people who die of fatal bacterial or viral infections don't have a team of forensic specialists investigate their home to figure out where the infection originated, right?

Towels are too thick to line dry. Well, at least mine are, maybe most people use thinner towels. I still have some towels from my parents that are in my rag box and they were purchased at minimum 30 years ago, and even after being used for a lot of dirty work and repairs and washed on hot and dried on high for their entire lives, they're still perfectly fine towels, just old. I have a set of 3 kitchen towels from the 1980s that I still use and they were probably cheap K-Mart towels in the first place.

R1 proves that you can tell what the rest of the post is going to be like if the poster doesn't start with a capital letter:

R4, how do you know when to add vinegar to the rinse water? Do you have to stand by waiting for hat cycle?

R11 do you know that porn means? And tricks, do you know the meaning?

Weirdness in this thread.

r20 autistics vs stoners

But what is the twat droning on about towel warmers in the gym. Which are going to disinfect your towel brought from home? Why wouldn't you just bring a CLEAN TOWEL? And any gym that has towel warmers for all members is going to have a towel service, no? And if there is no towel warmer, then a lovely mist of VINEGAR and Tea Tree oil is going to disinfect your dry towel. Ew. Simply FUCKING INSANE.

I have a lot of towels. I use each one once and then wash. I add laundry sanitizer along with detergent. I dry them in the dryer on the sanitizer setting.

I wonder how many people who wash after one use then pretend to care about climate change.

I wash towels weekly. Who has time for constant towel changing? And then you have to worry about sheets and your underwear.

Ain’t got time for dat

Every day at 60c (140f), then once a week at 95c (200f) both times with detergent and hypochlorite bleach (all white). I generally use a mix of white vinegar and Comfort fabric softener in the rinse.

I buy hotel quality towels and they last a year or so until I replace them, also have a stainless steel towel radiator, the chrome one's are shite.

My washing machine is energy/water efficient and I hate using dirty towels.

r22 you type poor.

certainly if your gym had a towel warmer, they'd offer complimentary towels, dear.

r22 And as far as the water, vinegar, tea tree.. it's viable alternative when you're not at home and require other methods to freshen it up. It's limited to common bacteria and fungi but if you're gym isn't a code word for a bath house.. then that should be fine.

^ you're = your, obviously, but one must offer regular sacrifices to the 'oh, dear' demons

My body is clean after a shower so the towels don't get dirty. I wash them once weekly.

r30

I have a friend that buy's a new bath towel every month. He throws them away after a month, washes it daily... I asked, "why not buy 6 at once"? reply, "It gets me out of the house"........ It's sad, he's really fun and very cute, but kinda quirky.....

I wash my towels with my other laundry, in cold water with my regular detergent, and line dry. I had no ideaI was being so cavalier with my health.

I'm a three-use-and-then-put-in-the-laundry-hamper guy, but I also shop around for thin towels. Thick towels do not dry completely between uses and nothing grosses me out more than drying off with a towel that is still damp from yesterday's use. Thick towels also take forever to dry in a dryer, which is a waste of energy, and are also slow to line dry. I have a couple for show, which I put in the guest bathroom, but I don't use them for drying off. I wash sheets and towels in hot water, cold rinse, and then dry on high heat, but only for 25 minutes. If they are still damp after that I line dry them. We all shed dead skin cells constantly, and they are most likely to end up on sheets and towels, providing a lovely environment for dust mites, which feed on them almost exclusively.

I wash my towels every 4 days or so. 40degrees on an hour long cycle, then they are hung outside to dry. I used to be weekly but the new towel I bought a couple of months ago starts to go smelly a lot quicker than my old one so I changed the frequency.

Buy all-white, and wash on the hottest water for the most extended cycle with CLOROX original liquid bleach and your favorite laundry detergent...dry on high heat till really thoroughly dry. You won't have anything living in them at all. Nothing. In fact, have all your linens white, and bleach them all.

I live in Tampa and learned thick, fluffy towels won’t dry completely between uses and tend to get a phantom smell. Even with the AC running, in high humidity leaving a damp towel strewn across bedding or upholstery a few hours can encourage mold bacterial growth throughout the apartment…

Once a year, I head to IKEA and buy half a dozen, thin white bath towels. I’ll use it for three days and laundry once a week. They’re thin enough to dry completely between uses, have a convenient loop to hang them, are incredibly durable and at $2 a pop are no big loss if they stain or become dingy.

R26 are you rolling in mud then drying yourself off without showering first? Your routine seems a little excessive.

[quote]My body is clean after a shower so the towels don't get dirty.

General dust from the house, soap residue on your body, hairs, and bacteria build-up from them being damp for a while all make your towels dirty.

You being clean after a shower has nothing to do with it.

I don’t wash the towel. The towel washes me.

Line dryers know that sunlight is a powerful, natural disinfectant.

[quote] Regardless of how assiduously he wipes, the average person has about a tenth of a gram of fecal residue in his underwear

This just killed my underwear and boxer brief fetish FOREVER! 🤢🤮

[quote]Line dryers know that sunlight is a powerful, natural disinfectant.

So is bird poop, pollen, and random bits of debris tossed about by the wind.

Yeah,r43 that'd be terrible if you live in a windy, debris-blown area with thousands of birds that know to aim their shit at human laundry, especially if you are prone to year 'round hay fever.

Medium thickness is a happy compromise. I don't have a staff, so I don't enjoy the maintenance involved in thick luxurious towels.

I don't oversoap my laundry.

Often I remove thick cotton items 1/3 way through a dry cycle, and hang them. Including jeans, towels. The fabric has been refreshed from the washers spin dry cycles and they can air dry for the rest. This cuts 2/3 of the drying cycle and is an gesture to save energy AND to limit the destruction of the fibres. It really pays off with todays jeans, I can tell you that.

It’s been 29 years with my wash rag

I know you were trying to get off a real zinger, r44, but everyone in the world lives in an area with dust, wind, allergens, and birds.

You remind me of the time I competed in the national high school science fair in Philadelphia, and the dumb blonde who traveled with us sneezed and then declared, "I must be getting a cold, because there's nothing to be allergic to in Pennsylvania!"

R38 Probably is, but in common with most Brits/Europeans I wash almost every day, even though I have a high capacity 10kg (22lb) front loading washing machine/dryer. Doing a weekly wash isn't a thing here, as the machines adjust water and energy consumption automatically.

It's not like I'm beating them on rocks at the riverbank, I just throw dirty washing in press a button and remove it clean and dry a couple of hours later.

[quote]Regardless of how assiduously he wipes, the average person has about a tenth of a gram of fecal residue in his underwear

1/10th of a gram of fecal residue? That's not an amount that should go unnoticed. Do people not know how to wipe their asses? Or do they wear underwear in camouflage shades of brown?

One gram of salt or sugar is 1/6 and 1/4 of a teaspoon, even 1/10th of the smaller of those visuals is still enough to signal: Hey, maybe I should wipe my ass before hiking up my drawers next time.

This is why everyone should be using bidets.

[quote] I buy hotel quality towels and they last a year

I buy hotel quality towels and they last years. What are you doing to them?? Excess washing?

I agree R50 i still don't know why they're not a thing in America. In many ways we are so behind the rest of the world despite being a first world country.

Japanese toilets are great too, I don’t know why we don’t have them. Toto up my ass please!

r53 BINGO!!!

[quote] Buy all-white, and wash on the hottest water for the most extended cycle with CLOROX original liquid bleach

R36 You win this microbiologist’s award for the most accurate answer. In research labs, we use 10% bleach for at least 10-to-20 minutes to kill all known viruses, bacteria, yeasts/molds/spores, and parasites from liquids and solids.

The other standard method is inside an autoclave: 121 C (250 F) under 15 pounds per square inch of pressure for at least 15 min. Water can’t get hotter than 100 C (212 F) unless it is under pressure. Otherwise, water will boil off and evaporate.

R49 There can be as many as 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) microbes per gram of feces. One-tenth of a gram therefore contains one hundred billion (100,000,000,000) microbes.

[quote] Regardless of how assiduously he wipes, the average person has about a tenth of a gram of fecal residue in his underwear

I have considerably more than that.

Why not use paper towels?

I bought a Toto washlet at the start of the pandemic and it was the best purchase I made in a long time. Can’t go back to just toilet tissue. Every poop is like visiting the spa now

r59 Ditto, probably about the best purchase I have ever made.

I got a much cheaper Kohler model from Costco last year. And it too entered me into a whole new realm of bathroom hygiene.

They can eat my dog’s shit.

Like I need their “self appointed expert” opinion on how and when to launder my bath towels. I’m not an idiot.

Currently, I have navy blue towels. (Lots of shedding, unfortunately.) I was tired of dealing with white towels. Anyway, I don't wash my towels that often.

What are these "hotel quality" towels that posters are talking about? I noticed that the Hotel Collection towels (Macy's) have gone down in quality.

I'm looking for towels that don't shed that much. Suggestions would be welcomed.

Try Turkish bath sheets. No lint.

R63 It just means they can be washed at 95c (200f) without them suffering damage. All hotel laundry services wash them that way.

I wash them after using them once. Why would you take a shower and get clean, then wipe off with a used, dirty towel?

Warning: the Frontgate towels recommended in that Wirecutter article are NOT colorfast.

I wash 🧼 all of my towels twice a week.

r66 if you think that's bad wait until you find out about their cum rags

r50 tap the stall three times and ask the gent next to you to piss in your arse

During the summer I will use the same towel after showering for three days. In the winter months I will use it up to five days since the air inside the home tends to be dryer inside due to steam heat and the towels dry quicker.

My pet peeve about hotel stays is they usually have paper thin towels that get drenched before you can even dry off. I like a more absorbent towel.

Anyone here that does not use a fresh washcloth and towel everytime they bathe is a disgusting zoo animal.

I use a towel twice and then it goes in the laundry. I honestly don't have the space to do the daily thing. I would like to do it my face cloth and scrubby cloth but I have /no idea/ where to find another mesh cloth for shower gel. And not those stupid puff things. A mesh cloth. I haven't searched for them for a fee years though so maybe you can actually find them now.

R71 There are various qualities of Hotel towels.

You must stay in some shit places.

[quote] They can eat my dog’s shit. Like I need their “self appointed expert” opinion on how and when to launder my bath towels. I’m not an idiot.

Okay ... 'cause you kinda sound like one.

r73 SALUX makes a really good mesh cloth. Amazon has them.

I will have to check that out, thanks R76!

What happened to the "Let's be a Guy Fieri recipe" thread? Can't find it anywhere.

Wrong thread, whoops. And those aren't the kind I'm looking for, I checked.

[quote] Why would you take a shower and get clean, then wipe off with a used, dirty towel?

If you use the towel each time you're clean after a shower, why would it be dirty?

SIX pins, Dolores! Never five!

[quote] How (and How Often) to Clean Your Towels?

How (and How Often) to Clean Your Bowels?

[quote]If you use the towel each time you're clean after a shower, why would it be dirty?

Then why wash it at all?

[quote]If you use the towel each time you're clean after a shower, why would it be dirty?

Sometimes I wonder if anyone on DL is a fully functional adult.

The towel has skin cell residue and moister than begin to gather bacteria. Smell the towel after 3 days of use and you will notice a growing odor.

"Swap out" = uneducated white trash

r86 -- They say "hot water heater" too.

Obsessing for months and months over the existence of people who use the term "hot water heater" isn't the indicator of intelligence and class that you think it is.

Why on earth would you use a towel more than once between washes? That's just disgusting.

r88 -- Says "hot water heater."

Once a week, I guess.

[quote] Why on earth would you use a towel more than once between washes? That's just disgusting.

Your body should be clean, shit-for-brains.

[quote]Your body should be clean, shit-for-brains.

Seriously, Datalounge is now full of the dumbest fucking people on the planet.

Towels get washed once a week. That's all the time I'm prepared to allocate to goddamned towels.

Re the germs in the washing machine? Having a few germs in your life is actually a good thing.

Is this a “Greg” post?

I’m gross. I use the same towel for about 4 or 5 days. But I was them every 7

I love washing the towels because they're the easiest load. Wash on hot, dry on high, fold into squares and put in the linen closet and enjoy your day. They're not like those bastard fitted sheets.

I use a towel twice. Maybe three times at a push.

[quote] Is this a “Greg” post?

“Egalandy” do you see my name as the OP?

[quote] The towel has skin cell residue and moister than begin to gather bacteria. Smell the towel after 3 days of use and you will notice a growing odor.

My towels dry completely during the day so my towels never smell.

My towels never get dirty, neither do I, and the natural laws of the universe don't apply to me.

Dry your face first, THEN your ass crack, sweetie. Never the other way around!

This thread reminds me of those loser tiktoks of people (mostly suburban housewives) bleaching every surface and appliance in their house because they have nothing else going on in their lives and they use cleaning as friendship replacement therapy in order to feel good about themselves. With special little accessories for cleaning each thing, which in turn need to be cleaned themselves.

Do the people boiling their towels at 95c (wtf?) every day ever have sex? Or eat? Or touch grass?

R103 you hit the nail on the head!!!!!