I wash mine when it starts growing mold. So anywhere from every 3 years to every 6 years.
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
81 points (96.6% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35716 readers
1929 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
What the fuck
I had a roommate in college who just never washed his towel (singular) all semester.
It was fucking disgusting and made the whole bathroom smell like BO, to the point that every time I needed to use the bathroom, I'd put on my trusty rubber gloves and throw it up against his door.
His argument was that he only ever used it after he showered, on his clean body, so using it to dry a clean body was effectively washing it too.
It became routine for me and the other roommate to warn him when we were bringing a girl over that if he didn't get his towel out of the fucking bathroom, we'd exact nuclear revenge.
We must have had the same roommate. Did he also stay up late at night screaming and clapping at movies alone in his room?
Not that I recall!
The towel thing attained a new level the next year: he moved in with two of my other friends (who didn't think to ask me instead, or even ask me about how he was to live with), and when they noticed the same behavior, they decided to test him: they put a few pieces of fruit under the other towels in his towel drawer to see how long it'd take him to get down there and find them.
The fruit rotted and was stinking up the whole apartment and attracting flies before he noticed.
I use the smell test. If it smells weird in any way, it goes to the wash.
Same. If it smells clean and looks clean, then it's clean enough for my needs. Any mustiness though, and in the wash it goes.
I've found that in the summer, I'm lucky if it still smells good in two days, but in the winter it can sometimes last 4-5 days.
If you asked my wife, the answer would be that you use them for a day or two tops, but the important part is that you throw them in the hamper wet, and then make sure to put other clothes and stuff on top of them so they sit there damp and mouldering until laundry day comes around.
Our towel bar is directly above the heating grate, so towels, properly hung, will dry fairly quickly there. Considering that towels are typically only used to dry you once you've just thoroughly cleaned yourself, they won't smell like much of anything but maybe soap and shampoo for many days of use, assuming they are able to dry out. But apparently it's more of a priority that they get put in the laundry basket immediately, moisture be damned. I gave up trying to fight that fight long ago.
Should do malicious compliance and drench the towels till they are soaking and dripping wet, then put them in the laundry basket.
I thought sarcasm music but I couldn't hear anything.
I wash towels one week and sheets the next. Everything is on and alternating cycle.
Once a week is fine. You're clean when you get out of the shower, and the towel air-dries as you're not using it. Even where I live - 65% humidity year-round - we only wash the towels once a week.
Proper air-drying is key. Gotta maximize the surface area. If there's a gentle breeze nearby, all the better.
Living somewhere where you can use a clothesline would fit this most times (ie, if it's not raining all the time).
Which towels are we talking about, and how frequently do they get used?
Bath towels, hand towels and dish drying towels will all get dirty at different rates, and get/stay wet at different rates.
Towels should smell clean (clean, not perfumy) and be dry and not feel like they’ve got something on them. The more time a towel stays wet, the more often you wash it. If it gets noticeably dirty, you wash it. This could be anywhere from once a day to never, if it’s just decorative and you never use it.
How often should you, I cannot tell. I do it when it's no longer white, and the idea of using it starts to seem repulsive. This strategy has worked for over a decade.
Really depends how dry you make them. If you're not able to dry and they stay damp all day I would throw them in the washing bin after a day or 2. If they dry out easily, maybe a week. But the smell test if best.
I'm only using the towel to dry off when I'm clean from showering, I use it at least a week. I do hang it from a rack where it dries well.
even when you are clean from showering, you are still covered in delicious skin, refreshing moisture, and things that thrive in the presence of both.
Once a week is normal, unless you notice a funk. How wet they get, how you hang them, and how well they dry can be factors in this. 
Face towels (washcloths) really only one use and then wash. Body towels I switch about once a week but I live in a dry climate and they dry fast. I also use a linen towel which is very absorbent but also dries much faster than terry. Kitchen towels I change depending on how I used them - normal use (drying hands), every couple of days. Cooking? Change after I am done cooking.
Cooking? Change after I am done cooking.
You cook your towels?
You don't? But they taste awful raw.
Just to add to the answers here, remember to strip your towels once a year. That funky smell when they’re dry may be your delicious human oils penetrating deep and impregnating the fibers. Sebum rots and goes rancid, producing that musty closet smell.
What does 'strip' mean in this context? (not a native speaker)
I'm a native speaker and I don't know either.
“Laundry stripping is a soaking process where you’re removing the built-up residue: excess laundry detergent, fabric softener, body oils, hard-water minerals… It’s something you do on towels that are already clean, not dirty.”
“Fill a bathtub with hot water and add a quarter-cup of borax, a quarter-cup of washing soda (a.k.a. sodium carbonate) and a half-cup of detergent. Soak clean towels until the water cools (at least an hour), stirring occasionally. Then run the linens through the rinse cycle in your washing machine and dry them. Make sure to do this separately for lights and darks.”
“Add an optional one to two small boxes of baking soda (especially if you have hard water) to soften and deodorize fabrics. You can also add more borax — up to a cup — if the laundry is moldy or musty.”
Just put in a scoop of oxyclean.
I'd generally heard 'laundry stripping' used to refer to a vinegar soak/rinse, followed by a baking soda cycle to further neutralize. The idea being laundry soap/detergent is basic and some things build up and don't dissolve. Added borax was an alternative 'laundry booster' that made this unnecessary, as I'd heard it.
But, it sounds like there's some variability to how the terms are used and for some a borax rinse is a stripping process. Understandable, as the end result is pretty much the same.
I didn't know either but I just looked it up. It says to soak towels in a borax solution in a bathtub or a bucket
You can also avoid this problem by adding a little borax to your laundry, particularly if you have hard water.
3/4 c Stain Solver per load for the most cost effective solution. Has the most borax percent by weight. We order the 50lb tub and it lasts months. I'm not a shill, I promise! If we don't use it for every load, our hard Colorado River water makes the laundry smell like ass.
Washed once a week, and bleached every few washes. Helps keep them even cleaner.
I use bath towels for two times, three if I can't be bothered.
I usually go for once a week to once every two weeks. But I do have a heated towel dryer, and k think that helps to keep bacteria to grow in them. My advice is to make sure you hang your towl somewhere they can air out well
I only clean mine once a week; but that's like 7 towels at a time. I use a fresh one every time I take a bath/shower and toss them in a hamper when done. The only towel that gets used more than once without being washed until the rest is the one towel I use as a floor mat because I'm too cheap to buy a floor mat.
Argh
Body, one use. Then it’s on hand duty until next towel takes its place.
Twice a week.