Flannels/face cloths and loo roll. How do YOU use them?

[Beachtastic]

I'm performing a community service by starting this thread, to take the heat off the one about Xmas guests behaving oddly. Who knew that we all needed to explain our washing/wiping routines in such detail!

So I'm a flannel person. I like to wash my face with warm water, and it makes less mess doing so with a clean flannel so that the sink area doesn't end up looking like bathtime at the zoo. No blindly reaching for the towel with soap in your eyes!

I draw a veil over how I wipe my bum, I'm happy with my toilet routine and do not feel the need for high-pressure steam cleaning.

Do you consider using a flannel to be the height of civilisation, or an oddity from the 1950s? Do you expect to find one (or a stack of them) in the bathroom when you are a guest somewhere?

Are you excited to share details of how you prefer to use toilet paper after doing a plop? (I wouldn't normally ask this, but it seems to fulfil a need on MN)

Being a flannel girl, I've been known to hyperventilate if I realise I've come away without one. I now have them stuffed into all my travel paraphernalia so that this tragedy can never happen again.

That made me laugh. I can just imagine the look on her face!
I remove my makeup off with just a flannel and warm water too. I have soft ones that are made especially for this task that I keep for me personally. I also have heaps of regular ones in the cupboard for dh, I and the dcs.

Always use a flannel as do my DH and DC. We have lots of them. I wash them after every use on a very hot wash. I wouldnt supply them for guests but they’re just on the side in the bathroom so could get used. Loo roll is used once and flushed 🤪 but we so use around 2 rolls daily for 4 of us.

I admit I’ve never seen the point of a flannel. I just use my hands to wash my face.

Clearly, I am a heathen, as I don't own a flannel! Washing my face with hands and a wipe of the towel later, and I'm good to go. Flannels might be advisable, given my occupation, but if necessary, we have been known to wash ourselves off under hosepipes and carry on!

I am firmly a folder in the loo roll department... possibly as a result of my school loos being full of tissue paper-thin loo roll, so you had to layer up! I rarely seem to change to new rolls on my own, but it is astounding how much guests get through, even if they're only here on a day visit!

I own a bum gun (a much better name than 'bidet attachment'). It has been sat on the DIY pile for a long while. Aren't the watering cans in loos generally a cultural thing? (I seem to remember it being mentioned in a book about a South African Muslim community)

Speaking of loo habits, I'm clearly not too fussy, as I have used compost loos without ill effect before!

I keep several old flannels in different colours for 3 young Gdcs to use when they’re having a bath together. Sometimes used for cleaning the bathroom too, but then they go straight in the wash.

I had a friend staying with me who is a bit of a hippy and doesn't believe in showering more than a couple of times a week. She was using a flannel to wash her bum/bits in between showering and hanging it on the edge of my bath 🤢 I had to ask her not to leave her "fanny flannel" in my bathroom

People who use a flannel to wash their bum - please tell me you only use it once and put it in the wash?

I read on here, probably about ten years ago or more, that when she was young a Mumsnetter had a water fight at her boyfriends house (teenagers, so with his parents). They went into the bathroom to dry off and she picked a towel that was hanging up in there, and he exclaimed "Not the bum towel!" Apparently it was a shared one they used after the bidet 😁

I’m a wash everything in the shower with my hands person. My question to the flannel lovers is this: where do you put your used wet once used flannel, do you have a special drying place/routine before you put it in the wash, or throw it into the washing basket wet?

I reuse my flannel multiple times and change to a new one once a week or so (my face doesn't really get that dirty!) - I usually hang it over the glass shower screen to dry between uses/going in the laundry basket after I've had my shower and it seems to work well.

I knew someone who used a flannel ... to dry herself after a shower. Honestly.

I use a flannel every morning in the shower, face first then everywhere else, it then goes straight into the wash.
If I’m away from home I use disposable flannels, they’re small and hard until you put them in water and then they soften and expand.

I use a clean flannel every morning and evening on my face, nice level of exfoliation,
hung to dry on the heated towel rail before being bunged in the wash basket so they don’t go smelly while they wait to be washed.
Overnight guests have never asked for one but there’s always a clean pile of them in the bathroom cupboard if they want to help themselves!
Toilet roll is just used as…
toilet roll!!

I have different piles of washing and the flannels / towels pile is by itself and gets a very hot wash when there's enough of them.

Indeed I do use a flannel on my nethers. I start at the top of me and end at the bottom of me. It's a thorough process, I have a system and this necessitates both a flannel and a back scrubbing brush.

I'm quite passionate about flannels and wouldn't travel without an especially raggedy frayed selection of them to be left in the hotel bin. All flannels are used only once before a hot wash.

I do also cut up clothes that have become too dilapidated and use them in the kitchen.

I'm so glad to have a safe space to talk about cloths.

Speaking of cloths I've heard the term 'family cloth' which I think Japanese people share to dry their nethers after a bidet. 😳

Wash face in shower, don't use a face cloth

And just use my hands in the shower

Where did you get your buff puffs? I remember these from the 90s!

YOU DO NOT NEED TO FLUSH WIPES TO HAVE A SQUEEKY CLEAN BUM!

Since about 20 years ago when it became common knowledge that wipes are not, in fact, flushable, my whole family switched to using loo roll with a squirt of cheap body/baby lotion - no need to buy fancy stuff eg. Wype.

I always think that foreigners with their lovely bum cleaning routines involving water must think us Brits are really grim just using dry paper! 😂 Can't believe this isn't more common and I thought it insane when wype made out they'd invented a very obvious idea...

I don't own a flannel and just use my hands to wash my body in the shower. But I'm surprised how many people use them to wash their faces on here. Water hasn't touched my face since I was about 10yrs old.

Sponge on a stick does me.

I'm zero flannels & minimal loo roll.

Face gets washed with soap in the shower. Bum gets bum gunned. Patted dry with a square or two of loo roll.

Although I got caught out wearing make up for the first time in ages recently - I could actually have done with a flannel to scrub off the seemingly indelible lipstick I nicked from dd2. She was all 'oh yeah THAT stuff. I just live with burgundy lips for a few days, anyway, it suits you, mum'.

I live in the ME. It's bloody freezing ATM so the bum gun can be a fairly motivating moment first thing in the morning. Properly sets you up for the day, does a chilly blast of water to the nether regions!

I think flannels are a bit disgusting tbh. I wash my face in the shower with my hands (using a cleansing bar); and use dermalogica microfoliant (a powder that you add water to in your hands to create an exfoliant scrub) every so often for exfoliation.

I wash the rest of me, including pits, bits and feet, with a fragrance-free soap lathered up in my hands. Don’t like those wash pouffes or anything like that either! I live in a hard water area so unless you tumble dry them towels are always a bit crunchy and rough. A vigorous towel rub is good exfoliation for the rest of the body!

I never have a strip wash as hopping in the shower for a couple of mins is just as easy and quicker.

If you really have to know about the loo roll, I have trained my body to poo once a day in the morning — I have a coffee when I wake up, poo, wipe with loo roll, then shower! On the rare occasions I can’t shower just afterwards, I use wipes or fragrance-free lotion on loo paper and shower that evening as well. Wouldn’t be averse to a Japanese toilet if I could get one….

I do the same. I only use a flannel on my face - I've always used one - and it doesn't need washing after each use. I hang it either over the glass shower screen or drape it over the shower nozzle thingy. I use my hands to wash the rest of me.

I use loo roll and nothing else!

If all this talk of flannels/facecloths/face towels is inspiring you to buy some (more), you might like to look in M&S where several have been reduced further in price today, eg the quick dry pure cotton ones which are now 2 for £1:80.

I expect there’s more choice in store.

OK . . . Shower every morning, using the shower head to wash my undercarriage. Facecloths to exfoliate in shower three times a week. Wash every evening with fresh facecloth each time: face, rinse, pits, rinse, front bottom, rinse, back bottom, rinse. Facecloths go in 60C or 90C wash. Provide facecloths for guests but few use them. If I have a poo during the day, I use an old facial cleansing foam bottle with shower gel and water in to squirt a bit of soapy foam on to loo paper and apply.

Do I win the TMI award?

It hangs on the edge of the bath to dry out after use.