to only wash bath towels once a month?

[starkadder]

or less

DH is in charge of washing his own towel and I am sure he never puts it in the wash more often than once every 2 or 3 months...

DS's goes in about once every 2 months (but it barely touches him as he likes to run around naked pretending to be a train driver straight after his bath, which dries him quite effectively).

I usually wash mine about every month but have realised that I haven't washed it since coming home from hospital with DD, who is now 5 weeks...in my defence, there is one HECK of a lot of other washing to do and it just won't ever fit in the machine....

We do wash out clothes (!) and sheets once a week. And I do the kitchen hand towel every week or two - it gets quite grubby and also fits in the machine with another wash easily.

But are we grim and disgusting when it comes to bath towels? How often do normal people wash bath towels?

It's the possibility that the towels and the bathroom floor might have made contact at some point that has me reaching for a fresh one from the basket.

Mathanxiety, I am like this with cleaning sponges and tea towels and the hand towel in the downstairs loo, as that's where the cat has her litter tray, but for some reason, not the other hand and bath towels! But maybe I am luckier with storage than you? My bath towel hangs over the shower door, DH's dries over the boiler, and DS's over the bannister, and the hand towels stay on the radiators, so they all have plenty of space to air properly.

DC share family bathroom - DS has yellow, DD has sage green.

DH and I share our bathroom - I have pink, he has sage green.
Guest bathroom has terracotta and sage green.
All the bath mats are sage green - we have 6.
Face flannels are put out and rarely used.
Down stairs loo has white hand towels.

All towels, bath mats and flannels are washed weekly or between guests. Downstairs loo hand towels are washed every time I do a hot wash, at least every other day - tea towels go in that too.

We still have an outside loo in the garden and that is used hands are usually air dried - and the loo roll tends to get a bit damp!

Bedding is washed fortnightly alternating weeks between ours and the dc's.

Think that's OK - seems alright to me.

Towels get washed on a hot wash once a week. YABU!!

On average they get washed once a week, but towels get changed every couple of days or so. Daily when it's time of the month. Bathmat is changed midweek.

Bedding is alternated weekly, so one week it's adults and the next it's children.

We use one tea towel a day at least, if not more... we just chuck them in the wash when we're done, and we have over thirty so no worries about running out.

Oh for the love of God, you cannot eliminate bacteria from your life! Just because some gets on your skin, it isn't going to kill you! Skin is waterproof. Who the fuck licks or chews or eats their towels?! Someone washes their towels at 90 degrees after ONE USE??????? I'll ask again - what the hell do some of you plan on doing if ever water or electrcity was rationed? Explode? Or just get on with life, accepting that re-using towels Will. Not. Make. You. Ill.

I find it funny how often there's a screaming headline about how many bacteria live on your chopping board, toilet seat, phone, keyboard, towel, etc (usually seems to be DM so I wouldn't know if people didn't keep linking to the bloody thing from here). We're all absolutely covered in bacteria and smearing everything in anti-bacterial gunge is creating far more problems than it solves.

Admittedly washing towels doesn't add to the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria but it's a symptom of the culture which is causing the problem, this idea that everything should be spotless and sterile is utterly bonkers.

Well, well...who knew?! I thought you'd all tell me to wash them once a week but I had absolutely no idea that so many people would wash towels EVERY DAY. Bonkers. Or that the majority of people seem to think washing towels is more important than washing sheets. Or, in fact, that anyone shared towels in a family - I assumed that all families gave each person their own designated towel(s). You live and learn.

Conclusions?

-I guess in my family, our sheets take a bit more punishment than our towels;
-I might wash our towels a bit more often (I'll aim for every 2 weeks) but I'll stick to 40C;
-Also, I think it has been pointed out by a few people that drying towels out properly means that they don't smell mouldy or manky, and does mean less washing, i.e. less waste of energy. And by energy, I mean both the kW kind and your own energy. Life is too short!

PS thanks everyone who congratulated me on our new baby :) And for all the kind and humorous messages, even from those who disagree with my standards of hygiene :)

Not read it all but I wash towels after every use - not cos I think they are dirty but because if I dont then they hang around wet. Same with childrens school clothes - I wash them every time they wear them, its quicker than working out what can be reworn etc. I do wash everything on a quick wash though

I usually wash mine about every month but have realised that I haven't washed it since coming home from hospital with DD, who is now 5 weeks...

YABVU for not washing it even though it's been in hospital. Hospitals are a petri dish i.e. a bredding ground for infection. That is truly disgusting not to wash it. I ocassionaly get blood on towels when I have my period, how's you avoided that having had a baby where the quantity it much more?

To each their own but i think it's pretty disgusting. I have 4 towels. I have seperate towles for the gym, etc. They get rotated and washed about once a week.

Then again, this is equally ridiculous:

I have a clean towel after every shower or bath...

How many do you have? Once a week is enough. In winter they go on a hot radiator to dry them so that's bound to zap some bugs.

Congratulations on the baby! Every 2 weeks(ish) sounds just fine, now relax and enjoy the newborn cuddles (without worrying about whether you might be cross contaminating your baby ).

once a week, hand and tea towels more often as they get grubby quickly.
the trick is to air them, have a three tiered towel rail in each bathroom for that. they are not smelly even after using them daily for a week, but I wash them anyway...
towels go on a 60 degree wash, everything else on 30 or 40 depending on the dirtyness.

I can't believe noone's linked this already. For those concerned about drying their face where a bottom has previously been dried.

where's the like button

pmsl

That is disgusting - every month?

A1980 whilst I agree with you that a hot radiator is sufficient, why on earth do we need to be worried about zapping bugs?

Unless you know for sure you or someone in the family has worms or impetigo or something, it really is not an issue. The whole world is crawling with miniscule things every second of the day and they really do not do us any harm. Be clean and resonably hygienic by all means, but over-sanitising your entire environment to an obsessive degree is pointless and a little bit bonkers.

I think it's hysterically funny how many people are suffering from hygienic mania and are calling anyone who doesn't agree VVU. There's accumulating evidence that we're actually creating a world that's too clean (article selected at random from among many):
www.webmd.com/parenting/guide/kids-and-dirt-germs

And apart from keeping us away from the germs we need, this incredible amount of laundry is costing cash and damaging the environment. Some of the cost and damage is in the form of prematurely wearing out the towels and needing new ones!

This is all part of the attitude that's drowning us in stuff. Healthy minds in healthy bodies, not phobias.

We should all go back to wearing 1950's housecoats when doing jobs around the house or cooking fatty/smelly stuff, like our grnadmothers did. They have fallen out of favour since the automatic sawhing machine took over, but they were very sensible. I myslef have a vast collection of pinnies/aprons which I wear all the time when I'm cooking or just doing stuff in the house, much to my friends' amusement, but I don't care. I am very un-sweaty and could get away with most (outer) things twice providing they don't get housework/food/dog gunk on them.

Donkeyteapot, I have a friend who uses clean towels every time she showers for that same reason.

I wash my towels twice a week because I like hard crunchy towels (no fabric conditioner) that are really absorbant. After a couple of uses they soften up and don't seem to dry as well.

Bedlinen every week at least, it's in too close contact with skin (and stuff) for too many hours for me to leave it any longer.

'Towels only used once in this house, washed @ 90deg on intensive wash with two rinses + www.eradicil.co.uk/ or if out of money : 1st rinse vinegar, 2nd rinse dettol. And abolutely nosharing Different towel for body and feet too. +'

That's just paranoid. Unless someone in your house has the plague or something.

Do you actually get time to leave the house at all?

Bedding every week.

Towels after every bath.

Hand towel every couple of days.

Fellatio - I can only assume from that post that someone in the poster's family has leprosy. In which case, those sound like sensible precautions. Otherwise, bonkers. But you can probably get pills for it.