Step son used my bath towel

[Green0911]

Want to gauge if IABU here.

My and my husband's towels are in the bathroom. Teenage SS keeps his in his room. We each have a hand towel and a bath towel. They all get changed every 3-4 days. When it came to changing them, I realised SS didn't have his towels in his room. He said he'd put them to be laundered a few days before. When I asked him which towels he'd been using in the meantime (he'd showered at least twice during this period), initially he claimed none, then admitted he'd used mine.

I blew a fuse. Couldn't believe he thought this was acceptable. Husband has laughed it off and is accusing me of being dramatic/blowing things out of proportion.

AIBU?

You have a very lurid mind to immediately think of someone else's genitals in the context of their bath towel.

My answer is that I would prefer not to, but if I did then I wouldn't be overly grossed out, given that he would have dried himself after cleaning his body.

When you dry yourself, you effectively give yourself a gentle exfoliation. Skin cells rub off and are left in the pile of the towel. A damp towel and dead skin, in a warm bathroom that often gets steamy, makes an excellent breeding ground for bacteria.

I grew up in a household of 4, and we all had our own towels, both bath and hand towels. And they were colour coded, we all had our own colour!

I hate sharing towels, and when I have guests, they have their own towels too.

You sound fun

I fucking love this website sometimes, what an utterly ridiculous thread. How do some of you go outside, you might catch germs? Fucking lunatics.

But happy wiping your own all round your face?

I certainly would not want to share a towel with a teenage boy. But your reaction seems strong as though you feel disrespected not just by the boy but his dad as well.

So clearly he doesn’t have an issue if hes had a bath every day for 3 days!

Yes YABU it's a towel, not a toothbrush

Buy. More. Towels.

You need to get out more! What do you do about sitting on the sofa? Because you’ll shed skin cells when you do that. Or sitting in the car? Or using public transport?

And yet leprosy is no longer prevalent! And we are all still alive without colour coded towels.

Amazing really, the towel sharers should all be dead with all that bacteria, and yet we are all still here walking amongst you.

This whole thread confuses me. I share my towels with my children and we just hang them on the heated rail to dry. And then wash them every few days. Is this not normal?? There is a whole other world going on here. Also, none of us seem to have contracted any diseases or infections…

This. If you all only have 1 towel each it’s silly. Also teach him how to use the washing machine so he can ensure he has clean towels in future .

Wait…you’re a man??

I mean not that it matters but I’ve seen you post on here for years and I never knew that 🤷🏼‍♀️🤯

Your children and yourself are breeding bacteria, you’ll get leprosy as a minimum and you’ll be finding limbs everywhere!

You could say the same about myriad practices, including for example having children, being terrible for the planet.

No one with kids or a car had better finger wag at me over my use of clean bath towels.

Another vote for ‘why is this disgusting’?!

You use a bath towel when you’re clean - so unless either of you has an infectious disease then there’s no germs transmission?! And if I get period on my towel it goes straight in the wash, not hung back up because I wouldn’t want to use it again,

Note, we are a family of towel sharers. And there is a basket of clean towels if you want a new towel, but we have absolutely no concept of our own towels.

@MrsTerryPratchett me too!!!

A towel isn’t dirty after 1 use surely ?

Nor did I!

I’ll finger wag abs your absurd thoughts that everyone needs to be thinking the same way as you!

otherwise they’re some sort of dirty individual and you are somehow better with your crazy ideas of what’s acceptable with towels.

given, assume you eat out, use public transport etc.

Me three🤣

I don't sit on my sofa when naked (it's leather, so rather cold on the arse), or travel naked in the car or on public transport!

I totally don't have a lurid mind. I just wouldn't like to be thinking where the towel I had my face on had potentially just been. Teenage boys' hygiene can be cursory to say the least, I don't think there's any guarantee they'd have washed as thoroughly as they should.

What do you think is going to happen? You’ve both showered so you’re clean?
Do you have spare towels in a cupboard that he can grab from? I would have just told him to grab a clean one next time rather than use yours but it’s not a big deal.