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 are so angry you started a thread about this!
Id be annoyed but I would just say please don’t do it again.

sorry - I haven’t read the whole thread but I’ve now got the uncle Harvey and auntie Val towel poem going round my head. Wonder if anyone else does?

We've always kept our own bath towels in our bedrooms.

I don't understand how people have enough space in the bathroom to hang up 4 bath towels, a hand towel and a bath mat in a family bathroom.

We also find they dry better in the bedrooms in our house.

He’s had two showers in three days, seems unfair to accuse him of having little regard for personal hygiene. You seem like a really unpleasant step mum!

Do the people who are suggesting that you should keep your towels in your bedroom actually have towel rails in their bedrooms?

The individual (bath) towels thing is fine, but why on earth does he have to keep his in his room? Why isn't he allowed keep his in the bathroom like OP and her DH?

I would tell him where your towel wipes, he’ll soon stop!

We use fresh towel each shower maybe 2. Using same one more than once is grim. Keep yours in your room, sounds totally bonkers but that is what you expect SS to do.

But this isn’t the OP, because she hadn’t actually noticed? Fair enough if you have some specific quirk about wanting a clean towel - but if you can’t tell whether the towel is new or not, then it’s purely psychological.

I share bedding with my husband and children, I share a toilet, sofa, chairs, hand towels and many other fabrics with them. If any of those fabrics look or feel dirty they get cleaned. We’re not here using grimy week old towels that have been used 20 times.

Isn’t there a study about about how phones have more germs than a toilet too - I regularly touch my husband and kids’ phones too.

And if it’s not about getting sick, it is a bit bougie and a bit wasteful - which is fine, you do you, but I’m perfectly entitled to judge you for that, the same way I judge people who use paper plates to avoid washing up. It’s excessive and unnecessary. You can’t really defend it.

Also nobody noticed he'd been using the towels until he confessed. 😅

Oh FFS, what a fuss about nothing! It's a towel - who cares? He is clean when he gets out of the bath/shower. Just make a joke out of it, OP, and move on.

No idea what you mean by that.

Ewww that would gross me out too 🤢 I’d be furious.

But he used it after the shower…you’re aware that means he’s clean? Worst case scenario your towel has a faint smell of lynx africa.

Poor boy..tennager..man whatever
How awful for him

You genuinely think that it’s common to be as uptight about towels as you seem to be? And that the step son even registers who’s towel is who’s?

You’re judging people based on a pretty unusual set of beliefs so of course other people aren’t going to do the same as you. To leap to all sorts of accusations because of this is going to cause some issues at some point.

Using a towel once is completely excessive and wasteful. I don’t think anyone ever got sick from using a towel more than once. And when it dries it’s just like using a freshly clean towel. Do you only use a tea towel once too?

Please post the poem🙏

Our bathroom is tiny with a single rail over the radiator (no towel radiator) so we keep our individual bath towels on the back of bedroom doors... it works fine, plus the hand towel in the bathroom is big enough to be used in an emergency if someone forgets their bath towel.

I work in a job where I have to spend time in other people's homes (and obviously use the loo occasionally) I'm amazed at the amount of people who either don't have a hand towel at all?! Or have one crusty rag that remains in place for weeks at a time!! 🤮 I now carry a small clean tea towel to use on these occasions, that I can take home and wash.

Poor kid always having to remember to take his towels into the bathroom with him, like a guest. And then his stepmum blows her stack for using one that is readily available. So now he has to start tiptoeing on eggshells because he doesn't know what she is going to overreact to next.

Maybe his mum is more relaxed about towels and they share. Having to go between homes with different standards adds an additional layer of complexity, asking young people to adhere to two different sets of standards.

Apparently a pp has checked and towels host a load of bacteria. The thing is everything does. If you touch the bannister after someone else you'll get whatever bugs on your fingers as they had so unless you walk round spraying everything with dettol you'll just be exposed to all normal everyday flora.

If someone had, say, a highly contagious disease or illness I'd then be strict but otherwise? Meh.

We don't have our own towels, is that a thing? We have matching towels on the ladder and you just use whichever. Are they embroidered with initials or something? How do you know?

Seriously? What a waste of time never mind the impact on the environment.

OP clearly hasn't caught anything fungal, otherwise she would have said so. This is a non-issue.

We each use a particular hook. Bath towels only though.

YANBU, it’s unhygienic and disgusting.

But YABU for reusing bath towels in the first place instead of washing them every time. If you used clean towels to dry yourselves this wouldn’t be an issue.

Instead you’re drying yourself on something that just dried your stepson’s balls and not been washed since.