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?

That’s gross. I would never share my towel with anyone

I genuinely don’t see how anyone could think you’re being unreasonable here

our towels are all the same, its impossible to tell who they belong to!

@Gloriia

its not mental. I don’t want to share a towel with anyone even people I’m related to.

I was the youngest of six! Hot water didn’t fill many baths and showers were not a thing!

8 people in one house, with one bathroom and the only toilet in there.

@Green0911 I totally understand where you are coming from. Towels are personal items and it's not unreasonable to expect someone else not to use yours. It sounds like he was just too lazy to remember to take a fresh one in. The initial lying would bother me too. As for children sharing towels, perhaps that is ok when you are quite young, but it's completely different as an adult.

If you want to live in your bubble of shared towels, fine. But the fact that hotels and other places leave towels out 'per person' shows it's how most people live.

Really gross to use someone else's towel in the first place, putting it back for them to use without knowing is downright disgusting. I don't blame you for being angry. I think everyone blasting you here would soon change your tune if they found they'd dried themselves on a towel your stepson had been using.

@SallymetLarry they also ask people to reuse them but that doesn’t seem normal to some posters on here

Please don't accuse me of lying @Gloriia

I can assure you we had our own towels.

My parents sometimes shared a bath (taking turns) as hot water was a luxury and derived from a boiler fed by coal. Our sole source of heating and hot water.

But we had our own towels.

What a drama. Couldn’t and won’t put up with this in my house. When kids were young and we all shared a bathroom (always had a bathroom we never used so we didn’t need to clean it apart from twice a year to get rid of the layer of dust), the whole family shared two towels, they were hung over the verandah balcony each day to dry, and washed once a week. Because we had better things to do. We have a seperate set of towels for visitors, however if they expect them laundered more than weekly they are having a laugh.

Now the kids are adults, DH and I share a towel in our bathroom and the kids share two towels in their bathroom. Fine to run two bathrooms now as kids clean theirs so it’s not like DH/I have to clean more than one 🤣. Sometimes one will get period run off while towelling off so they stick that one in wash and get a replacement out of cupboard to make up the pair going forward. They get washed once a week with our towel.

People are needlessly anal about these things. I worked A&E for decades and never once treated anyone with issues caused by sharing towels, bedsheets not being washed often, or hand towels causing issues. Never happened. Had long term homeless who lie in their own excrement and never shower, and vulnerable and elderly who have been neglected and had issues, sure, but it’s very very different. Who knows, maybe GP’s are overrun with such things involving towels/sheets for mobile functioning people etc and I’ve just never heard about it? Still, on a personal level our household has made it through a few decades with numerous people sharing with no issue. That included the extreme teenage male funk years where you virtually had to push them into the shower with a broom handle as well (always thought parents of teenage boys should be issued with cattle prods🤣). No drama required.

I think YABU just because you say you do all the laundry. Why don’t the other two males in the house take responsibility? No wonder the boy does sneaky evasive shit like this - no one is encouraging him to be mature and act with an adult mindset. Ditto the husband. They’re both still mummied like children and therefore will act impulsively and selfishly. You reap what you sow unfortunately.

I use a towel for 4 days ish but it's MY towel.

I must have low standards then, I couldn't get excited about sharing towels. My DP and I use towels interchangeably. My DD has her own. It makes no sense if you live in the same house and share linen, walk on the same carpet, share food and food utensils etc, to be this fastidious about towels. Unless someone is known to have an infection of some kind. You will never be able to contain the contamination risk if you live in a house with other people, you'll drive yourself mad worrying about it. If someone wanted to keep towels separate I would go along with it out of respect, but it's irrational.

More to the point, I feel "blowing a fuse" at a teenager for this is massively disproportionate. The damage done to the family wellbeing from this far exceeds any marginal benefit from preserving the sanctity of your own towels.

Nothing to do with class and everything to do with hygiene. My mum was a nurse.

We all use the same towel and change it at the end of the day.

I've never thought of keeping a towel in my bedroom.

The women who share towels with their partners....

what happens when you have a period?

Even taking care (and we have white towels) it's hard not to get blood on them even if you 'mop up' coming out the shower or bath first.

And if you're drying yourself thoroughly, there are always some secretions around at any time of the month.

Don't you mind that someone else is being asked to share that?

And are you 100% sure that your partner has scrubbed their arse and it's as clean as whistle?

It would annoy me he used mine and not his dad's as you're step mum. I'd want to know why..

Blowing a fuse is OTT.

Isn't it obvious that if you share towels, and you get any kind of stain on it, it would go immediately in the wash?

If this is an issue for you could you colour code the towels and have a colour each so he knows which ones are his? That’s what we do - teenage boys can be a bit bodily unpleasant! There’s a big basket of fresh towels in the bathroom so we just pick a new one of our own colour when we want one. Sounds sexiest but if you choose a pretty pink he’s possibly less likely to use it!

If that happens the towel goes straight in the wash. I wouldn't want to use it again anyway.

At all other times towels are shared and used for a few days.

No because that's a waste of water etc. I'm happy to reuse my own towel if it was a small stain and MY stain.

As I said if you're drying in between your legs there is always something going on the towel.

If I got blood on a towel I'd stick it in the wash. No drama. I wouldn't be thrilled at a teenage lad using my towel & I'd ask him not to in future, but I wouldn't flip my shit over it. The OP's response was totally disproportionate.

One person re-using a towel isn't the same as more than one person using the same towel. We all have our own towels which we re-use (they are hung in airing cupboard or somewhere else suitable to dry between uses). We can tell them apart as we have coloured towels and I also sometimes put mine on a plastic hanger to dry.

OP's response was perfectly acceptable and normal.

We share towels in our family. Towels are changed regularly 1-2 x weekly or as needed. There are 4 bath towels hanging to choose from. They are used to clean bodies which are freshly cleaned and hung up to dry . No biggie!
To be honest I think most families do this . You over- reacted in a big way .