Sharing towels???

[LavenderFields7]

Inspired by another thread, do people actually have family towels that they share? This seems absolutely revolting to me 🤢

YABU - sharing towels is normal
YANBU - eww, everyone should have their own towel.

Indeed… you would potentially catch those things from your partner simply by sharing a bed, having sex and doing the washing up together. You are more at risk when your children are small of catching stuff from handling their nappies/wiping bums, cleaning up sick and washing their soiled clothes than you are from using a towel they used earlier. Unless you wear a hazmat suit when at home of course.

Some people on this (and the other) thread seem a bit OCD to me.

We still do 🤣

I find that really gross. I wouldn't dry my naked body with a towel someone else had used.

I cannot think of anything worse than sharing a ( used ) towel with anyone else or picking up a damp towel off of the bathroom floor and having to reuse it.

We all have a clean bath towel, face towel and flannel each day and everyone has 7 each of the above in their own distinctive colour sets- it just makes sorting laundry easier.

Bathroom hand towels are changed daily and bath mats every other day.

Also all have 3 beach and swim towels each.

I do a towel wash every other day.

I cannot think of anything worse than sharing a ( used ) towel with anyone else

I think you may lack imagination. 🤣
So (as an example) you'd rather have a week of D&V than use someone else's towel?

We have always had our own towels, since our dc were small. We don't wash them after every use and I don't want to dry my face with a towel one of my adult dc have dried their arse with.

Yes I actually would

Having already outed myself as having relatively relaxed views when it comes to this, I should also add that my household is not riddled with thrush, worms, verrucas or fungal infections. In fact, we’ve barely had any issues with anything above. Colds and D&V get passed around, but that’s got more to do w our small children needing help when they’re ill and less to do with our towel regime.

I feel like my kids are more likely to bring home stuff from swimming lessons or being at the local pool, and always wash the swimming towels after a use. We remain a perfectly healthy household.

"I think the idea of having towels that are only ever used by one person is a bit odd. If you have all same colour or sets then you must need to put names/markings on them somewhere. Not really practical and certainly not necessary."

We are a family of 4 and we all have our own bath towels of different colours and we keep them on radiator airers in the bedrooms. The hand towel in the bathroom is communal. I have a separate towel altogether for my face. It's not in the lease bit odd and not in the least bit difficult to organise.

How big are these bathrooms that have towels hung in different places?
Only two of us now but we share and always have. When dd was at home she had her own that she dried on the end of her bed, metal baseboard. I also don't wash them after every use just when I judge they could do with it.
As a pp said it would be weird to not share when you consider what we get up to intimately.

Surely that’s not great for the environment though

You’ll put your husbands penis in your mouth but you won’t share his towel 😂

Do you kiss each other/have sex?

But if you have conjunctivitis or athletes foot, you are told not to share towels, so for this reason (and anything else that may not be nice to transfer), we don’t share.

You don’t always know you have these things straight away, so I’d rather stick to my own.

It seems on MN - lick each others genitals yes please
Use the same towel - Bleugh grim filthy disease spreading

We don’t have our own towels as such in our house. We have a huge amount of towels that are on the towel rack. Someone has a shower they grab a clean towel use it then put it in the wash. Next person to have a shower then grabs a new towel and so on. No towel gets used by more than one person before it gets washed.

Meh. We share towels. And bath water.

Well my kid isn’t licking anyone’s genitals, and would be horrified by using her dad’s towel (or mine tbh). Nor do we want to pick up verrucas from her gym and dance lessons.

DD did a contemporary dance workshop recently with an invited dance instructor (who is quite famous in the dance world); and he made them all dance barefoot. It was only when they all had to sit down in a circle and put their feet out that she said it became apparent that his bare feet were absolutely crusted with giant verrucas everywhere 🤢

Same goes for any kids at school or anyone swimming or using a communal gym/changing room, kids or DP. You won’t see some skin infections until they’ve fairly taken hold, so it makes sense not to share towels (I also always use slippers to walk on bathroom floors these days - have picked up a couple of verrucas from my sister or DD in the past and keen not to again!)

We have our own towels and keep them for a week before washing, often a little longer for the kids who only shower every other day. Main benefit of not sharing for me is that your towel is your own responsibility- if you want a nice dry towel when you use it, you hang it up to dry carefully. I’m not grossed out by the idea of sharing per se - just more that looking after your own ones means you’re not going to be stuck with a damp crumpled one. And we probably do less washing as I’m much happier to use my own several day old towel than someone else’s several day old towel.

Been sharing towels with DP for over 20 years and the only thing from PP's list I've had is shingles which is a virus that lies dormant in the body after having chicken pox and cannot be activated by sharing towels.

Yes always. Do families have specific towels each? Never heard of that. Towels are washed.

So long as the towel is dry I don't care who used it last. If this grosses you out I won't tell you what other things me and DH do 😂

I dunno if I am reading the op wrong but when I hear 'shared' I assume you mean that say you shower and dry yourself with your towel then without washing it another person in the house uses it too? If so then absolutely not that is disgusting but if you mean do I have a few sets of towels and after a shower all towels are washed and then anyone can use any of the clean towels then in that regard we share towels but only after washing them.

We just have towels. You take one, you use it a couple of days and hang it on the towel rack thing to dry out, and when you've used it three or four times put it in the wash.

Our towels are all mismatched so it's easy to remember which one you used. Even my 5 year old knows which towel to use.

To add - I'd have no issue in using one of the towels my kids or husband had used if I couldn't find a clean one. They're used to dry themselves when clean....we just all tend to shower one after another so they're still damp