Are there really people out there who wash towels after only one use?

[meltedmarsbars]

Or am I a really gross slattern for thinking its ok to use a towel for a week before washing it?

You'd be permanently washing towels! I change towels once a week and it makes up a load of washing. If I did it every day, I'd have to wash a load of towels every day. And dry them.

I thought I was doing pretty well changing them once a week, to be honest...

I'm sure there are people who do it. I think they are completely crazy though. As Borntofolk says you would end up washing towels every day.

I'ts just that I've been reading the "I've too much washing" threads, it sounds like people really do wash towels after only one use. Even hotels ask you to re-use now.

I would never be able to sustain this and I don't really think it's necessary. I usually manage 3 or 4 days and then feel it's time for a new towel, and even then it seems to generate a lot of laundry.

Have read posts from people who say they do this on here, though. They probably have much higher standards than me about everything else in the house as well.

Fiofio, you mean you get a clean towel out, wash yourself in the bath, then dry with the clean towel and put it into the laundry?

i think a week is perhaps pushing it. 3-4 days here

Only after swimming - but they have usually been trawled across the less-than-clean changing room floor, stood on while trying to get shoes and socks on and used to wrap soaking swimmies.

Apart from that, we hang them in the airing cupboard after a shower/bath and use again (except for dd1 who likes to keep them hidden on the floor of her bedroom!)

I change hand towels every day

i do hate a greasy hand towel

there really are....one of my friends used to.

completely nuts if you ask me......with 7 in our house I would never have time to wash anything else!!

my husband thinks i am a terrible slattern for not regularly boil washing them. i tell him i want soft towels, not sandpaper to cuddle out of the bath.

ok, there are other reasons he considers me to be slatternly...

clean bath towels every 3 days for all (except - sorry if tmi - when I'm on my period and then I have clean towel every day)

clean hand towel every 2 days.

clean tea towel every day - no dishwasher here

second weegie-mum

the swimming pool changing room floor even looks dirty, so i couldn't use my towel more than once after that!

but at home, they get changed after about a week (or sooner if they're really dirty or smell)

Weekly here, unless my sweaty DH has been down the gym and used a towel there! Sometimes the towel looks as if its been used to clean the floor!!!

Yeah, clean tea towel practically every time we do dishes here too, as we don't have a dishwasher either. Am a bit OCD about tea towels whilst maintaining lax standards in other areas.

I have read someone on here saying that she washes the bathmats every day!

Bath towels get washed once a week. Swimming stuff gets washed after each use. Hand towels get washed when I think about it. Tea towels get washed when they need it (next to washing machine, usually pop the current one in the wash every couple of days).

I do not understand how anyone could be arsed to wash and dry bath towels (and bathmats ) every day.

'Tea towels get washed when they need it (next to washing machine, usually pop the current one in the wash every couple of days).
' [boak]

Why do you think that people feel they need to wash bath towels after one use? (Genuine question - do you think it's the influence of hotels, they actually think that they are still dirty when getting out of the bath / shower, they have difficulty drying them, or what?)

Tea towels I can understand, especially if you don't have a dishwasher, but bath towels seems a little over scrupulous.

Hmm... mine sometimes get washed after one use, sometimes it goes down the ranks from baby, DS1, me then DH then on the floor, then wash, or sometimes it gets properly re-used. Depends if I can remember what it has been used for - if I can't they go back in the wash

Um, please don't at me Bariatric I promise you there is nothing disgusting about my housekeeping: we have a dishwasher, teatowels are rarely, if ever, used for actually drying.

I think I must be a complete slattern. I had no idea other people did so much washing until I read these threads.

I wash clothes and towels if they smell or look visibly grubby. And not before. (underwear changed every day obviously). I don't see the point otherwise. No-one is going to get ill from it, I can spend my time on other things, my washing machine lasts longer, I spend less on powder and electricity and we all still look and smell presentable.

There is more to life, surely?

But there is a lot of pressure on people today, especially women, to have things gleaming white and smelling 'freshly washed'. I think that the media and advertising equate large amounts of washing with cleanliness, competence, health and morality. Whiteness (as in white sheets, white shirts, etc) comes with associations of moral virtue - heavenly white. Plus of course there are probably long standing connotations of white clothes with wealth.

It's interesting as well - what do we think is actually on a tea-towel after it's been used to dry some dishes? Water, surely?