April 27, 2012
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Xangans are Gross
I was reading the pulse of Alex and he asked “How many times do you use your shower towel before you wash it?” Here is the link: Link
I was amazed at how many people use their towel multiple times before they washed it. Some people said they washed their towel once a week. Others said they used their towel 3-4 times before they washed it. Some even answered once or twice a month.
I use my towel only once. We have a bunch of towels (probably 50 or more) and there are five of us. I use one towel each night after a bath and I use a towel in the morning for shaving, brushing my teeth and fixing my hair. So typically I will use at least two towels a day.
How many times do you use your shower towel before you wash it?
Comments (115)
How is that gross??? Your body is clean when you towel off, and the water dries, I.E. the towel is still clean. And I would hate to have your laundry bill.. just sayin’.
yep, not very sustainable nor green.
I shake it like a salt shaker before I wipe myself down with the towel.
LOL. I answered twice! I also have a closet full of towels. I think it’s only gross to use it a lot if you don’t hang it properly so it can dry.
Let’s just say waaay more than once.
Probably, on an average of 4 times. I don’t like using it TOO many times. MAYBE even 5. after that i just want a new one.
I guess I need to buy more towels. I stretch it out. Like @VoxTheFox - said, you’re clean when you use it so the towel is still clean.
I use two towels per shower, don’t tell my hippie friends though.
That sounds pretty wasteful. I change my towel when it no longer smells fresh and clean! Probably somewhere between one and two weeks.
A few times, .@VoxTheFox - exactly.
I had to use my moms towel once on a camping trip,I forgot mine, she said “Just don’t go in any cracks” Ha…she is funny.
Isn’t it amazing how such a simple question can lead to so many different answers? It still intrigues me. I actually have another question ready to ask people too, but it’s a bit grosser.
Well, I wear clothes on my body for 16 hours, so surely I can use a towel on my freshly cleaned self for a total of 16 hours.
If I wear it 5 minutes a day, Then I can use it 192 times. So that’s 2 towels a year, generously.
I use a new towel maybe every third shower.
I can’t imagine how much laundry your poor wife must have to do! towel waster!
@Roadlesstaken - I want to know!
Oh heck Dan,I use a towel once and then throw it away.I’m not taking any chances.
You can wash towels??
LOL I guess I’m one of those “gross” xangans. I use the same shower towel at least for a week before washing it. I switch out my face wash towel every day though, just because it’s what I use to remove my makeup.
ONCE!
and gotta say — you take a BATH every night?
that should be your next survey.. how many men take baths!!
i find men usually shower and women are more the bathers. ha.
In college I frequently went months without washing my towels. I mean… you’re clean when you get out of the shower, it’s not like the towels are getting dirty.
I use it multiple times before washing. Why’s that bad? My body is clean at that point. And if you hang it properly, it dries out. Much more efficient, since I use two towels each shower.
Usually, I let it go a week, tops. In college…. monthly?
I wash my towel once every week or every two weeks.
We always had tons of towels so I thought it was normal to use a new one every time. I was so shocked in college when my suitemates used the same one all week. I still get a new one every time.
No offense Dan, but everyone has forgotten you are the 1% and we are the 99% thus the difference in towel usage.
Shower daily, towel gets used 3 times before getting washed. However, the husband wants a clean towel every shower…and sometimes he showers twice a day. Ugh. (I’m in charge of the laundry, can you tell?)
Dan, I don’t think we can be friends anymore.
Wow, even hotels are recommending you reuse your towels to help save the environment
How often do you wash the sheets on your bed? <3
It’s okay to use a bath towel more than once. You’re drying a clean body with it, so what’s the problem. I wash my two towels about every week.
Once a week, but if it touches the floor in between I’m tossing it in the hamper.
I use my towel (as of recent) twice before I wash it. Truth is, after you get out of a shower, you are clean but wet with clean water. So why not? But then, there is two of us, and we have about 8 towels. And I drive to his moms house to do laundry, 30 minutes away.
What a fucking waste, dude — unless you’re a filthy old man, in which case once is acceptable.
@FuhkAwf - He’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.
I can see this being a health hazard if your immune system can’t handle an already used towel.
I don’t think towels stay clean. They have skin flakes and detox from your pores. Ewww, I am grossing myself out! So to answer your question, once if I have a washer/dryer and maybe 3 times max if I have to go to a laundrymat.
A face cloth is sufficient to wipe the entire body after a bath. A bath a day is too much or so i think. The cloth could be washed once week. I fear there wont be enough water soon with all that indulgent waste.
Haha, maybe once every few months. Opps. Are you supposed to wash it more often?
Once a week. I shower twice a day so that would be a LOT of towels if I were to use a new one per shower…
Well see, you’re clean after you take a shower. So toweling off after you take a shower means that you are wiping a clean body. Hanging the towel right means it is drying. So I use the towel a couple of days before I switch it out with another one.
How spoiled we have become:
The weekly Saturday night bath was common in Christian industrialized
lands in the 19th and early 20th century. A half day’s work on Saturday
was the norm for factory workers allowing them some leisure to prepare
for the Sunday day of rest. The half day off allowed time for the
considerable labor of drawing, carrying, and heating water, filling the
bath and then afterward emptying it. To economize, bath water was shared
by all family members. Precedence in bath order could lead to
contention since the first user enjoyed the cleanest and warmest water.
Indoor plumbing became more common in the 20th century and commercial
advertising campaigns pushing new bath products began to influence
public ideas about cleanliness, promoting the idea of a daily shower or
bath. – wikipedia
Your house runs cleaner than a hotel. haha
You have FIFTY towels!? I don’t think there’s room in my childhood house for fifty towels for the five of us! We have probably ten…five get used at a time for about a week, and then we wash them, while the other five are being washed. That’s SO expensive to use a new towel every time aha.
At school I have two towels. One is for drying my hands, and one is for the shower. Since it’s only me using the towel, and I am always clean when I use it (because I just came from the shower), and I always hang it up to dry on the towel rack, I see no reason to wash it more than once a month, or sometimes even a month and a half if I am lazy. It costs money to do laundry and towels take up a lot of space.
Now my SHEETS…I’m just gross. I wash them once a month. There is no excuse there, haha. I rotate through the about five pairs of pants I own and then wash them all at the end of the month. HAHA…you have to be cheap. As long as I don’t smell, I’m okay.
You’ve GOT to be fucking kidding. What the fuck is this shit about using a towel just once? I agree with @VoxTheFox
That’s wasteful as fuck! How much laundry do you do? Seriously. You said you use 2 towels a day, and there’s 5 of you. If everyone else does the same, we’re talking TEN FUCKING TOWELS PER DAY that need to be washed.That’s 70 towels per week. I don’t think we own more than 10 towels total, between me and my wife. And only 3 or 4 ever see the light of day, because we use them for at least 5 days.
Please make a post detailing your laundry practices. You must have several industrial-sized washing machines and dryers. Either that or you’re rich and you have a maid or two that take care of it. Regardless, it’s WAY wasteful. It’s like you have no regard whatsoever for the environment. I’m no tree hugger, but YIKES.
In fact, if anyone hasn’t mentioned it, what you’re doing is textbook OCD, Danny boy. Look it up. It’s not healthy (psychologically speaking), and using a towel more than once it’s not gross, you twerp. The VAST MAJORITY of people (as you can see from the comments) do use them more than once. Way more than once.
So, seek help. Seriously.
2-3 times and than I wash it. I only have 3 towels lolz. I take every day a shower and sometimes 2.
only once? heck, you must have a huge load of laundry to do every weekend.
@Roadlesstaken - please do ask. let’s find out who’s the grossest xangan
you can even hold a contest for it.
What’s a shower?
i hope you do your own laundry
I use two towels/shower and wash them once a week for the most part.
I use a new towel every shower……I also use two bars of soap per shower (one body and one facial soap)…and of course I have to use a new shampoo bottle every shower too. The thought of people using the SAME shampoo bottle over and over again disgusts me. Ewww!
Why would someone with a towel fetish feel he is better than people who are balanced and well adjusted?
I used to have one towel that I washed once a week. I have towel racks in my bathroom that allow them to dry out well before I use them again, but even so, I recently decided to buy another towel and alternate them, so they have two days to dry out instead of one.
Have to second what @VoxTheFox said. I don’t know about you, but when I shower, I shower thoroughly, so there’s no reason to think that the towel is going to be getting particularly dirty when I use it.
once or twice. I use one for the body and then put it on the floor and another for the head- alternatively I use one for the floor (to stand on) usually and another for the rest, depends on the sizes of the towels availiable. If I have an extra towel for my head I use it more often, the ones that touched the floor go to the laundry obviously.
I don’t think it’s gross to use a towel twice or more for your body but it is if you use it for body and face…and it is also just easier to throw them in the laundry than to take them with me to my room to dry.
I use a fresh handtowel to wash my face/body every day, but as for drying off towel, I wash that every one-two weeks. It works pretty well for me.
If you wash yourself properly, then you are clean when you dry off, so the towel is only getting wet with clean water, so why not reuse it a time or two?
I try to wash my towel in with other laundry so.. it depends. It might get washed weekly and then it might be 2 weeks. so… I guess the answer is 1 OR 2 WEEKS.
Reckon I’m the only one who incorporates the drip-dry method.
@PrisonerxOfxLove - Oh, snap! Nicely said!
@Kellsbella - Once in a while I do that if it is not too cold.
I use my towel… for a long time. ahhaha. you would think i am disgusting. but whatever. I let it dry after I use it, and the way I see it, I’m only using it to dry off, I’m already clean I just got out of the shower! So it’s pretty much just water and maybe soap that gets on it.
@seedsower - Don’t tell everyone about our showers with Dan!!
Huh….that’s a lot of towels you should be washing weekly, I use it about 3 times. I don’t see why it’s gross to use a towel more than once, unless of course, you’re sharing that towel with someone else then it would be extremely gross.
well. considering that i only have one towel, and i visit the laundromat once a week…
it’s true that you’re clean when you’re done showering, but why do towels start to go bad then?
in that case, it’s obviously not clean. bacteria is more susceptable to growth on damp objects as well.
every time i’m at someone else’s house and i use their bathroom, i’ll also try to use one of their towelettes to dry my hands, and i find that it always smells like sh*t.
i think my pants are cleaner than their towels. people need to wash their towels more.
That’s freaking insane. My fiance has cleaning OCD and even he uses a towel 2 or 3 times before washing it. Which is not even close to being gross. I mean there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be clean, but FUCK, dude. Do you have a separate room in your house just for towel storage? It seems like you would almost have to.
@PrisonerxOfxLove - The kitten in your picture looks exactly like my kitty when she was little! Stripe on the nose and everything. Sorry, random
Wow, you’re a wasteful fuck. But considering it’s you, I’m not surprised. I hope you at least have the decency to do your own laundry.
once a weekkk
I tend to make sure I’m clean before I step out of the shower. My mom used to yell at me when I’d use a towel once and then put it in the dirty clothes. Every time I’m tempted to do so, I hear “we’re not made out of money” and just hang it back up for a later use.
I’m with you on this one. I use my towel only once, more than that and I find it really gross. A moist towel hanging up can collect all kinds of bacteria. Why in the world would someone take a fucking shower then use a dirty towel covered in that bacteria? I’m breakout prone so I go through about 2 washcloths a day and a towel.
At least you can take solace in the fact that all of your haters are unhygienic.
I would say I use it around 3 or 4 times, but if you JUST showered, how does that make it dirty??? Silly man :-p
♥L
-SM
I use a new towel about every 2-3 days depending if I shower once or twice.. I usually shower twice a day, morning and night. And your towel DOES get dirty, you shed dead skin, y’know…
Sometimes I use another thinner towel for my hair.
I wash the bath towels every Monday whether they need it or not. If a towel gets dropped on the floor or used for anything besides drying off a freshly showered body, it goes in the laundry and is replaced with a clean towel.
I wash the towel I take to the pool after every use because the locker room is nasty.
I just use it till it feels icky. You’re clean when you come out the shower anyway so you’re really wasting water and energy by washing your towels so often.
I use 1-2 towels per week. I also use a different towel for my face.
One time, I do laundry every day so it’s not a big deal.
New one everytime–or I use the old one to wrap my hair, and a new one for my face and body.
Towels?! I air dry. Except my, hair, I do use a towel for that. Maybe you should invest in an industrial size wall dryer, put it high up and then just stand under it after the shower. Lol.
I don’t know, people keep track of things like that? hahaha
@VoxTheFox - It does get covered in dead skin but that’s definitely not the most frightening thing in the world. People make it sound like we use our towels as toilet paper or something.
A week usually. But it all depends how wet (or dirty) the towel is after use.
@wizexel22 - how is a shampoo bottle dirty? do explain.
using a new towel with every shower drives me NUTS. huge pet peeve. we don’t have that many towels and my husband likes to get a new one every morning. i agree with @VoxTheFox , you’re clean when you dry off. if you hang it up to dry properly then there’s no problem with using it 3 times.
@MzKeekz - Ever heard of sarcasm? Come on now. @wizexel22 -isn’t being serious.
towels and sheets get washed/changed once a week, on average. Kids are in charge of changing their own beds, so theirs probably goes longer. We’re clean when we use the towels, so if they’re hung up and don’t stay damp, they’re just fine for the week. Washcloths is another matter.
These questions are so interesting to me: questions about something everyone does, but completely in private. So there’s not a lot of overlap like there would be if we watched other people.
I bet it would be different if you did your own laundry.
Once. Same with bedding. Won’t wear unclean (unwashed/ironed) clothes either, unless I really need to.@musterion99 - Microbiology doesn’t quite work like that. Bacteria growth is exponential. You don’t step out of the shower sterile.
I only use a towel once.
I remember growing up we always used the towels once and then tossed them into the washer. The conversation came up later in life and…I’d never really thought about it, but it is pretty wasteful to wash them after every shower: as everyone else has said, you’re clean when you dry off with them. It’s just water and water dries; how is that anymore gross than using them after washing them? OMG! It was wet! Now it’s dry! GRRROOOOSSSS!! And since I like my dark purple towels that match my bathroom decore? Washing and drying them less seems to prolong the color so that they look nicer longer, too.
I use mine 2-3 times.
Shower towel gets washed twice a year.
@Uek - Hasn’t killed me yet.
Whenever I have another load of laundry to do I throw it in. Seems less wasteful.
It’s not like your towel gets that dirty from you drying yourself off. If you really want to think about dirty…every time you flush your toilet with the lid open, it sprays toilet bowl water all over your bathroom including tooth brushes, “clean towels”, your shower, etc etc. Besides a little germ is good to keep your adaptive immunity “up to date” with all the more recent illnesses.
Meh, after I shower, I grab my towel, dry myself off, put on my bath robe, carry my towel and lighter to my back door, light my towel on fire and toss it onto the back lawn. I use a new one next time.
Usually 2-4 times before I wash it. Growing up, we washed bath towels maybe once month. We were poor and didn’t have the money for all that extra laundry. To each their own.
Paper towels all the way! None of that reusable shit around here!!!
I wash towels once a week, since I have to drive all the way to the laundromat to do laundry and it isn’t cheap. I change out small towels for my face every day. But my body towel? I use it seven times before it gets washed. It doesn’t even smell funny after a week since I’m clean coming out of the shower.
I wash it every other day. i have like 40 towels and i live alone. my closet is full of them.
I use mine 3 or 4 times. I hang it to dry. It’s not really dirty every time since you are clean when you get out of the shower.
I suppose I must be quite gross! I wash my towel maybe once a month, if that. That is because I’m in college and have one towel. I’d love to have more but I simply don’t have the space for it. I would if I had my own place. When I lived at home and we had multiple towels, I would only use them about 3 times.
I’m in the “one towel a week or two” boat.
@babybug329 - Yes, it is pretty easy to tell that you are the one that is in charge of the laundry due to the fact that you don’t like that your husband sometimes showers twice a day. I would not like that at all either because it would just mean that it is more work to do.
It’s just water and some bodily fluids too. Your whole body is made up of germs, so it’s not something to worry about.
People are kinda crazy about this kind of stuff. Hi the whole world is full of germs! A lot of them are good for you. Showering frequently washes them off. But you know, soap makes us itchy and dry, so it must be good for us.
Young looking oily skin is so unnatural!
@wizexel22 - How often do you replace the bathtub? :^)
I don’t use my towel, I just use the dirty clothes I was wearing before I entered the shower. ;D
i guess i’m a gross one too.. i wash every few weeks.. maybe even once a month.. Where i live, towels dry up in less than half an hour (lots of sun, so no mold), and i take two showers a day. It would be a pain to wash it every time i take a shower. And very unfriendly to the environment.
I agree with the first commenter. My body is spankin’ clean after a shower, and I don’t share that towel with anyone.. so.. how is it gross?
I use it about 3 times…. Yep!
@TheSchizoidMan - Changing the bathtub is a lot of work. So now I just move houses every few months. (The house must have at least 5 bathrooms of course.)
I wash em once a week, and to be very honest i believe its quite .. a waste..? I mean, imagine the amount of washing you have to do.
3-4 times. I’m poor – I can’t afford to do laundry all the time!
Once, twice if I haven’t gotten around to doing the laundry, but that’s rare and usually involves me being sick, so usually once.
Also, I don’t know if its just me, but have you SMELLED a towel that has been used and hung back up to dry? It makes me gag, each and every time. And we just got new towels, so I know its not anything wrong with the towels. Plus, we don’t have any really good places to hang towels up to dry, and I would have absolute heart failure if I saw a wet towel on carpet.
Now you have asked us this question, how many times do you used the same towel before washing it.
Why use a towel at all…why not just stand there and drip dry!
isn’t that a bit excessive?