Following the prior Lemmy post about towels…
I wash once a week, is that sufficient or need I more frequency?
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I use bath towels after two uses, three if I can’t be bothered.
I mod 4 communities and never have recieved a report! Honestly I want one now
Nice
This post is about towels. Did you intend to comment on this post instead?
passionate moderator of r/towels
Which towels are we talking about, and how frequently do they get used?
Bath towels, hand towels and dish drying towels will all get dirty at different rates, and get/stay wet at different rates.
Towels should smell clean (clean, not perfumy) and be dry and not feel like they’ve got something on them. The more time a towel stays wet, the more often you wash it. If it gets noticeably dirty, you wash it. This could be anywhere from once a day to never, if it’s just decorative and you never use it.
I shoot for 2-3 uses for body/shower towels.
Hand towels, etc I try to grab/replace when I’m doing other laundry. Sometimes more often in the kitchen though, if say I’ve been cooking a lot and they start feeling wet or funky.
Once a week is normal, unless you notice a funk. How wet they get, how you hang them, and how well they dry can be factors in this. 
I usually go for once a week to once every two weeks. But I do have a heated towel dryer, and k think that helps to keep bacteria to grow in them. My advice is to make sure you hang your towl somewhere they can air out well
Body, one use. Then it’s on hand duty until next towel takes its place.
Just to add to the answers here, remember to strip your towels once a year. That funky smell when they’re dry may be your delicious human oils penetrating deep and impregnating the fibers. Sebum rots and goes rancid, producing that musty closet smell.
You can also avoid this problem by adding a little borax to your laundry, particularly if you have hard water.
What does ‘strip’ mean in this context? (not a native speaker)
I’d generally heard ‘laundry stripping’ used to refer to a vinegar soak/rinse, followed by a baking soda cycle to further neutralize. The idea being laundry soap/detergent is basic and some things build up and don’t dissolve. Added borax was an alternative ‘laundry booster’ that made this unnecessary, as I’d heard it.
But, it sounds like there’s some variability to how the terms are used and for some a borax rinse is a stripping process. Understandable, as the end result is pretty much the same.
I didn’t know either but I just looked it up. It says to soak towels in a borax solution in a bathtub or a bucket
I’m a native speaker and I don’t know either.
“Laundry stripping is a soaking process where you’re removing the built-up residue: excess laundry detergent, fabric softener, body oils, hard-water minerals… It’s something you do on towels that are already clean, not dirty.”
“Fill a bathtub with hot water and add a quarter-cup of borax, a quarter-cup of washing soda (a.k.a. sodium carbonate) and a half-cup of detergent. Soak clean towels until the water cools (at least an hour), stirring occasionally. Then run the linens through the rinse cycle in your washing machine and dry them. Make sure to do this separately for lights and darks.”
“Add an optional one to two small boxes of baking soda (especially if you have hard water) to soften and deodorize fabrics. You can also add more borax — up to a cup — if the laundry is moldy or musty.”
Just put in a scoop of oxyclean.
If you asked my wife, the answer would be that you use them for a day or two tops, but the important part is that you throw them in the hamper wet, and then make sure to put other clothes and stuff on top of them so they sit there damp and smelly until laundry day comes around.
Our towel bar is directly above the heating grate, so towels, properly hung, will dry fairly quickly there. But apparently it’s more of a priority that they get put in the laundry basket immediately. I gave up trying to fight that fight long ago.
I thought sarcasm music but I couldn’t hear anything.
I only clean mine once a week; but that’s like 7 towels at a time. I use a fresh one every time I take a bath/shower and toss them in a hamper when done. The only towel that gets used more than once without being washed until the rest is the one towel I use as a floor mat because I’m too cheap to buy a floor mat.
Argh
Face towels (washcloths) really only one use and then wash. Body towels I switch about once a week but I live in a dry climate and they dry fast. I also use a linen towel which is very absorbent but also dries much faster than terry. Kitchen towels I change depending on how I used them - normal use (drying hands), every couple of days. Cooking? Change after I am done cooking.
Cooking? Change after I am done cooking.
You cook your towels?
You don’t? But they taste awful raw.
I’m only using the towel to dry off when I’m clean from showering, I use it at least a week. I do hang it from a rack where it dries well.
I wash mine when it starts growing mold. So anywhere from every 3 years to every 6 years.
What the fuck
Washed once a week, and bleached every few washes. Helps keep them even cleaner.
