this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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... you people use towels more than once?
By definition you're clean when you use it. If you hang it to dry it's perfectly fine to use more than once
I was always taught that the towel's final role is to abrade and collect the dirt/grime/skin that has been loosened by showering, but that wasn't washed away (which iirc is mostly just the skin and oily grime, not dirt or other large particulates).
If it works for you then you do you! It's just odd to discover that people think towels are somehow clean after being rubbed all over your body. It's probably fine, the literature I've just dug up seems to indicate that it's not ideal but safe to use the same towel for 1-3 days so long as you're not sharing it, (depending on environment, it seems that they get a "disconcertingly large bacteriological load" (heh) if left in a humid bathroom) but still. ew.
This is nasty to me. Do you not scrub yourself in the shower? Like, if you have dirty hands, and wash them in the sink, you can dry your hands on a white towel and it should not get dirty. Same for your body except you usually have more scrubbing tools to exfoliate your skin and remove the dirt so you should be even cleaner come dry time.
I don’t know that I’d call my used towel “clean” per se, but it’s certainly not dirty. It’s not doing any cleaning or removal of anything, just patting up water.
You gotta use washcloths or scrubbers on your body! In conjuction with soap, that will help remove dead skin, dirt, sweat, etc.
... you soil your towels?
Do you change your hand towels every time you use them?
Errr... yes. But only the kitchen towels, other hand-drying towels just get swapped out in the mornings or if they're particularly damp/soiled.
And I’m pretty clean each time too so it’s not exactly collecting a ton of dirty. If it’s used for something other than me fresh out of the shower then it goes straight in the wash. Otherwise it gets washed when I do laundry each week.
You're not clean, though. You're really, really not. You're cleaner, but humans are disgusting and a residential shower is in no way getting you anything close to actually 'clean'. You don't have to be insane like I am and swap them out every shower, all the literature I can find says 1-3 days is probably fine, but please please get a couple more towels and swap out for a clean one every few days at least, right now you're just culturing some very nasty bacteria and then rubbing it all over yourself.