How Often Should You Wash Your Bathroom Towels and Rugs?
How often should you wash your bathroom towels? And what about the bathroom rug? Should you wash it every week? Every couple of weeks?
In my experience, people tend to fall into two categories in the Bathroom Towel & Rug Department.
WHY YOU SHOULD WASH BATHROOM TOWELS FREQUENTLY
It would seem that one wouldn’t need to change bathroom towels too often. I mean, you are drying off a clean body with a dry towel, right?
Well, that seems logical, but here’s the real deal: every time you use your towel to dry off, you’re scraping off dead skin cells. And those dead skin cells collect in the fibers of your towel. So if you use your towel for 10 straight days, you have 10 days’ worth of exfoliated cells on that towel.
Lovely thought, huh?
Also, your towel got wet when it dried off your body. Any time the fibers of something get wet, the opportunity to harbor bacteria and other germs is greatly heightened.
WASH BATHROOM TOWELS EVERY 3-5 USES
It is best to wash bathroom towels every 3-5 times they are used. Notice that I did not write every 3-5 days.
That really is the maximum times a towel needs to be dampened (from drying you off), allowed to dry, and then be used again.
And keep in mind, this rule of thumb only applies if you hang up your towel after every single use. It needs time to dry between uses so yucky things don’t breed and cause mold and mildew.
Besides the fact that mold and mildew are hard to remove from towels, the thoughts of mildew being on a towel I am using makes me cringe.
HOW OFTEN TO WASH BATHROOM RUGS
How often you should wash your bathroom rug greatly depends on several factors:
- If the rug has a non-skid rubber backing
- If your bathroom is used frequently
- If a lot of water is routinely splashed on the floor
- If your rug has a non-skid rubber backing, it can’t tolerate being washed frequently. It is best to wash a bathroom rug on warm/hot, and the rubber backing will deteriorate quickly if it is
- washed on hot too many times. Rubber and hot water and not a good mix in terms of durability.
To maintain a bathroom rug that has a rubber backing, only wash it once ever 3-4 weeks.
If a bathroom is used frequently, rugs need to be washed weekly. If several showers are taken in the same bathroom on a daily basis, the rug gets wet/damp multiple times. Since the rug is against a floor that doesn’t breathe well (if at all), it takes a long time to dry.
Because of this poor drying between uses, mold and mildew grow easily. It really is the perfect condition for gross things to multiply quickly.
In a bathroom where water is routinely splashed on the floor, the rug needs to be washed weekly as well. ::Think Kids’ Bathroom::
Again, the rug doesn’t have time to dry out well between uses and harbors all kinds of fungi and mold. Add in a damp, warm bathroom and that mold is just waiting to multiply.
