how many bath towels per person?

[Aeress]

Every few years my MIL buys me new bath towels, usually this is after a visit where she notices that I have updated the bathroom. (which involves a new curtain or maybe paint). This is very sweet of her, but our towels are still in great shape and I must have at least 20 bath towels, which is crazy.

We are a family of 5, how many towels per person? I was thinking 2 would be sufficient, which would be 10 total. We generally re-use them, so I would end up doing towels between once and twice a week.

Does this seem reasonable?

[cparkly]

I think that is a reasonable amount of towels. I would add beach towels, too.

[mom2mygirls]

that sounds reasonable.

[flightgoddess]

Eh, that depends if you have long hair  (or a child might have long hair) I always use one for my hair and one for my body. So that would bring my total to 4. Then my hair is not dripping all over the body I'm trying to dry.

[sweetjasmine]

I have 3 for myself. My husband and kids have maybe 2 each but they also use the beach towels sometimes which are also probably about 2 each.

[bandgeek]

2 is fine I think.  We probably actually have 3 per person, but we never get to the bottom of the stack.

[NikonMama]

My son and husband each have two and i have four.  They use one at a time, I use two.  I get bad acne, so I have one towel that I use only for washing my face, then one for my body and hair.  We also have extra towels for guests (in case we ever get any) and a few beach towels, then a few old towels that I bought from Goodwill to use on our dogs when they get baths or go outside in the rain, etc.  Bath towels are all white, beach towels are solid bright colors, dog towels are all some shade of blue. 

[34me]

We are a family of 5.  Each of the kids has 2 (each a specific color and their names on them) and then we have 4 plain white at 2 cheap IKEA towels that we use for dogs and send to camp with my ds.  I work at the rec center so we just use their towel when we go.

[Rainey Daye]

We've got a few too many, but I am working on several decluttering projects and one of them is the linen closet. My GOAL is to have it down to this:

*2 bath towels and one beach towel for husband--We've got 2 brown fluffy ones for him, but no beach towel currently.

*2 bath towels and one beach towel for Bug--We've got 2 green fluffy ones for him, and I just got him a beach towel.

*4 bath towels and one beach towel for me--I've had my 4 thin towels and the beach towel for YEARS (since before I ever met my husband), but they are still in decent shape. I kind of prefer thin towels and use two at a time..one for hair and one for body.

*6 hand towels for the bathroom--We've got too many of these. I just want one and a spare for each of the three hand towel rings in our house.

*4 hand towels for well, umm, sex--We've got these, but in white...I want a color that won't show stains as easily.

So basically, I need to get rid of about 4 bath towels and 4 hand towels, buy one beach towel, and hopefully someday replace 4 other hand towels...and then we will be good!! I figure that since I do laundry at least twice a week and everyone tends to reuse their towels once or twice, we should be good even when we have guests that we have to loan towels to.

[Tilia]

We have 4 per person, a lot. I am lazy with laundry though. DD has 4 big brown ones, and I have 4 thin blue ones. If we have guests they can use DD's, they are nice enough.

[clutterwarrior]

Well I am shocked...I actually had no idea how many towels we had so I just counted them and we have a massive 35 towels! And that's just bath towels, I haven't even counted the beach towels yet!!    That is for 5 of us. We obviously have way too many towels, and they all get used in rotation which means that none of them get used enough to wear out quickly.

Even when they get tattered, DH insists on keeping them under the house for rags. I feel like they are the hardest thing to get out of the house! We have bags full of old towels under the house which he says he will need for when we one day get to renovate!

[lucifugous]

It depends on so much... if you go to the beach or pool daily, you might need at least 2 beach towels per person. But we did fine with four towels as a family of three (didn't have any beach towels at the same, except my striped bath sheet which doubles as both). I used to use the same one for a week. In our new place, I only use it a couple times because I always need it to mop up water that escapes the tub with the help of the toddler!

[Shantimama]

We have one each and that seems fine. We have beach towels too that we bring out in the summer. 

[Siennaflower]

We have a set of regular towels, 1 for each person in a family of 4.  We hang them up and reuse them, and I wash them twice a week.  I also have a mishmash of reserve towels in my cedar chest that are for big spills, illnesses and whatever else they can be used for.  I haven't counted them but I'm guessing 5 or 6.  Plus two big beach towels.

[lucyem]

I do not have a count of how many we have but it seems fine.  Meaning there are not tons in the cabinet and yet we never run out.  I have a couple of nice ones I save for guests, a bunch for us and the kids, thin older ones for dogs, anything ripped goes to the barn for horses or use as rags.  Now and then I might see a pretty towel at Marshalls for cheap and I pick it up.  Works for us :)

[accountclosed3]

At one time, I had 6 sets of towels for two people. It was excessive. This past year, we've had one towel each -- it isn't enough. I've decided to try for two towels each this next year. The ones from last year will be made over into rag towels (they took a beating!), and then I'll alternate towels week-to-week so that they have time to line dry well and all of that. And, I'm not going to go with white. I could not get my white towels white enough after the first few washings. I'm thinking of going with a dark, charcoal grey/black this year. :)

[accountclosed15]

I have 4 fluffy white ones for DS and myself, 2 beach towels for at the pool, beach, picnics, etc.

[tree_hugger]

We are a family of four, one adult and three children. I recently drastically parred down on our towels, because we had way too many! They weren't cared for properly and were usually dumped while still damp on the bathroom floor.

We now have:

* 2 x bath sheets for me - one for body and one for hair

* 3 x bath sheets for the children - they are all the same colour (got them on sale!) so I sewed a different coloured ribbon on to each towel. Each boy knows his own colour and is responsible for hanging his towel on his hook after use.

* a couple of spares for guests

* a couple of old towels for cleaning up messes

* a beach towel each

* a couple of spare beach towels

I love our new simplified system! It has cut down so much on my washing - I am a firm believer that bath towels are only used to dry off clean bodies so they don't need washing more than once a week!

[IsaFrench]

family of 5,

two bath towels per person, color coded so that even the children can work it out = no towel on the floor left there as in "it's not mine!"

plus the kids spare towel goes back in their individual wardrobe alongside their spare set of sheets after being line dried (on wet days, we need the spare towel, the first one might not be dry by the time it's needed in the evening .... especially if I'm not fast enough to start the washing machine early in the day.... in the summer it needs only 3 hours to dry ....)

we have about 4 beach towels

plus a few spare towels in case we have guests

am so glad I decided to color code the towels 6 years ago .... because by now, it's a non issue, no wrangling about who gets what towel etc ....

[accountclosed3]

due to our atmospheric conditions, we have opted for aquis microfiber towels in graphite x 6 (2 each). regular towels will not dry in the 24 hrs between washings (might in summer) without a towel warmer. i happened to pull out the microfiber one that I have (travel size) and dried myself and hair, and an hour later, the towel was dry.

so, aquis it is -- times 6.