The Wedding Registry Towel Conspiracy

I don’t know how many towels and washcloths you should have. Except I’m pretty sure that somewhere close to 60 is not the right number. I knew this even before I consulted Dr. Google. I mean, everyone has a towel they used in high school and took to college, right?

No? Moving on.

Based on my research, how you use towels is an actual question you are supposed to ask yourself. What? It never occurred to me to think about usage, but duh. Of course you should.

So I said, “Self, how do you use towels?” Then I asked each member of my family. I got weird looks.

I use two at a time (one for body, one for hair). I would think this would be pretty standard. I can’t be that much of a weirdo. Well, I can, but not in the towel department.

Stephen and The Boy use one towel at a time. The Girl alternates between using one or two each time. She has mastered the art of wrapping her head with a towel and when she’s feeling particularly, I don’t know, girly, or finishes watching an episode of Shake It Up, she wraps her hair and struts around showing off her masterpiece. “Mommy, look what I did!”

We all use either a washcloth or small hand towel. I use a poof sponge thing in the shower, not a washcloth. We also use bath towels more than once between washings unless there is a specific need to wash them after one use. And by need to wash them I mean it’s been more than 4ish days and/or I suspect they are about to start to walking on their own.

And now I’m getting paranoid. How often do you wash your towels?

The Boy and The Girl swim nearly every day in the summer. We currently have 4 ginormous beach towels and 7 smaller ones. These get washed after each use.

Given this, how many towels do we need?

Research

According to Unclutterer.com, to determine how many towels and washcloths you need, you should use the following simple math equation:

(House residents + Guest bedrooms) x 2 = Sets of bath towels and washcloths

According to the Wedding Channel’s Q&A regarding the Bath Registry you need three sets of towels per person: one in use, one in the wash and one in reserve. The Wedding Channel has determined that one set of towels consists of a bath towel, hand towel and washcloth.

The opinions on The Straight Dope forums are all over the place – anywhere from 2 per person to 9 per person.  63% of respondents fell within the 2 to 4 towels per person range. Before my research, I never would have imagined there would be a forum called The Straight Dope. Do you think that’s a legit site to reference?

According to the Unclutterer formula, we should have 8 sets of towels:

(4 house residents + 0 anticipated guest rooms) x 2 = sets of towels and washcloths

4 x 2 = 8 sets

According to the Wedding Channel, we need 12 sets. Broken down, this would mean 12 towels, 12 hand towels and 12 washcloths. Doesn’t that seem like a lot?

Utilizing the opinions on Straight Dope, the number of towels (not sets) could range from 8 (2×4) to 36 (9×4), with the majority of the opinion that between 8 and 16 towels for the family would be a good number.

Consulting Martha

After this research, I couldn’t help it. I checked out a book from the library. What book? Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook: The Essential Guide to Caring for Everything in Your Home. Otherwise known as, The Essential Guide to Feeling Inferior and Inadequate.

In the world according to Martha, you should “allow for two complete sets of towels for each person in the household and two additional sets for guests. Each set includes a bath towel, a hand towel, and a washcloth.”

I was all like, “Yeah, I’m siding with Martha,” until I read this:

“In addition, it’s also useful to have three or six fingertip towels. Also known as guest towels, they are typically smaller than hand towels. They are often embroidered or otherwise embellished and made from flat-woven linen or cotton. They are traditionally set out in groups of three for guests (so they do not, for the sake of hygiene, dry their hands on towels you or your family have already used).”

Then I had to stifle my gag reflex. I know this is like the pot calling the kettle black, but isn’t that obnoxious? I have two lovely hand towels one of my best friends gave to me many years ago with a ‘B’ embroidered on them. They aren’t fingertip towels, but when we have people over, they are set out. Isn’t that good enough?

If you decide you need to have personalized guest towels, here’s a tutorial on how to make them. Straight from Martha.

Where We Wound Up

According to our usage, the highest recommended 36 towels from Straight Dope seems obscenely excessive, making the Wedding Channel suggested 12 towels appear downright reasonable. And, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I suspect that the Wedding Channel is in cahoots with the towel industry to suggest more towels than one really needs.

So, we sort of followed Martha. We decided to keep 8 body towels, 4 hand towels, 4 washcloths and 8 beach towels for regular use and 2 old towels for any potential disasters requiring cleanup. And the two hand towels from my girlfriend. Because, really. That’s plenty.

All remaining towels and washcloths have been donated. So, if we need more than that, it’s too late. We’re going to have to suck it up. But I don’t think we will.


32 Responses to The Wedding Registry Towel Conspiracy

  1. Good for you! It is time we all start thinking for ourselves! If we let the industries decide what is right for us, imagine the mess we would be in……or should I say, look at the mess we are in! LOL

    I just read a great book called More or Less by Jeff Shinabarger, it may help you on your journey.

    Keep at it! 🙂

    • This is a GREAT book and the reason I’m looking at my “enough” for clothes today. I also couldn’t recommend the book highly enough. You Tube has the videos too that correspond with the book if you haven’t seen them. Search for, you guessed it, More or Less videos.

      Good for you on deciding on your own. Martha Smartha. Towel & wedding industry conspiracy theory, sounds like the plot for a new thriller.

  2. Ok, that video was so funny but on to the towels…at a minimum, 1 towel per person so you don’t have to share or use a wet towel. In reality, 2 is better so you can have one in the wash or an extra for a guest (I do have an extra hair towel for my daughter and I). For us, we don’t have a ton of hand towels and wash cloths as my kids use the same hand towel in the bathroom. We don’t have room to have 4 hand towels sitting out.

    I wash towels once per week, no matter what type, regular or pool towel. We just hang up the pool towels to dry on the line and the kids re-use them for the week. Of course we don’t have a pool, just a sprinkler so not sure if there is a need to wash a towel that gets chlorine water on it.

    I am amazed how many people I know who have about 5-6 towels per person. One of them says its because she doesn’t want to have to wash towels every week but isn’t it easier to run one load of towels per week as it is to run 2 loads every other week? And you don’t have to store a pile of dirty towels until its time to wash them all.

  3. I love reading your posts, Kandice, you crack me up! As for towels, well, I’m on the minimalist side. We have two in our household and could possibly have two guests (rare, but it does happen). I have four of each: towels, hand towels and wash cloths (which don’t get used much–I’m a puff girl myself). I could make due easily with two of each until the occasional guest comes so I’m forced to have more.

    I wash them after about four to five days as well. How long can it take to wash a load of laundry? So really, one set would do just fine if it weren’t for those pesky guests! (Don’t get me wrong, I love guests but I don’t love storing stuff.)

    As for how many at a time, well, I LOVE my REI travel microfiber towel for my hair. It’s light weight so my neck doesn’t feel like it is balancing a boat that’s about to topple over. It absorbs water quick, but doesn’t let my hair dry out too much so it blows dry great. Besides that, it doesn’t take up much room on the bathroom rack or in a suitcase (I take it with me everywhere I go).

    Ree ~ I blog at EscapingDodge.com

  4. Too funny! But I think you need to boost your decluttering self confidence! There seem to be “experts” on everything, but you can probably just trust your gut on how many towels your family needs. Martha should keep her nose out of it! LOL

  5. I can relate to this – I was purging my 7yr old daughter’s room (with her help) this weekend – and realized she had 7 sets of twin sheets. 7?!! What? how and why did she accumulate all these? Well, we promptly got rid of 4 sets which probably leaves us with 1 too many still. My son’s room got a similar stink eye for sheets (we got rid of 2 sets there) but I haven’t moved on to the bathroom yet – I will though!! Apparently grandparents love to buy my kids bedding!

  6. I go with three sets of linens/towels: one set being used, one set in the wash, and one set in the cupboard for emergencies. For a long time we could only afford 2 sets so its luxury to have spares!

  7. I am so with you on this one. In addition to your categories we have camper towels and dogs towels, both of which are one step from the trash can. And Xmas towels. And four bathrooms. When the “good” ones exceed their allotted space, some go to the dog or camp pile. Must remember to let some go this summer!

  8. We have about 8 sets of towels and we do have alot of wash rags and hand towels. Thou I have been getting rid of some when need be. I will keep what is left thou cause with the moving that is coming in the next year we will be having guest more often. I have a good supply of dish towels to but we use them. We have 4 beach towels but I do also use those on the dogs when they get bath.

    When we got married 20 years ago we hardly got any towels for a shower gifts so my mom told people we needed towels and boy did we get them lol!! My hubby has some of those he uses to wash the car and such.

    I love reading your blog it is so funny but yet you can learn things also

  9. This is so funny as I just replaced our towels for the master bathroom. We usually do two towels each – one in use, one in reserve. As I was ordering, I caught myself just mindlessly putting four of each thing in my cart. When I stopped to think about use, I came to the conclusion that for one week (we generally wash towels weekly) for two of us we need two towels, one hand towel and four washcloths. So instead of buying four of each thing I bought four towels, two hand towels and eight washcloths. So now it’s all customized to our actual.usage which is nice and user friendly in terms of storage as well.

    Our children’s towels were purchased as a set so they have six of everything (we have three kiddos). We also have four full sets of guest towels as I wanted to allow for the different ways guest might use them.

  10. The Straight Dope would be a fantastic name for a rock band. Sounds TOTALLY legit, by the way, and the fact that you included this in your research confirmed my suspicion that you are awesome.

    When I was growing up, you used your towel once and threw it in the laundry because it was considered toxic. (My parents have germ issues, I guess.) When I got married, I was shocked that my husband would use his towel two or three times before tossing it in the wash. Then I noticed how much less laundry this method produced and I was converted.

    This post reminds me that while my master bath is a thing of beauty in the towel department (8 towels, 3 hand towels, 6 washcloths), my girls’ bath is basically a free-for-all. Perhaps this is my next project… although if I do the math enough, it might be at the perfect towel level, who knows? 😉

  11. We have loads of washcloths. I use them with a wash off make up remover as I worked out that a pack from Ikea cost not much more than a pack of disposable cotton wool pads and these last years. I use once and toss in the wash. There is always pile of them in the bathroom so guests can use them for drying their hands too.

  12. Why does each person need a separate hand towel? There’s only one in each bathroom at any given time anyway!

    However, it makes no sense to me to have the same number of bath towels as wash clothes. One wash cloth per shower. It seems really disgusting to me to reuse the wash cloth I used on my butt on any part of my body after that without a run through the laundry (so of course, butt is the last thing to wash in the shower). However, bath towels get reused for several showers, so…I figure you need a bath towel and 7 wash cloths per person, assuming weekly laundry.

  13. Oh, and you might want to tell your daughter to cut out the towel turban thing as it’s pretty damaging. It’s on pretty much every list of “things you should stop doing to your hair” I’ve seen. My way of dealing with my hair does deviate significantly from the mainstream (shampoo every 2 weeks, using a shea butter shampoo bar, no brush only wide-tooth wooden detangling comb, cutting off individual split ends when I spot them, etc). I can also sit on my own hair.

    • She picked up the towel turban thing from me, I’m sure. I’ve been doing that since I was in junior high. Didn’t realize it was damaging to your hair.

  14. Wow – who knew that I am so Martha Stewart-ish? We have 2 “sets” each and 2 guest sets.

    But then I’m not counting the beach towels or “emergency” towels for if we have – say – a flood. These are in the basement storage so I can pretend they don’t exist except on beach days.

  15. I love the extensive research you have done to make sure we all don’t have too many towels – without counting I am sure I have more than 4 per person, but sometimes I throw the dirty ones in the laundry basket and wait a bit until I actually do laundry. I am not sure if my husband would ever remember to wash the towels!

  16. I enjoyed this post and am currently reflecting on our own family’s towel issues. I would also like to know what most of your readers agree is the lifespan of a towel based on the rotation and washing assumptions you make above? We have towels that should be in junior high by now. 😉

    • I think you can use them as long as they still dry ok and are comfortable to use. The two my husband uses are 17years old and still going fine. (so each would be 8.5years old with a weekly wash) They were good quality to begin with though. I wash one each week. I have had other towels that only lasted 10years or less. So it is all a bit relative and what you are comfortable with using.

    • I’d like to know how long towels can be expected to last, too. Although our towel buying habits have spanned everywhere from higher end department stores, to Bed Bath & Beyond, to Walmart. So, there’s the quality issue too.

    • This is a great question. I was just admiring the “Trix” towel my parents surely got from box tops, or whatnot. The true definition of threadbare. One of those silly things you keep…

  17. We have a lot of towels and perhaps this is one area we need to cut down on. How long do you think the average bath towel lasts? I wonder whether I might be better to take some out of rotation but keep them for when the others wear out. Or is that just a terrible idea that shows that my decluttering mindset is still sometimes clouded with my prior hoarding self?

    • I don’t know. The towel I had from high school was pretty ratty, so that’s almost 25 years. I bought some towels for the kids in 2004 and they are still going strong without any signs of wear, although before we assigned each person a set of towels (different color), they would use ours. If you have perfectly good towels, I wouldn’t worry about keeping them for when the others wear out unless you are drowning in towels (like we were). Although, if your current towels are in good condition, you’ll be hanging onto those towels for a pretty long time. I guess it’s just a personal thing.

  18. I don’t know if this a European (or Eastern European thing :-), but we only own 1 body towel per person and 1 beach towel per person and then probably 2 extra for guests. I do not wash the body towels every week (might be every month) because they are not dirty (at least in my opinion) and we dry them well after use to avoid the weird smell that develops otherwise., They are used to dry a washed and clean body – how should they be dirty after 3-4 uses? We are not so concerned about germs and stuff around here – we also usually wear our clothes more than once before washing (especially pants, dresses, sweaters, jackets etc).
    I usually dry the beach towels in the sun (or at least in the open air) after use and wash them quite infrequently.
    We have about 8 hand towels (two bathrooms), but only 1 (or 2 for the main bathroom) are in use at the same time.
    As 95% of families around here don’t own a dryer, don’t live in a house and the climate is quite nordic, the constant washing of clothes, towels and bed linens is just not possible. Still, not many people die because of it 🙂

    • I agree with you about the towels not being dirty after drying a clean body! I do wash towels each week since they get a bits stuffy smelling, but we live in a temperate climate for most of the year. I also don’t wash bed linens weekly as some do.

  19. You can cut up your old towels and they make fabulous dish clothes, or rags to wipe up floor spills, and my husband uses them to clean the bbq with (then throws them away). A good substitute for disposable paper towels!

  20. I was just thinking similar things. There is only myself and Dear Husband and we have only two bath towels. When they become old enough then they would be beach towells I suppose. We have no issues in this regard; Guests are extremely rare so we don’t generally stock items specifically for them. If a towell is a soggy mess in the dryer when we go to shower we transfer it alone to the dryer. We traipse naked(!) to get the now hot and wonderful towell as we finish up with the shower.

    😀

  21. We have loads of mismatched bath towels the whole family uses and 4 bath/hand towels that match our bathroom. When guests come over I put out the matchy towels in the bathroom. Other than that, we just use whatever. Drop-in guests better be prepared to see non-matching towels in the john – lol.
    Also, I have a heated towel rack that dries our towels super fast, so we usually use the same bath towel for about a week before chucking it in the hamper. I love my heated towel rack, it’s great for drying hand-washed items quickly as well.

    • Your heated towel rack sounds awesome! I’d love to have a toasty warm towel after I get out of the shower. I honestly don’t care about towels being matchy matchy either. We just happened to have enough for each member of the family to have their own color. Any of the towels would theoretically work with any of our bathrooms. I tend to have neutral colored bathrooms, so it’s not a huge issue.

  22. I found your post while googling around trying to figure out how many guest towels we need. So funny! And seriously helpful! I am enjoying going through the archives 🙂

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