No Stupid Questions

Usually wash them about once every 3-6 months. I don’t think I’ve ever replaced a towel in my adult life, had my absorbent bath robe for 9 years so far.

Whenever I can hold them flat and horizontal without bending when grabbed by a corner.

Once a week or two depending on how much other laundry I've got.

I'll replace them when they fall apart.

You guys have more than one towel???

We wash them after using them. Replace when broken after years.

I loathe newly purchased towels, they always feel like they don't dry well for a while. I typically wash/swap every 4 or so days. We also "strip" our towells with a deep clean like every couple months.

I change out my towels every day... they are washed weekly.

I wash them after three uses and use them until they fall apart.

When the pile gets too large in the bathroom or on Sunday, whichever comes first.

I wash my body towels (for stepping out of the shower) weekly. I wash hand towels, for drying hands after washing hands, whenever I feel like it, quite infrequently but they get washed.

I'd only replace a towel if it fell apart or something like that. If it's unusable.

My bathroom faces a very sunny window so heats up every day... I wash myself dry my clean self with the towel, then it dries with the sun.

The result is it doesn't get particularly dirty or left wet for particularly long.

I wash them on saturdays, usually each week but sometimes every other week. The ones for showering get dried quickly after use on the upstairs handrail (bathroom is kinda small). The hand towels have a small heated holder in the bathroom, so they don’t get a chance to ripen as well. Face towels after each use.

Replacement only if they get thin or holey. And then they become cleaning rags.

almost never because towels are self-cleaning

Pfft you can't trick me everyone knows towels are single use

I don’t have a satisfying answer to you. I think once a week wash is perfectly fine and it is roughly what I do.

It depends on how much you’re using them.

If you shower once a day 6 days a week (just as an example), a wash once a week is good. If you’re showering and using the towel multiple times a day it’s getting a lot more use and likely never totally drying out between washes. I’d recommend a second towel and/or more frequent washes of the towels.

If you use the towel for showering at home only 3 times a week (for example you shower at the gym and they provide towels there) then you could radially go multiple weeks without washing your towels just because they aren’t being used.

Finally replacing. I also don’t have a strong answer for that but I replace them when I notice they either stop absorbing water as well or when the threads are getting much thinner. Current set of towels is 3 years old and replaced a set of towels that were 8 years old. Also if the towels get significantly dirty or stained (blood usually in my case) I’ll replace them.

I also wash them weekly and I only buy new ones once they start to feel uncomfortable or get holes in them.

I wash them whenever I've dirtied enough for a full load, and if I don't, I'll often throw the bathroom mats in there with them. Frankly though, still nowhere near often enough. If they pass the sniff and squint tests (smell and look fine), I'm usually OK using them again. And again.

There was already a towel wash pencilled in for this week or next, oddly enough, before this question showed up, or else it might have shamed me into considering it. Other laundry is first in the queue though.

As for throwing them out? Never had need in the 20+ years I've had my own towels, and some of those were hand-me-downs.

I remember one particularly large brown bath towel starting to fall apart at my parents' house long before I moved out, and I still kind of miss it, which is kind of funny.

Now, washcloths made of towelling material - I've ruined a fair few of those with careless wringing. PSA: Don't fold them diagonally before wringing them out.