Friday Hack: Multi-toweling

I was brought up with three siblings, and at a certain point it seems that moms decide they don't need to encourage any more laundry.

So when I showered I don't remember paying any special attention to towels, I'd pretty much just try to find one that wouldn't make me wetter by using it.

Of course when you grow up you usually get to the point where the idea of sharing bath towels reveals itself for the germ-swapping habit it really is, and you start to try to only use towels that YOU have used. You don't want to wipe someone else's remnant filth on your supposedly clean body.

Some people I've seen actually go to the extent of only using towels once, but I never really wanted to spend that much time washing towels. As the years went by I started to be more conscious of the idea that I didn't feel comfortable wiping my face with a towel that had been used elsewhere on my body, if you get my drift. Being me I tried to think of "hacks", ways to keep the microbes native to one region from traveling to more sensitive places, like my face.

The first idea I had was to mark a towel, and use the ends carefully. Then I realized that towels were already marked, usually with a cloth tag, and I thought, "Use the tag on your face, and the rest of the towel everywhere else." But even this is not really satisfying to me.

Now I'm multi-toweling.

On my towel bar I keep a large towel and a small one. And whether after a shower or any time else, I only use the small towel on my face, and the large one elsewhere.

Now I can use a towel on my face and feel unafraid of bodily cross-contamination!