[Closed] Why is my shower towel grubby, and other questions

My work shower towel is brown, and as such doesn't get grubby 😉

My guess is not cleaning legs properly, grubby chain marks, dry as f. just now so legs get mega dusty (my running shoes are manky, and not from mud!)

try anal bleaching

Why after hoovering, regardless of how conscientiously do all the corners, and go over every square inch, do i find missing spots only after I've put the damned thing away again?

You've just got out of the shower and you cannot think of a potential source of brown streaks?

Like a wooden towel rail or something.

Why after hoovering, regardless of how conscientiously do all the corners, and go over every square inch, do i find missing spots only after I’ve put the damned thing away again?

That sucks.

Op, You are a wally and icmfp

Why after hoovering, regardless of how conscientiously do all the corners, and go over every square inch, do i find missing spots only after I’ve put the damned thing away again?

Oh, oh, I know the answer to this one! It's "small children".

Or it is in our house, at any rate.

You’ve just got out of the shower and you cannot think of a potential source of brown streaks?

Like a wooden towel rail or something.

Nope. Hung from a chrome hook on the back of a painted door. Anyway, there's no brown streaks... Eewwww. It just looks...off white after a while.

Hung from a chrome hook

There's your answer, hang it on a proper laptop.

Chapeau 👏

So how does it get grubby eventually?

And I'd have thought that the answer is obvious.
Fake tan.

For the OP it might be some of the materials you work with.

I've found with some paints and glues,  polyeurathane wood glue and hammerite seem to be particular villains- if i get some on my hands and if it sets no amount of washing will get it off - but when I get in the bath it transfers effortlessly to the nice white plastic bath handles and then is really tenaciously stuck and seemingly dried on to them instead. When I had one of the white polycarbonate iMacs even if my hands seemed perfectly clean stuff would stick to it where my palms rested on the plastic after I'd been working - poly glue in particular was a real devil for that

So although you're getting out of the shower 'clean' there may be leftovers of your day-job on your hands that don't wash off but will happily transfer to your towel afterwards instead

Do you wash it? In hot water? Every 3 uses or so? If not then it's some kind of grim fungus you are rubbing over your body. Yeuch.

Mine doesn't.

Maybe your water isn't very clean?

Do you wash it? In hot water? Every 3 uses or so?

You wash towels every day?

Ooo Mumsnet. Scuttles off...

You DON'T wash towels every day?

You DON’T wash towels every day?

Well technically I'm the cleanest thing in the house when I get out of the shower...

You DON’T wash towels every day?

No, but then I don't live in Claridges innit.

I don't live in Claridges either - still don't rub myself with a filthy brown mouldy towel every time I get out of the shower, which seems to defeat the purpose of the shower in the first place. I rotate a few towels so I have a nice dry one at all times for shower and hand-basin, they all get washed properly at the weekend.

And I always know where they are, of course.

Time for new towels
🙂

I don’t live in Claridges either – still don’t rub myself with a filthy brown mouldy towel every time I get out of the shower, which seems to defeat the purpose of the shower in the first place.

Your towels get filthy brown and moldy after one wash? Wtf?

To the OP - your washing in the shower does not remove absolutely every trace of any kind of material from your skin unless you are scrubbing every inch of yourself raw in every shower. When you dry yourself, small amounts of material will end up in the towel which accumulate over time and attract bacteria.

However this takes a couple of weeks and not overnight like hels apparently thinks.. who appears to be something of a germophobe!

I was going to guess the slightly less disgusting, soap residue.

Molgrips. Concise and informative, thank you.

I’m calling shenanigans 🤣

(But in case not...)

Oils from your skin, Demodex mites (which feast on your follicle-cells and your sebum before pooping on you) and all kinds of bacteria. And (most of all) - dead skin. All of these things cling to you even during showering. When you use a towel it’s basically an exfoliation-device. A sludge-gathering rag that cleans you after you’ve showered. And yes, by the law of averages a towel will gather more than a few of those tiny arachnids that happily **** each other on your face day and night.

Ask yourself...are you a rubber? Or a dabber?

are you really clean when you get out though?

Do you shower with a microabrasive mitt and scented gel, or one of those plastic pouffy things (our house name for it, named by a four year old, not a homophobic slur) taking sufficient time to use up most of the hot water and leave just enough to get in, get your hair lathered before it goes cold so you have to rinse like an early 20th century boarding school boy.

Or do you do the classic bloke shower (cross shaped, water gets the rest)

Anyone washing towels every day (or even every few days) needs to have a word with themselves. Do you know how much energy/water that wastes?

Is this the OPs way of getting folk to tell him he's actually a very dirty, dirty boy?

Hels - They wrote a song about you back in the day

Do you shower with a microabrasive mitt and scented gel,

120 grit wet 'n' dry and poorfega.

Oils from your skin, Demodex mites (which feast on your follicle-cells and your sebum before pooping on you) and all kinds of bacteria. And (most of all) – dead skin. All of these things cling to you even during showering. When you use a towel it’s basically an exfoliation-device. A sludge-gathering rag that cleans you after you’ve showered. And yes, by the law of averages a towel will gather more than a few of those tiny arachnids that happily **** each other on your face day and night.

Does any of that actually matter though?

The benign bacteria that cover our bodies actually keep some more dangerous ones in check - there was an experiment on a Michael Mosely programme where he swabbed his body and daubed it over two agar covered dummies, one of which was treated with antibiotics. The non-treated one had loads of bacteria species all over it, mostly benign. The antibiotics however killed all the other bacteria except the tiny amount of MRSA present, which then took over the whole dummy.

That's why I just do the bloke wash as described above. Keeps the bacteria and also the oils that protect my skin.

Peed off with having to wash your hands every time you visit the thunderbox?
Just wash them thoroughly in the morning and then you're done for the day.

Yeah yeah, you all shower once a week, whether you need to or not. Grimsters.