Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with towels

Wrinkly Shirts and Linty Towels

phrakture — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:48:09 -0800

[LaundryFilter] I need help de-wrinkling and de-linting my clothes and towels! This is kinda two questions in one, but I expect they are related.

a) I have a few shirts that I love, but react as if they were made of paper whenever I wear them. They come out of the dryer fine, but after hanging for a bit, they end up looking like tissue paper (small, fine wrinkles). Ironing has the same effect - looks nice for a matter of minutes, but they seem to spring back to tissue-paper state.

Any tips for ways to keep things less wrinkly (including shirt collars on button-up and polos) and save me some ironing time would be appreciated. Think buying one of those fabric steamer things would help?

b) In a similar manner, I have some towels that always seem to get lint all over me when I dry off. I like the towels, but the lint factor is annoying. I've tried drying them in a drying repeatedly, shaking them out, and a few other things, but it doesn't work. How does one de-lint towels like this?

So yeah. Help me figure out my laundry issues and I'll give you a cookie.

I need absorbent towels

peep — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:51:11 -0800

I need recommendations for bath towels, and they need to meet only one criterion: they must absorb and remove water from my body. Any bath towels I've purchased in the past 4 years or so have been absolute crap at absorbing water.

I got a set of very plush, quality-seeming towels for Christmas, and they are like drying off with a plastic bag. They just smear the water around and it's maddening.

Notes: I do NOT use any fabric softening products on towels. I have washed all of these towels many, many times, and their absorbancy has not increased. I've tried soaking them in a tub full of borax. Nothing helps. At this point we're using our old, ratty, scratchy towels from YEARS ago, because at least they dry us off.

I've Googled the old towel brands in hopes of purchasing more of those, but none of them appear to be available (most were probably Mervyn's towels and there are no longer any stores here).

So, any recommendations for awesome, absorbent towels you've purchased somewhat recently?

How to clean Musty Towels

milestogo — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:34:00 -0800

How can I get this awful, musty smell out of my towels? A wierd thing happened with my towels. I left them in my apartment over the summer, and the subletter here made the entire place stink, including my towels on the linen rack. When I came back, I noticed thier awful, musty smell (same as the apartment smelled), and threw them in the wash. They came out just fine.

Here is the wierd part: after one use, the old smell was triggered again and it reemerged! So they smell just as bad as when I thre them into the wash. How can I remove this smell once and for all?

Do any MeFites have similar experiences?

Thanks, all!

Roseanne Barr's towel folding advice?

emhutchinson — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:02:10 -0800

Does anyone remember Roseanne Barr's rant about pre-menopausal women and towel folding/hanging as means to waylay the beast? Long ago I was a young mother and peripherally watched some stand-up thing (we had cable, and tv too! back then) in which Ms. Barr let loose a screed about women obsessing about towels. "If I hang them up just so, all will be right in this the most perfect of worlds," or something. I had no idea what she was talking about, spending most of my hanging up time hanging up diapers. Years have passed, and I think of this every time I go in the bathroom and decide whether to scream at my sleeping teenage sons to "pick up your towels!" or do it myself, so they'll be hung up "just right." Menopause is no fun, MeFi folk.

Google and Youtube have not given me what I am looking for. I just want to hear her explanation of the towel thing. Thanks in advance.

What’s bleaching my towels all splotchy like?

funkiwan — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 09:27:08 -0800

Help me figure out what’s bleaching my towels and possibly causing health problems. Hint: I don't think it's my facewash. I moved in to an apartment in NYC in April and have noticed that my bathroom towels are being bleached in a splotchy way. At first I thought it was because I was using Benzoyl Peroxide while showering as mentioned in a previous askmefi so I became rigorous in my rinsing ritual. Then I noticed it was affecting all of the towels in my bathroom, including the one I only use in wiping the mirror. This is not happening in the laundry cycle as I’ve noticed it in a brand new towel that had yet to be washed.

Occam's razor suggests that indeed the problem is just the Benzoyl Peroxide and I must have somehow gotten it on to all of the towels involved. The thing is, I seem to have a much higher incidence of canker sores (Note: not cold sores) that are more painful and longer-lasting since moving in. I don’t know that the two are related but I thought it might be relevant.

I’m wondering if anyone has any ideas of what might be going on? Could there be something in my water causing this? Does anyone know where I could get a water test that would help me figure this out? I don't have any idea what I would even look for. I’d like to have some proof before I bring it up with the landlord so I don’t seem like a total nutjob.

My facewash bleached and ruined my new washcloth!

saucy — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 18:03:35 -0800

My facewash bleached and ruined my new washcloth! It left a pretty brown washcloth with a giant orange splotch!

I know this one is not salvagable, but is there anything I can do to keep this from happening to my other new washcloths (short of not using them or switching face washes?)

This face wash has not bleached other similarly colored (older) washclothes before, and the new ones had been washed before use. Are all my new washclothes destined to be only decoration?

Towels!

jewzilla — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:55:15 -0800

I want to purchase the very best towels money can buy. Soft, absorbent, and not perpetually fluff-shedding. I can't find a robust source of reviews (who would review a towel, after all?) but I'm tired of spending too much money on too little towel. For example, amazon has one or two reviews that don't tell me much for almost every decent-looking towel in their inventory (I searched on Egyptian Cotton).

Any recommendations? What should I look for?

How fast do swim/travel towels dry?

duck — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 18:49:14 -0800

How fast do swim towels dry? I'm thinking of buying a swim towel to keep at the gym. They say they dry "in minutes". Would it dry in the 3-10 minutes it takes me to get dressed so I could keep in my my locker without worrying about mold? Or should I just keep paying for towel service?

Why can't we use bleach on white cotton?

grumblebee — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 05:11:20 -0800

My wife and I threw away all our multi-colored towels and replaced them with white ones. We did this so that we could throw them in the wash with some bleach and get them really really clean. The new towels are 100% cotton. When we looked at the tags, we were surprised to see a "DO NOT USE BLEACH" warning. Why can't we use bleach? That's the whole reason we bought them. I've never heard of that warning before on white cotton items. If it makes any difference, they come from The Company Store.

how much do you use a towel?

Capn — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 07:34:55 -0800

For how many showers do you use a towel before throwing it in the hamper?