If your family’s laundry routine involves tossing everything into the machine together, you might want to reconsider how you handle towels. These bathroom essentials actually require special treatment that makes them poor candidates for mixed loads with regular clothing.
The thick, absorbent nature of towels means they need more intense cleaning than your everyday clothes. While that cotton t-shirt does fine in a normal cycle, towels benefit from hotter water and more agitation to truly get clean. When washed with clothes, the towels don’t get cleaned properly and the clothes get unnecessarily roughed up.
Then there’s the lint factor. New towels especially shed countless tiny fibers that will coat every other item in the load. That favorite black dress or dark work pants will come out looking like they’ve been through a snowstorm. The texture of towels can also cause premature wear on delicate fabrics through repeated washing.
From a hygiene standpoint, towels collect more bacteria and body oils than clothes. Washing them together means spreading those germs to items you wear directly against your skin. And when drying, the heavy towels will either leave clothes damp or force you to over-dry everything to get the towels fully dry.
