There’s nothing like wrapping yourself in a clean and fluffy towel after showering – how often do you experience this luxurious feeling?
According to shocking survey results by Showers to You, over one million Brits only wash their towels once a year. It also found a whopping 190,000 bacterial counts on towels immediately after they’ve been freshly laundered.
After being used for just one day, this skyrockets to a staggering 17 million, and an astounding 94 million in just a week. If that doesn’t make you want to chuck all your towels in the washing machine, we don’t know what will.
So how often should you wash your towels? Official advice recommends washing towels after just three uses, yet a baffling 3% of Brits surveyed by Showers to You (nearly two million) confessed to only refreshing their bathroom towels once a year. Moreover, the research found that “almost one in 10 UK residents (8%) surveyed only wash their bathroom towels twice a year, equating to over 4 million people.”
When examining the gender divide, it was found that men “were five times more likely to clean their bathroom towels just once a year, with five per cent of male respondents admitting to giving them an annual wash, compared to one per cent of women.”
A shocking third of UK residents surveyed “wash their bathroom towels just once every three months”, suggesting that over 17 million Brits could be neglecting towel hygiene. So which cities had the least hygienic habits?
Leicester and Glasgow seem to be the worst offenders, with residents from both cities “most likely to go the longest without washing their bathroom towels, with over four in 10 (41%) from both cities admitting to only washing their towels every three months at the most.”
Healthline warns that this isn’t a habit we should be getting into. The website states “Towels absorb a lot of water and remain damp for hours, which is the perfect breeding ground for unwanted germs. That’s why towels should be washed every three uses.”