Turns out there's a reason you should treat your towels as separate things, and that reason is germs. Bath towels, especially, should be treated as their own thing because washing them with clothes, or other items like tea towels, can transfer bacteria between them all.
Towel care
Ideally, wash kitchen and bathroom towels separately — and never commingle cleaning rags with any other kind of laundry, to avoid contamination. If you do not use a fresh washcloth or bath towel every day, hang them to dry between uses to keep them from developing a musty, mildewy smell.
The USDA warns against the cross containment of certain kitchen items, including towels, as they can be a source of bacteria that can cause foodborne illness. Putting them into separate loads prevents this from happening while still getting them clean and safe to use.
While it's common to separate laundry based on colour and fabric, few may know bath towels and tea towels should never be washed together. In order to avoid cross-contamination, it's optimum to wash bath and hand towels separately to kitchen towels.
Wash Towels With Detergent
Wash white towels using hot water, detergent, and a non-chlorine bleach or natural fabric brightener (like sodium percarbonate) according to package directions. White towels stay brighter when washed in hot water. Wash colorful towels in warm water, using detergent with color-safe bleach.
You should wash dish towels frequently—we recommend every three to five days. Depending on how you use the dish towel, you may need to wash it more often. For example, if you use a dish towel to clean up spills and messes, we recommend swapping it out for a clean one and washing it sooner so bacteria don't build up.
Soak them in a bucket of warm water and vinegar for about 15 minutes. Sprinkle in about 1 tablespoon baking soda. These are both proven odor busters! If your dish cloths/towels are white, add bleach into the load when you wash them.
Don't wash different colored towels together. Don't wash different types of towels together. Don't wash towels with other laundry items. Never overload the washing machine or dryer [source: Doctor Joe].
You can wash bath and kitchen towels together, but you should wash them at a higher temperature (60 °C or above) in order to kill germs. It's also fine to separate your towel types and wash them as a different load to one another to be on the safe side.
Hot water is the most hygienic option for towels. Washing in cold water is sometimes recommended to extend the life of towels, but to clean towels thoroughly, we'd advise using the maximum temperature shown on the label.
How do you store dirty and wet dish cloths correctly? The best place to keep your dish cloth is within your sink because you don't want water from the cloth dripping down to anywhere else but your sink. Moreover, your cloth needs to be hung in a place, where air can go through and helps them to dry quickly.
Towels can be washed with anything cotton — so t-shirts, socks, cotton or flannel PJs, sweats, sheets and so on are all fair game. Gym clothes — anything with lycra or spandex — hate towels and fleece, so don't mix those things if you can avoid it.
You shouldn't use fabric conditioner at all – or, at most, only a little – when washing towels in order to keep towels soft and absorbent, so this may influence what you choose to put together in the drum. Note also that new towels may shed fluff, so this can be a reason to wash them as a separate load at first.
Washing your towels with a detergent that cleans deep like Defunkify will result in a funk-free towel for future use - but please, don't share towels (aka bacteria breeding receptacles) with your family members between washes! Secondly, sharing towels can lead to skin problems.
Avoid splotchy colors or dingy whites by washing similarly colored towels together. Too many towels washed at once won't get clean, but too few means greater agitation for quicker wear and tear. Most front-loading washing machines can fit seven standard-size bath towels; top-loading washers can fit around nine or ten.
Bath Towels Need to Be Broken-In
But you may not have known that your new bath towel has a "break in" period before it reaches maximum softness and absorbency. In fact, it can take as many as three full wash cyclesfor your bath towel to feel great and absorb water the way it was designed to.
"For bathroom towels, they should be washed every 3-4 days, whereas kitchen towels need much more frequent cleaning," explains Wischnia. "A good thing to note is when they are wet, make sure to hang them dry instead of leaving them bunched up, as they can get musty."
Dead skin cells, bacteria, and even sweat can accumulate quickly on your towels, so using a fresh one about every three days is a simple rule of thumb—for all kinds of towels. You can of course change them more often.
Reusing towels a few times is better for the environment and likely won't be a cause for alarm. But as soon as you notice any funky smells, it's definitely time for a wash, since this is an indication of fungal and bacterial growth, Mohammed said.
There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Many doctors say a daily shower is fine for most people. (More than that could start to cause skin problems.) But for many people, two to three times a week is enough and may be even better to maintain good health.
In many restaurant kitchens, each cook works with two side towels or stacks of side towels: some for dry work (as a pot holder) and others for wet work (wiping up the station). Wet towels conduct heat quickly, so you don't want to cross over and use a wet towel as a pot holder.
Bacteria can survive regular detergent, according to Gerba, so use hot water and a product with activated oxygen bleach to thoroughly clean towels. You may be able to go slightly longer before washing if you're careful about keeping towels very dry, Whittier says.
Baking Soda and Vinegar Deep Clean
But, in this method, you load the towels with a quarter cup of baking soda first. Then run the washing machine on the hottest cycle possible. Heat is known to kill bad bacteria, so the hot-water wash with the baking soda is sort of like a deep clean on its own.
To wash bleach-safe bed sheets and towels, machine wash in the hottest water recommended using a good detergent and ⅔ cup Clorox® Disinfecting Bleach in a traditional deep-fill washer, or ⅓ cup Clorox® Disinfecting Bleach in a high efficiency clothes washer. Make sure the bleach contacts the load for 10 minutes.