You Deserve Better Towels

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Speaker 11 Towels, especially, it's because cotton and linen are more absorbent. They're porous fibers naturally.
And so they're thirsty. I'm not talking about like romantic

Speaker 11 levels of thirsty hair. I just mean that they physically want to soak up a lot of water.

Speaker 11 I'm Christine Zier-Clissette. I'm Kyra Blackwell.
I'm Rosie Garin. And you're listening to The Wire Cutter Show.

Speaker 11 This episode is called You Deserve Better Towels.

Speaker 11 Guys, I was doing some laundry last night and I realized at a certain point that I had folded like

Speaker 11 eight towels. But the thing about this, and I know this sounds random, but the thing about this is None of them matched.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 11 And then I was starting to go back through my personal history trying to remember remember where all these towels came from.

Speaker 11 I was like, they're all kind of in varying forms of degradation, I think maybe is a good way to put it. And I was thinking that maybe it's time for an overhaul.
Right.

Speaker 11 I just feel like that's how you come to collect towels over your life. It's like a really boring collector's item.

Speaker 11 I feel like leveling up is having a full set of matching towels. I mean, I feel like Christine, you have a full set of

Speaker 11 do.

Speaker 11 Yeah, of course I do. Are they all the same color, too?

Speaker 11 Well, you know what? Actually, I have some, I have a couple sets in different colors, but I will tell you that I didn't actually achieve that until my late 30s, early 40s.

Speaker 11 So is it fair to conclude that perhaps, Kyra, you do not have a full set of matching towels? Don't look at me right now. She's setting me up because she knows I only have one towel.

Speaker 11 Wait a minute. That seems pretty extreme.
Are you like a

Speaker 11 gymnastic person or something? Like, are you, you just like, you just have like one chair in your apartment and one towel? Okay, call me one, Christine. One dangling bulb.
Yes, actually.

Speaker 11 That's my entire life. But I had a towel collection, but all of them just got so raggedy so fast.
They're now all just rags. Yeah.
And now I just have one functioning towel. Yeah.

Speaker 11 You know, this is actually, I think, pretty common. Towels are kind of one of those things that, you know, they don't last forever.
They get raggedy.

Speaker 11 And it can be expensive to buy nice ones that will last. There's also just a ton of options out there.
So I think there can be a little bit of decision fatigue to kind of figure out what you want.

Speaker 11 And they're not cheap. No, they're not cheap.
There's so many things we talk about. Yeah.
You know, I've also edited a lot of our towel coverage.

Speaker 11 And I just know that in general, towels can be really polarizing.

Speaker 11 Like if you are in a partnership with someone and you like one kind of towel and they like a different kind of towel, it can be kind of hard to decide which ones to get.

Speaker 11 So, you know, they're just very, very subjective things. I get that.
I mean, I covered mattresses for a few years and obviously people have different tastes.

Speaker 11 But the wonderful wonderful thing about towels is that you don't have to share. Like you can just

Speaker 11 share your own towel. Yeah.
BYO towel. Yeah.

Speaker 11 I'm so thankful that we, of course, have somebody to talk to about this.

Speaker 11 And that person is Jackie Reeve, which I'm so excited about because Jackie is our in-house expert who knows a ton about textiles, but she specifically covers towels and sheets, as you guys, I'm sure, remember when we did our sheets episode a few months ago.

Speaker 11 That was like one of my favorite episodes. Yeah.

Speaker 11 So hopefully she's going to help me and all of us find a set of towels that we all like so we never have to think about this problem ever again, or at least for the next five to ten years, maybe.

Speaker 11 Jackie's going to walk us through the different kinds of towels you can buy, secrets to figuring out the real texture of a towel before you invest in an entire set, which, you know, this is going to save you money in the long run, and how to care and maintain for all of your towels.

Speaker 11 That's all coming up after the break. See you in a sec.

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Speaker 11 Welcome back to the Wire Cutter Show. With us now is Jackie Reeve, who is a senior staff writer.
She's covered everything from bath towels to rugs, even.

Speaker 11 So she actually told us in her Sheets episode that she has a whole second laundry room in her basement just for for all the things that she tests for wire cutter, which is wild. That's truly wild.

Speaker 11 Jackie, welcome to the show. Thank you.
It's really great to have you on again. I loved talking about sheets the last time with you.

Speaker 11 And something that I think is just wild is you told us a little bit about the setup in your house for testing all of the textiles that you test at home.

Speaker 11 You test sheets, you test blankets, obviously towels. How many towels do you think you currently have in your home? Oh my God.

Speaker 11 I mean, I, you know, towels, do you mean like towels that have become rags because I've tested them into the ground or do you mean towels that you could actually clean your body with? Both.

Speaker 11 A couple dozen, probably. Okay.
I try to donate them on if they're not in terrible shape, but yeah, a lot of them become rags.

Speaker 11 And that doesn't count the ones that live in our greenhouse and outside with my chicken coop supplies. So the ones that are physically in the house, I'm sure I have at least a couple dozen.

Speaker 11 And how long have you been testing towels for wire cutter? Since 2017. Okay.
Wow. A long time.
Okay. So a common complaint that we see on wire cutter is just about the absorbency.

Speaker 11 People just don't seem to like that their towels don't seem to be that absorbent, or they don't think that they absorb water well. Are there some towels that are just more absorbent than others?

Speaker 11 Like, what's really going on there?

Speaker 11 I mean, yes, there are towels that are more absorbent than others, but one of the tricky things with testing these is that humans do not actually have a wetness receptor. What?

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 So like what does that mean? We don't have a mechanism for identifying wetness directly.

Speaker 11 What our brains do is they've formed all these other pathways and senses to tell when something is wet, but we cannot actually identify wetness. Insects can, but we can't.

Speaker 11 So what we use to detect wetness, temperature, because when things are cold, we tend to identify them as wet more than when they're warm.

Speaker 11 So if you've ever taken like a load of clothes out of your dryer when they've sat for a while, if they feel cold and you can't tell if they're wet or not, I

Speaker 11 have had

Speaker 11 knock down, drag out arguments about whether the clothes are cold or wet.

Speaker 11 And I never knew why because I always think they're just cold. Yeah, I do too.

Speaker 11 And I run them in the dryer for another 20 minutes, even psychologically, because if they take the laundry out warm, I think it's dry.

Speaker 11 And I've gotten trouble in the past for doing laundry, taking it out warm, and then finding out later it's clammy after it's like cooled off.

Speaker 11 And then like, oh, I didn't dry it enough, but I thought it was dry when I took it out of the dryer. 100%.
And that's one of the other senses that we use. So we basically use temperature and texture.

Speaker 11 And so the way it feels, you can sort of tell if something's clammy or like if you get dressed and you're still damp and your clothes stick to you, you can tell that there's still moisture on your skin.

Speaker 11 But technically, we do not have a wetness receptor. Smell comes in later.

Speaker 11 Like if you've ever done a load of laundry and you think it's good and dry and you fold it and put away, and then sometime later you pull a shirt out of a pile and you realize it stinks a little bit and it was probably not totally dry.

Speaker 11 That's one of my least favorite sensations ever. One of my least favorite smells.
Yeah. It's awful.
It's just like moldy. God, it sounds like humans need like a software update.

Speaker 11 That's such a flaw in our design. Isn't that a weird companion to let us know, like our little assistant.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 So if you take that into account and you think about how different humans respond to temperature, right?

Speaker 11 Like if you live with someone who's always changing the thermostat to the opposite of whatever you want it to be, you know, you run hot, someone runs cold.

Speaker 11 That makes it really tricky to pin down wetness.

Speaker 11 But I think because those things are really different from person to person, then that to me, that means that the way a towel feels to someone when they're drying off and that sense of how well it's absorbing is going to be different from person to person.

Speaker 11 Everyone will kind of experience it differently, which, you know, like a lot of the things I test, it's really subjective.

Speaker 11 And it sort of makes identifying the best anything challenging because I can try and find the best thing for the most people, but it's never going to be perfect. Right.

Speaker 11 So it must be then really difficult to actually test absorbency, like in an empirical way. I mean, we would need a lab, really, to be able to tell.
So it's wildly challenging.

Speaker 11 And so when I've done panel tests for towels, I rarely have someone give me the same answer for absorbency. You know, like I don't get a consensus when I do that.
Everybody experiences it differently.

Speaker 11 And so a lot of what I'm looking at is texture, which is also different from person to person, but like texture, overall quality, how it washes, does it pill? Does it fall apart? Sure.

Speaker 11 You know, does it hold its color? All that good stuff.

Speaker 11 So Jackie, this question might be simplistic, but I do want to zoom all the way out. Can you lay out for us the main types of towels you can get?

Speaker 11 What are my options if I'm going into a store and shopping online? All right. So a Terry towel is the most common in the U.S.

Speaker 11 It's been, you know, sort of generally the most popular for years. And it is made with loops of yarn that are attached to a base layer from both sides.

Speaker 11 So it's going to be loops on the front and the back. It is heavy because it just has more material in it.
The way they're constructed is not dissimilar to a carpet.

Speaker 11 And we think of these Terry towels as like the plushest, softest kind of towel, right? Think of it as like a classic sort of hotel towel. You know, wrap yourself up in it.
It's really soft.

Speaker 11 If you are someone who likes to wrap up in a towel and hang out in it for a while, a good plush Terry towel feels amazing. Terry towels are going to be the heaviest towels by weight.

Speaker 11 And that's actually a feature, not a bug. Part of how Terry towels are measured and advertised is is by weight.

Speaker 11 And because there's so much material on them and it sticks up off the surface, they take up more room to store. Okay, so that's terry towels.
The next type of towel is waffle towels, right?

Speaker 11 Can you tell us about those? Waffle towels are, I would say, on the rise and they look like waffles. They are very light and they have sort of a 3D look to them.

Speaker 11 So they're covered in tiny little pockets of material.

Speaker 11 You can look into them and see some dimension, like a pie lattice or a honeycomb it's woven with just layers of yarn there's no material in the middle that a waffle towel is attached to it is just straight woven on a loom with layers of yarn going over and under each other in a pattern to make those little 3d pockets that you could just like plop some butter and syrup into.

Speaker 11 And so if you held a waffle towel up to the light, you probably could see through it, you know, because it's just yarns in layers.

Speaker 11 Whereas a terry towel, you can't see through it because there is material in the middle that both sides, those loops are attached to. And so by weight, waffle towels are super lightweight.

Speaker 11 And because you can see through them, you know, they dry pretty well. You know, they do the job with less material, basically.
I feel like I associate waffle towels with like spa

Speaker 11 loobes and stuff. They have a very spa vibe for sure.
I think of. Terry towels as classic plush, fat hotel towels and waffle towels as like soothing spa towels.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 11 It's very stretchy too as a material because of just the way it's woven, it has a little bit more give.

Speaker 11 And so that is appealing for some people, you know, different body shapes, things like that.

Speaker 11 And cons are that they snag really easily because that material, the way it's made, all those yarns are just very accessible to like the surface of a towel.

Speaker 11 So if you hang it on a hook, you could stretch out a hole in it. You know, if you snag it on something, you could pull out a thread of the yarn and, you know, kind of distort it.

Speaker 11 And also, people have really strong reactions to the texture of waffle towels.

Speaker 11 I mean, I don't want to say scratchy because that makes it sound like a negative, but that's something that we hear a lot for feedback on waffle towels is that they feel scratchier than a terry towel.

Speaker 11 And some people really are into it. You know, we also talk to a lot of people, and Christine, I think you're in this camp too, that they like a little texture to towels.
I like a little scratchiness.

Speaker 11 I don't like to be pampered by my towel. I want it to like scratch me a little bit.
You like a terry towel the best, don't you? No, no. My husband likes the terry towel and I

Speaker 11 actually prefer your next category, Jackie. Yes, and I know this.
Pestamal towels. I know this is your jam.

Speaker 11 So Peshtamal towels, I would say like really gaining popularity maybe 10, I don't know, 10 years ago before waffle towels started to become the ones I see the most.

Speaker 11 Pestamal towels were a popular alternative.

Speaker 11 And they are sometimes also called Turkish towels, which can be confusing because terry towels are sometimes also called Turkish towels just because of where the cotton is grown.

Speaker 11 But like, let's say a Turkish style towel, a pechamal towel, it's going to be flat woven, kind of like a tea towel. Super thin.
There's no height to it. So there's no material standing up from a base.

Speaker 11 And again, if you held it up to the light, it's pretty densely woven. You're not going to be able to see through it.

Speaker 11 I mean, I would say it's probably the lightest of the three and certainly like the easiest to store in a closet, right? They fold up really flat.

Speaker 11 Some people use them as beach towels because they're really easy to throw in a bag too and just be on the go with it.

Speaker 11 The cons are, again, people find them too thin and scratchy because it's just straight flat yarn, you know, that you're rubbing back and forth like across your body.

Speaker 11 It's just going to have a different feel to it than terry. And another con that we hear from people is that they feel more wet after you use them than a waffle or terry towel.

Speaker 11 And that's because they're flat. whatever water you transfer to it is right there on the surface.
So they're going to feel cold and a little clammy immediately.

Speaker 11 And some people, when the towel feels really wet, it gives them this feeling like you're just moving water around and you're just touching a cold, clammy thing to your body.

Speaker 11 It doesn't actually feel to some people like it's getting you dry. So Christine, is it masochism or what is it that makes you love the pechamel? Talk about it.
I like that they're lightweight.

Speaker 11 I do like a little texture. Like the pextamel towels I like, they're not super scratchy, but they, I really like that I can wrap them around my body.

Speaker 11 And I'm not like, you know, with a terry cloth towel that's really thick, it's kind of hard to wrap it around your body and like, you know, keep it on. Fasten it to a fastening.
It's more rigid.

Speaker 11 Pestamal is so lightweight that you can just wrap it around. I can walk around.
I kind of almost feel like I'm wearing a robe or something. And my kids also really like the Peshtamal.

Speaker 11 Now, my husband hates it. He does not like it.
He feels like it's just pushing the water around. He also doesn't like that it does get really wet.

Speaker 11 Think about just having a huge tea towel and wrapping it around your body. That would be really gross for some people.
And for me, I think it's awesome. Like, I like it.
I'm Team Your husband.

Speaker 11 I do not like that feeling. Not a fan.
Pechmel towels are popular in like hot climates, you know, where, like, I mean, if you lived in the tropics, would you want to wrap up in a terry towel?

Speaker 11 Maybe not. No, you know, that just might be a lot to do.
I think that's why I like them because I really just want to be living in the tropics. Right?

Speaker 11 You can, you can imagine, like, you know, it has kind of a beach vibe. Yeah.
Beach spa hotel. That's how I sort of think of the three categories.

Speaker 11 Okay, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, Jackie is going to debunk some towel myths.

Speaker 11 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 4 Your home is an active investment, not a passive one.

Speaker 5 And with Rocket Mortgage, you can put your home equity to work right away. When you unlock your home equity, you unlock new doors for your family.

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Speaker 8 Get started today with smarter tools and guidance from real mortgage experts.

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Speaker 11 Welcome back to the Wire Cutter Show. This episode, we're talking with Jackie Reeve, our textile expert, and we're talking all about towels.
It's always so fun with Jackie. It really is.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 So if you're out in the wild and you want to buy a good towel, what do you recommend, Jackie, people look for on labels? So 100% cotton first or linen.

Speaker 11 And a cotton linen blend is also fine, you know, but you just want it to be entirely made up of natural fibers. Why is that the case?

Speaker 11 With towels, especially, it's because cotton and linen are more absorbent. They're porous fibers naturally.
And so they're thirsty. Not thirsty like.
Like they want to, they want to

Speaker 11 be thirsty. Yeah, no, thirsty like they.
absorb a lot of water. I'm not talking about like romantic levels of thirsty hair.
I just mean that they physically want to soak up a lot of water.

Speaker 11 And so, synthetic towels, like those fibers are finer. They're much smaller, thinner material.
And so they don't have as much space to hold water as a good natural fiber like cotton or linen.

Speaker 11 And they feel totally different. And so, yeah, we tend to just recommend cotton and linen because

Speaker 11 they're the most durable. And so they last longer.
They feel great. And they're, you know, fantastic.
What about microfiber that supposedly dries super fast? Don't do it. But no, no, no.

Speaker 11 But what, what about

Speaker 11 another nostalgia hit? Why are we all not just toweling off our bodies with the sham wow?

Speaker 11 Don't do it. Don't do it.
But that means absorb six gallons of water. I saw it on TV.
Do you remember what it feels like when it dries off? It's like trying to towel off with a sheet of cardboard.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Well, also, because like a sham wow is kind of one type of material and then a microfiber cloth is another type of material.

Speaker 11 And we have a lot of cleaning guides and we recommend microfiber cloths in almost every single one of those guides.

Speaker 11 And it's because they have these little fibers that are really great at picking up dust and they don't leave streaks and stuff.

Speaker 11 But if you touch those with your skin, they just, it feels like those little fibers are grabbing onto your skin in a very unpleasant way. So gross.
Yeah, it's not like a scratchy, nice way.

Speaker 11 It's kind of like a

Speaker 11 yeah, it's not, it's not nice. When I clean with microfiber, I have to wear gloves.
The texture is so unpleasant. You can't pick it up in the winter.

Speaker 11 If you have dry skin, yeah, it's just like you're going to be like flipping your hand trying to get rid of it. Yeah.
The static alone.

Speaker 11 Don't dry yourself off with a microfiber towel and then touch a metal doorknob. It'll ruin the day.
You heard it here first, folks. If you walk away with nothing.

Speaker 11 Let's say I know I like a plush towel, for example. I can go into a store and feel a bunch of terry towels towels and pick the one that feels softest.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 Is that going to be enough to know if I'll continue to like the way it feels and drives me off once I get home and take it for a spin? Yes and no.

Speaker 11 It does make a lot of sense to touch towels in a store to see how they feel. However, what I think you're really looking for is like, do I like how fat this is? Do I like the weight of this?

Speaker 11 Do I like the, if you run your hand over it, do I like the way the terry loops kind of move in the wind? That kind of thing.

Speaker 11 But just like with sheets and every other textile that i write about and we talk about towels come with a ton of finishes on them and so how a towel feels on a store shelf or when it arrives at your house brand new is probably not the way it's going to feel after a few washes and in fact we definitely recommend wash your towels at least one time before you use them and It takes about five washes to get all traces of those new finishes out of of a textile.

Speaker 11 And towels use a ton of them because if you think about it, they're more saturated with dye than a lot of other household textiles.

Speaker 11 They're more colorful and boldly colorful than like your sheets and, you know, some blankets even. They're really rich.
And that's because they just have lots of dye in them. And so

Speaker 11 that changes the surface feel of a towel when you have that much dye in it.

Speaker 11 And also they don't want those dyes to fade before you, the shopper, gets them and gets to go, oh, look at this amazing red towel. And so they put a ton of things.

Speaker 11 You know how you put like moisturizer on your skin to keep it locked in, right? Towels are the same. And so part of the manufacturing process involves putting a lot of.

Speaker 11 extra things to make them soft, to make them lustrous, to make them look amazing, and to keep that color on them as long as possible.

Speaker 11 And so you can absolutely touch a towel in a store to get a sense of whether or not you like it.

Speaker 11 But in terms of softness and how it's going to feel on your body after a shower, you really need to wash them a bunch of times before you get all of those extras out and get to the true feel.

Speaker 11 My mom is out in the world evangelizing your coverage. Um, Jackie and the wire cutter specifically.
Rosie's mom is my biggest fan.

Speaker 11 Yeah, and she came over the other day and she bought me a set of L Bean flannel sheets because she knows the way

Speaker 11 to my heart. Yeah, and then she's talking to me about she's like, Well, you got to wash them because the conditioners and the this and the.
I'm like, Do you listen to my show?

Speaker 11 Do you know Jackie Reef? So anyway, a lot of this is ringing true and I, and I love it. And it's interesting to me that it is a lot of the same stuff for towels as well.

Speaker 11 It's true for towels. It's maybe even more true for towels than it is for sheets because you're using towels in one of the most vulnerable situations you could be in, right? It is right.

Speaker 11 in all the nooks and crannies of your naked body. It is.

Speaker 11 And so how it feels is, you know, one of the most important things about how it works, especially, you know, tied into how we sort of understand wetness and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 11 And so you definitely have to wash them several times, which makes it really challenging to buy like six towels at once. Well, this is something I want to ask you.

Speaker 11 So, okay, if you're going to buy six towels, that's a big investment. That's like 15 to 30 bucks a towel.

Speaker 11 At least, I mean, you don't want to buy a bunch of towels, wash them five times and be like, oh, I actually don't like these. Yeah, that's like a very frustrating experience.

Speaker 11 So, what's your advice like to get a sense of what that towel will feel like? I would say buy one bath towel first and see if you actually like it before you commit to buying more.

Speaker 11 Having said that, that also comes with its own challenges, especially for more budget-friendly towels.

Speaker 11 Because one thing that we run into with our guide all the time, our top and like upgrade pick towels are expensive.

Speaker 11 And a big part of why that is is because they are consistently available.

Speaker 11 Like more high-end towels don't get discontinued as often, but a budget towel, like a towel from Target or Walmart, maybe even Amazon, they get discontinued constantly.

Speaker 11 And so our budget picks are the first ones to disappear. You know, sometimes even while I'm writing a guide, I'll be like, this is a great new budget towel.

Speaker 11 And I've had it just disappear while I'm writing the guide. They go that fast.
It's so frustrating. It's so frustrating.
Basically, you buy a cheap towel.

Speaker 11 You need to go home and wash it immediately five times and then decide. Just you've got a whole weekend task ahead of you.

Speaker 11 And And then if you like it, you go and buy it in bulk, call out of work, go home, watch it five. I'm sorry, I have an emergency.
And buy 300 of them. Yeah.

Speaker 11 I give you permission to take a day off work to do a towel experiment and like find what you like and then go back and stock up on them because we cannot promise that they will still be there.

Speaker 11 Okay, so now that we know what we're looking for, can you tell us how much we should expect to spend on each type of towel? Yeah. Good news is you don't have to spend a fortune.

Speaker 11 The bad news is you very well might. So for like a Terry towel,

Speaker 11 the good ones that I've tested can be as low as like $15,

Speaker 11 which is where a lot of our budget picks end up landing. They can be as much as $50

Speaker 11 or more. And inflation has some things to do with that.
Two of our... Longer running Terry picks are close to that $50 range.

Speaker 11 But for like our top pick towel, that front gate towel, which is a super plush Terry towel. towel.
Such a nice towel.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it is a really great towel, but it is significantly more expensive today than it was when we first recommended it in 2017. It was $28 or $29 when I first tested it.

Speaker 11 And I think it's currently $44. Wow.
But the towel itself really hasn't changed. It has just gone up for whatever reason.

Speaker 11 Waffle towels are consistently more expensive. We've found some really great budget.
waffle lately and that's a pretty like new addition to the world of towels that we've been testing.

Speaker 11 But good waffle towels are often 50 bucks. So waffle is typically more expensive.
And then Pestimal is, you know, sort of similar. It's in the sort of maybe $30 to $50

Speaker 11 price range for like a good one. I mean, Christine, I don't know how much you spend.
You know, I know you like a, I know you love them. I do.
I, I have spent up to 30.

Speaker 11 I also have like these Amazon ones that are made out of cotton that I really like. They're like six for 36.
Oh my gosh. Yeah.
I mean super cheap. I like them.
I don't know.

Speaker 11 I have one final question. How long should you expect a quality towel to last? Five to 10 years for a good towel.
And that sort of tracks with the testing I've done at this point. Like the,

Speaker 11 I still have and use the first front gate towel that I tested in 2017. And it obviously does not feel the same as a brand new towel, but it is closer than you would think.
It's pretty fantastic.

Speaker 11 That's pretty good. You're never going to be able to like revive a towel, right? Not really.
Yeah. Once it's sort of not plush and soft anymore.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I mean, people do by adding dryer sheets to them. And I will say, absolutely, do not put fabric softeners or dryer sheets in with your towels.

Speaker 11 Of all the things that you do laundry, you know, that you wash in the laundry, towels are the one thing that you should absolutely just never go near with that stuff because it affects their absorbency.

Speaker 11 So, if you're worried about how well a towel does its job, basically, all you're doing with a fabric softener is you're adding on the same kind of conditioners that are on it when it comes new.

Speaker 11 You spend all that work to wash them out to get that feel. You're just putting on another coating, basically, to make it soft.
And it's an artificial feeling. It will affect performance.

Speaker 11 Okay, Jackie, this is my favorite segment that we do. We're going to do a lightning round.
I'm going to give you a, like a rat-a-tat-tat list of questions. I don't want you to overthink it.

Speaker 11 Just answer as quick as you can. Okay.

Speaker 11 How often should you wash your bath towels? Every three days. You should change it every three days.
You can throw it in the hamper until you wash it, but every three days. What?

Speaker 11 Yep.

Speaker 11 I know. I feel like people are often shocked by that, but yeah.

Speaker 11 That skin that's coming off on it. It's, it's a, it's a good idea to wash it frequently.
Yeah. All right.
What do you do if you just have stinky towels?

Speaker 11 You just, you've washed them and they still stink. Make sure you're using a good detergent.
Don't use too much of it. Any extras that you add to the laundry can build up on a towel.

Speaker 11 And then if you have a stinky towel for whatever reason, just throw it back in the wash. And also make sure that it is, I say bone dry for things.

Speaker 11 And I understand that that is like maddening because I've also said we can't feel wetness. So like, what are you talking about, women?

Speaker 11 But get it as dry as humanly possible because any moisture left on that towel while it sits in storage and hangs out, you know, is going to make it stink.

Speaker 11 And just a quick aside, like the right amount of detergent should be probably around two tablespoons for a large load, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Okay, great. All right.

Speaker 11 How many towels should you have per person in a household?

Speaker 11 Okay, I like this question because I just finished working on this piece about linen closets and I talked to a bunch of professional organizers and asked them how many sheets and towels and things you should have.

Speaker 11 And generally two to four towels per person. That is so many towels.
I have like one and a half.

Speaker 11 Yeah, you want to have enough to rotate them out every three days and basically keep up with your own laundry cadence. What's the difference between a bath towel and a bath sheet?

Speaker 11 Bath sheets are just bigger.

Speaker 11 So if you're taller and you need more height when you wrap it around your body, or if you're larger and you need more width to cover your body, bass sheets are just bigger. Okay, that's great.

Speaker 11 So what is the deal with a beach towel? Beach towels are bigger, first of all. They're significantly bigger because you're also using them as like a blanket to lie on.

Speaker 11 And they are generally a shorter terry. And that is to make them lighter to carry, throw in a bag, fold up smaller.
And the idea is they'll dry faster.

Speaker 11 Okay, how do I tell when it's time to replace my towels?

Speaker 11 I would say when they they start fraying, if you notice that the edging is coming undone, you know, and you're, you're seeing threads everywhere, if the surface is pilling a lot and you're like, you know, picking off little bits of fluff, if the color is really gone, or if you just don't feel like they're feeling as good as they used to, but physical signs that they're falling apart are unraveling.

Speaker 11 Okay, so for dead towels, you mentioned you like to use yours in your chicken coop. Yes.

Speaker 11 But for like the regular people amongst us who don't have chicken coops, what do you recommend doing with old towels? Reach out to animal shelters.

Speaker 11 If they're in bad shape, I wouldn't donate them, you know, on to for other humans to use. But animal shelters, I mean, they need so many supplies, blankets, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 11 And so towels are great. Call a vet's office, call an animal shelter, see if they can use them.

Speaker 11 Before we wrap, we ask all of our guests one last question. What's the last thing you bought that you've really loved? I think the best thing that I bought.

Speaker 11 for anybody for Christmas is, and this might even be in one of our gift guides. This is how I heard about the company at least.

Speaker 11 We went to Japan last year for spring break and had this amazing trip and so for my husband for christmas i bought him from sagoy mart i think that's how you say it i bought him a 120 piece bag of japanese kit kats he is living his candy dreams with that bag of kit kats that has been a highlight of our january of my january is hearing him talk about how much he's enjoying all those kit kats i have that bag oh you do yeah i do and i now have to hide it from my family yeah i haven't seen it since i gave it to him me and my daughter have not had a single one of those Kit Kats.

Speaker 11 Went over well. Thanks, Jackie.
Went over well. Thanks, Jackie.
It's always fun to have you.

Speaker 11 Jackie, back again with all of the info nuggets and gems

Speaker 11 that I never knew about towels or textiles. Well, I've worked with Jackie for years and I feel like I just learned a bunch of stuff I actually didn't even know.
It's awesome.

Speaker 11 What are your takeaways from this one? So, okay, I got to say, this whole detail about us humans not having wetness receptors is blowing my mind. And I feel like it's my new cocktail party chatter.

Speaker 11 Like, by the way, did you know? I feel like this is that kind of thing. It's like, this is just wild.
The human body is wild. Why don't we have that?

Speaker 11 For me, I think I am going to be more open to different textures than I have previously. I've always gravitated toward Terry, but I'm intrigued by Waffle.

Speaker 11 I also appreciated Jackie's shorthand to remember what the textures should remind me of. Terry giving that hotel kind of style, Waffle giving spa,

Speaker 11 and Pech de Mal giving that sort of beach.

Speaker 11 Yes, it's so good. I have a lot of takeaways.

Speaker 11 First one being: I need to get more towels. More than one towel? It's like one and a half, Christine.
Okay, I have a backup. I just don't like it that much.

Speaker 11 Aside from that. I have a backup that that I hate.

Speaker 11 Guess I'll work on that. Also, I need to be washing my towels more than once a week.
Apparently, it's every three days. Yeah.
I mean, I guess it depends.

Speaker 11 If you only take three showers a week, then you're probably fine. No, I don't.
No, I take like two showers a day with my one crappy towel.

Speaker 11 My dude, you need to do that math because you're going to need more than one extra towel. Yeah.
We'll sidebar. Okay.

Speaker 11 That's it for us.

Speaker 11 If you want to find out more about wire cutters coverage, or if you want to check out any of the products that Jackie recommended today, if you want to find out more information about her reporting on towels, go to nytimes.com/slash wirecutter, or of course, you can find a link in the show notes.

Speaker 11 And that's it for us. Thanks, y'all.

Speaker 11 Bye. Bye.

Speaker 11 Here's what's coming up next week on The Wire Cutter Show. Turning on and off your router and modem actually will cover a multitude of sins.
What do you mean by sins?

Speaker 11 Make sure you're following the show on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss it. The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel.

Speaker 11 Engineering support from Maddie Mazziello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson.
Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Ba Yitoupe, and Diane Wong.

Speaker 11 Wirecutter's deputy publisher and general manager is Cliff Levy. Ben Freuman is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief.
I'm Christine Sear Clissette. I'm Kyra Blackwell.
And I'm Rosie Guerin.

Speaker 11 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's just something that you order from a catalog or order online, but doesn't have a physical store. Order from a catalog.
A catalog.

Speaker 11 Kyra doesn't know of such things, of these catalogs of yay, older days or whatever. I talked to Kyra and I feel as old as the hills.

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