I just want to point out that you should probably change your towel at least every week (preferably every three uses), especially if you leave it in a high humidity environment like a shared bathroom.
I can’t even imagine the smell… Actually, yes I can, because I’ve had the same scenario happen to me at another rationalist sharehouse.
So, um, maybe every two months is a little bit too long.
A few obvious alternatives:
1. Everyone leave their towels in their room. 2. Guests leave their towels in their rooms. The common towels are put into a hamper every week, and the hamper goes to the laundry when it’s full. 3. Have fewer towels. Not the best solution since that doesn’t solve the problem of not having any towels while they’re being washed, but it could create more incentive to change them more often.
This is definitely the sort of coordination problem that happens when you have a lot of people living together, but I also have a feeling that this should not happen at all, somehow. Like, in general, if this is like a hostel, then guests should behave as guests in a hostel, and the hostel itself should have people responsible for regular cleaning (this could be the permanent housemates). There is definitely a privacy and autonomy tradeoff at hostels.
You know, that’s an excellent point. I just bought my boyfriend a new towel and washed all the towels in the house (serendipitously, everyone’s out of town for the holidays). I also want to note that we no longer really have this problem, and that the smell—at least the ambient smell—has never been very bad. Although, yeah, when I stick my face in some of the towels and smell them I… wish I hadn’t. I’m also a female with good hygiene, moderate OCD, and an unusually good sense of smell, so. Yeah, I hear you.
Also, re: the two months thing—the guest towels would generally just remain hanging up after one or two uses, while housemates generally would each wash their own towels regularly like normal adults. So it’s not quite as bad as it sounds, though it’s still not exactly ideal.
Time to clean everything! Thank you for your input.
I just want to point out that you should probably change your towel at least every week (preferably every three uses), especially if you leave it in a high humidity environment like a shared bathroom.
I can’t even imagine the smell… Actually, yes I can, because I’ve had the same scenario happen to me at another rationalist sharehouse.
So, um, maybe every two months is a little bit too long.
A few obvious alternatives:
1. Everyone leave their towels in their room.
2. Guests leave their towels in their rooms. The common towels are put into a hamper every week, and the hamper goes to the laundry when it’s full.
3. Have fewer towels. Not the best solution since that doesn’t solve the problem of not having any towels while they’re being washed, but it could create more incentive to change them more often.
This is definitely the sort of coordination problem that happens when you have a lot of people living together, but I also have a feeling that this should not happen at all, somehow. Like, in general, if this is like a hostel, then guests should behave as guests in a hostel, and the hostel itself should have people responsible for regular cleaning (this could be the permanent housemates). There is definitely a privacy and autonomy tradeoff at hostels.
You know, that’s an excellent point. I just bought my boyfriend a new towel and washed all the towels in the house (serendipitously, everyone’s out of town for the holidays). I also want to note that we no longer really have this problem, and that the smell—at least the ambient smell—has never been very bad. Although, yeah, when I stick my face in some of the towels and smell them I… wish I hadn’t. I’m also a female with good hygiene, moderate OCD, and an unusually good sense of smell, so. Yeah, I hear you.
Also, re: the two months thing—the guest towels would generally just remain hanging up after one or two uses, while housemates generally would each wash their own towels regularly like normal adults. So it’s not quite as bad as it sounds, though it’s still not exactly ideal.
Time to clean everything! Thank you for your input.
That all makes more sense now :)
In our case the towel rack was right in front of the toilet, so it didn’t have to be an ambient thing haha