How to Keep Towels Soft, Fluffy, and Clean—No Matter How Many Times You Wash Them

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Experiment with some of these intelligent laundry techniques to ensure your towels achieve ultimate softness.

Your towels come from the store incredibly soft and luxurious, but aren’t they destined to turn coarse and threadbare eventually? Not necessarily! By using proper care and laundry methods, you can maintain their softness and fluffiness for much longer.

Related: The Top 11 Bath Towels of 2024, Evaluated and Reviewed

If maintaining optimal softness is what you aim for, heed this professional guidance to extend the life of your towels.

Meet Our Expert

Becky Rapinchuk cleaning specialist for CLEAN MAMA

Utilize your towels multiple times before washing them.

Washing and drying can take a toll on your towels, so frequent washing isn’t necessary unless they’ve absorbed significant amounts of sweat, dirt, or chlorine. According to Becky Rapinchum, the cleaning specialist from CLEAN MAMA, it’s best to wait until you have used them several times before tossing them in the laundry.

Related: Here’s How Frequently Experts Recommend Replacing Your Bathroom Towels

Tips

Make sure you hang your towels between uses so they are able to dry out as quickly as possible. If they stay in a damp heap on your floor, you're more likely to develop mildew, bacterial growth, and other ick that you don't want to put back on your body after you've bathed.

Don't stuff the washing machine

This is good advice for anything you want to wash—as overloading your washing machine means less room for your clothing or towels to move, get exposed to the detergent, and really get clean.

The tip to ensuring that your clothing and towels have enough room to wash properly? Do the palm test. If you can fit your hand between the edge of the washing machine tub and your clothing, you haven't overstuffed it.

But because towels are heavier and absorb more water than clothing, you might want to err on the side of a smaller load (half-full) to minimize wear and tear on your washing machine from the weight of the wet towels.

Wash a towels-only load

Washing your towels with your clothing, sheets, or other fabrics can be bad for the other items—and not great for your towels either.

The texture of your towels can roughen up delicate fabrics and leave lots of lint and towel fibers on your clothes. Since towels require a longer drying time than most clothes, it can cause you to leave your clothing in the dryer much longer than necessary.

However, your towels might also get damaged when washed together with other items; all it takes is one red shirt mixed in with several white towels to dye them pink.

Tips

It could be beneficial to categorize your towels based on their use—keep kitchen towels separate from bath towels—to prevent the transfer of bacteria between various parts of your home.

Don't overdo the laundry detergent.

Using an excess of laundry detergent doesn’t equate to superior cleaning. On the contrary, employing too much can result in residue accumulation, causing your towels to become stiff. This may prompt you to add even more detergent next time, thus starting a harmful loop that progressively renders your towels coarser with each wash!

Rather than using excess detergent, try measuring only a tablespoon or two, and you’ll notice that your towels remain soft and equally clean.

Tips

If your towels are quite coarse already, you could attempt laundry stripping To eliminate the leftover marks and ideally make your towels more supple.

Utilize vinegar instead of fabric softener.

One might assume that fabric softener is essential for maintaining soft towels, but according to Rapinchuk, it can have quite negative consequences. He explains that it forms a layer on the fibers, which stops them from becoming thoroughly clean.

Alternatively, Rapinchuk suggests utilizing a quarter cup of vinegar During the rinsing phase to aid in eliminating extra soap and make your towels somewhat softer and more voluminous.

Related: How to Clean Towels So They Stay Soft, Fragrant, and Hygienic

Consider air-drying your towels

Even on the gentlest settings, your dryer can increase the wear and tear on your towels, leading to a shorter life span before they fray and lose plushness. You can hang dry your towels To reduce stress on them and aid in whitening white towels, dry them in the sunlight.

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