Friday, July 20, 2018

You Can't Dry Your Hands with a Wet Towel

We've all heard the saying "size doesn't matter." Well, I completely disagree.

Especially when we're talking about hand towels.

We've all had it happen. You go to the bathroom, wash your hands, then dry your hands on the hand towel. Everything's fine. Until the next time you have to go to the bathroom. Once again you take care of your business, and then you wash your hands. But this time, when you go to dry your hands on the hand towel you find that the hand towel is still damp from the last time you dried your hands on it. It's hard to get your hands dry using a towel that's already wet.

Or, worse yet, you haven't been to the bathroom for hours, but it just so happens you have to go fifteen minutes after Uncle Stinky has gone. ("Uncle Stinky" is not his real name.) (But it probably should be.) You wash your hands and reach for the hand towel, but it is moist. Very moist indeed. You try to find a dry spot on the hand towel, but to no avail. And the worst part is, that's not your moistness on that towel. That's Uncle Stinky's moistness!

(Of course, if we're being honest here, the moistness level of the hand towel might be the least of your worries if you have to use the bathroom after Uncle Stinky. But that's a topic for another day.)

They call it a hand towel for a reason. It's barely big enough to dry your hand.

I understand the concept of the hand towel. It's just fine for drying your hands. Once. But, if you have to make several bathroom visits in a short amount of time (curse you, diarrhea!) or if you have multiple people using the same bathroom (and thus the same hand towel) in a short amount of time, the size of the hand towel really does matter.

Here's a standard size hand towel versus a standard size regular towel.
Yes, size does matter!

In my own bathroom, I've taken care of this problem. On my large towel rack I have two towels: 1) My very large bath towel; and B) My very large hand towel (which is the exact same size as my very large bath towel.) So, no matter how frequently I use my hand towel, I can always find a spot on it devoid of moistness so I can dry my hands with a dry towel.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work for all bathrooms, because most of the time hand towels have a wimpy little round towel-holder or towel rack too small to handle a large towel. If you try to put a regular size towel on one of these wimpy hand-towel holders, you'll get something like this:

The standard size towel on the wimpy hand-towel rack. The towel hangs down into the sink.

So, what is the solution? Well, it depends on the bathroom. But what I would do is have as many towel racks and towel hooks as possible in every bathroom, with a full-sized towel on every rack and hook. It's all about avoiding the pre-moistened towels!

Every towel you add increases the chances of finding one that's not damp.
Is it aesthetically pleasing? No. Is it practical? No. Does it look pretty stupid? Yes.

But sometimes you do whatever you can to avoid Uncle Stinky's Moistness!


Edited from a post originally published on 5/12/2015.






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