The Simple Tip That'll Help Stop Your Towels From Smelling Musty And Stale Over Time

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A fresh and soft towel is one of the simplest luxuries out there, but it may seem surprisingly elusive if you have noticed your own towels have a musty and stale smell to them. It's all too common for a brand new towel to be quickly transformed into a stinky linen that you dread using. Fortunately, there's an incredibly easy and straightforward tip that will help keep bad odors away from your towels. A seemingly underwhelming solution, the towel-transforming tip is to simply give your towels appropriate amounts of time to dry out before you put them in the washing pile or hamper. 

While your zeal to clear out the bathroom of used towels makes sense, this approach could be compromising the condition of your towels (and even impacting other clothes in the pile that are waiting to be washed). In most cases, drying out your towels will be straightforward, but in the event that your bathroom is extra humid, you might need to tweak things by moving the towel to a new location or even tracking down a product to help it dry faster. If you're in search of easy and practical ways to help improve the smell of even your most musty towels, executing the solution of drying out your towels is likely even easier than you imagined.

The key to keeping your towels smelling fresh is to prevent dampness from lingering in the fibers; this means avoiding balling up your towels instead hanging them over a hook or towel bar while they're still damp. Once fully dry, the towels can go into the hamper to await washing day. Larger towels or ones that are thicker will naturally take longer to dry out, whereas smaller towels or thin bath sheets will dry more quickly. If you are drying your towels out in the bathroom, reducing the humidity in the room can make a dramatic difference. An in-bathroom exhaust fan can be a game changer, as can a window that can be opened to let out steam and ambient moisture. If your bathroom is constantly moist, your best shot may be to move your towels to another location to dry out — such as outside on the patio in the sun.

Even if you're careful to dry your towels completely while they're waiting to be washed, you also need to be careful that they are fully dried prior to folding and putting them away. Remember to always empty the lint screen, as this will allow for a more efficient drying process — overloading the dryer should also be avoided as more laundry to dry equals less airflow and less effective results. Finally, while fabric softener might make your towels feel nicer, the chemicals in the softener inhibit the towel's ability to dry, trapping moisture and eventually leading to more musty smells.

If you are finding it challenging to get your towels to dry before washing day, you might need a little extra help. Fortunately, there are a number of products available that you can purchase and install in your home to simplify the process. For a compact towel-drying solution, you can consider purchasing a swivel-arm towel rack, like this Alise six-arm towel bar ($37.99 on Amazon). This product has a 4.7-star average from hundreds of reviews and has the benefit of being there when you need it but also folding away without any effort at all. For a higher-capacity drying option, check out this sleek vanishing drying rack for your laundry room or bathroom from Smartsome ($61.99 on Amazon). This is an ideal choice if there are a lot of bath towels being generated on a weekly basis. Customers find this towel bar to be of high quality and to be highly functional.

Perhaps you're renting or not a fan of installing hardware in your walls — in this case, finding a pop-up laundry drying rack can be a perfect solution. The Amazon Basics Foldable Portable Laundry Rack ($28.99) is an affordable and effective solution that you can throw a damp towel over easily. It can be folded away and stashed in the closet or under your bed when not in use. Lastly, if you've discovered how to keep gross smells at bay a little too late, here's how to remove musty odors from your towels to refresh them.