It is troubling that people still have so much trouble determining the proper use of towels in this day and age. A towel is the most "massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have", but this does not mean that we can abuse its many functions to make up for our laziness or even lack of common sense. The following is a list of what towels are NOT.
A) A towel is NOT a napkin.
I know it can be tempting to use the closest thing at hand when your fingers are dripping with orange-red barbeque sauce, but a napkin (cloth or paper) works perfectly well! In fact, that's what napkins are for! Next time you have something dribbling from your food-inhaling face, try washing it before wiping it off with a towel. Your washing machine will thank you for it!
B) A towel is NOT a carwash rag.
It is frighteningly rude to use a pristine white bath towel (normally reserved for drying off human bodies) to wash your bug-splattered vehicle. Do you use bath towels at home to wash your car? If so, how long before your wife decides that she's had enough and tries to smother you with the towels you've ruined with the soapy remains of deceased insects? Towels are for bodies, rags are for two-tonne modes of transportation.
C) A towel is NOT a doormat.
Doormats are made of tough materials that allow you to scrape off excess dirt from your shoes before you enter a house or a building. Towels - amazing as they are - are sadly inadequate for this task and cannot withstand the rough motions you make with your sand-filled shoes. And what are you doing with shoes on in the house anyway? Oh, you silly Westerners!
D) A towel is NOT a makeup remover pad.
A towel is handy for wiping off excess moisture after swimming or a shower. The tiny loops in the terrycloth provide pleasant abrasion for your skin as you dry off, but this should not be the only method of removing layers of caked-on makeup that you applied for some reason when you decided to go to the beach this morning. For an effective makeup removal, use a good quality makeup remover solution along with a disposable quilted cotton pad. This should prevent the housekeeper of your favourite inn from having a nervous breakdown and soaking your next change of towels in undiluted chlorine bleach. No one wants a chemical burn!
Next, we will review the proper use of a towel.
Step 1: Place self in bathtub/shower stall/waterfall/body of clean water.
Step 2: Wash self. All dirt should be removed from body.
Step 3: Dry self using a towel.
Step 4: If there are dirt smudges on towel, repeat from Step 1.
Unless you are completely inept at washing yourself, you should have nothing on your towel except for water and the occasional hair. If you DO have dirt on your towel even after the most thorough washing, then you have my sympathy, as you've obviously fallen into a tar pit recently. Good luck with that.
Remember everyone! Towels are our friends.
This message was brought to you by the Society of Keep the Towels Clean Unless You Want Me to Stomp on Your Face Like the Cast of Riverdance.
4 comments:
There's one more thing - Towels are emphatically not to be used as facial tissue!
(And in my family, anyone wearing shoes inside will be shunned and criticized by my mad-about-cleanliness grandmother.)
Thankfully, I haven't found nasal drippings on the towels yet. Of course, I'm usually looking for giant streaks of peach (makeup foundation) or brown-black (general dirt) when I do laundry here.
It's truly amazing what people will do when they're not in their own home using their own crap. Bath towels to wash a car? Yuck...
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