For a room in your house that's dedicated almost solely to getting you clean, there's a whole lot of opportunities for your bathroom to get really gross and grimey without you even noticing. All that steam and moisture doesn't bode well for keeping germs at bay, so here are seven things you need to either wash more often or just remove from your bathroom altogether.
1. Bath towels
Image: Tady MojeYou might be clean when you dry yourself with your bath towel, but that doesn't mean the towel itself stays clean. It absorbs moisture and unless it's left to dry, that moisture just becomes a home for bacteria. If you hang your towels up to dry after using them, you can get three or four uses out of them, but if you're not replacing them twice a week, you're actually only getting dirtier as you dry yourself.
2. Bar soap
Often nowadays when you find bar soap in someone's bathroom, it's of the fancier variety. But even the most expensive soap isn't immune to gathering grime. Using a liquid soap is much easier and cleaner, but if you really want to keep your bar soap, clean the dish every few days to avoid the soap dish harbouring all sorts of grime.
3. Loofahs
Image: AirowsIf you're a loofah fan, you're going to need to invest in a few more. These bad boys need to be changed every three weeks, if not before. Scrubbing your skin with a loofah inevitably means your dead skin cells get caught in the mesh netting, and the warm, moisture nature of a bathroom means you need to be looking out for mould growth inside your loofah after a couple of weeks.
4. Face cloths
It's not just the mesh netting that causes problems. Since most people use face cloths or sponges in a similar way to how they would a loofah, it poses similar problems. They get clogged up with dead skin cells but because they're less breathable than the mesh of the loofa, they're actually worse. You can wash them rather than throwing them out, but you need to be swapping them every single day.
5. Toothbrushes
Most people take a very ad hoc approach to when they change their toothbrush, usually judging it by how it looks after a little while. While worn down bristles are a definite sign you should change your toothbrush, they actually get gross a bit earlier. You need to change them every three to four months, because they're being exposed to nasty stuff like fecal matter in the air and bacterial growth, just by being in your bathroom. You do not want that going in your mouth!
6. Bath mats
Image: Urban OutfittersBath mats are easily forgotten about but they need to be washed every week. Between foot traffic and the epic build up of hair they experience, they just get nasty. They can take a while to dry, so if you're living in an apartment or somewhere where the drying isn't great, keeping a second one on hand so you can swap them out would be a good solution.
7. Spare razors or blades
Keeping your current razor in your shower or in your bathroom cabinet doesn't pose you any risk, but those spare blades should be in another room. Why? The moisture and warmth from the shower can dull or rust your blades before you even get a chance to use them.
