Cheap Towels!

This will be a bit of a ranting post, but somebody, please tell me - why do bathroom towels last so poorly? A few years ago, I invested in what I thought were nice, high quality bamboo towels in Ty Pennington's line. They were very popular at the time and used in every Extreme Makeover Home Edition build on ABC. Who would have thought they wouldn't last!?

Take this for example of my point: My husband and I average one towel each daily. With 15 towels in our arsenal, this would mean that any given towel would be used once every week. Multiply that by 52 weeks in a year and 3 years of use, and we can say, on average, they've been used 156 times. And, of course, it would be slightly less considering the times we've been away from home (and, thus, not using ANY towels), the times we used the towels that belong in the kids' bathroom and days we, for whatever reason, didn't use any towels.

One could argue that this was simply a bad batch of towels, a poor line of products or that we're just hard on towels. I would argue this: Previous to the Ty towels, we had a set of high end towels purchased from Macy's. These towels lasted even less time and were demoted to shop towels less than two years into their use. They had holes, unraveling seams and had lost their color. So, is it just Ty's towels that aren't making the grade? No.

Or, how about this: The towels purchased when I went to college are still in use in this house, over ten years later. These are the towels in the kids' bathroom I was just referring to. So, the idea of being hard on towels doesn't really hold water (yes, pun intended!).

Now, consider my mom's towels' performance. She has towels in her linen closet that are older than I am. She purchased some of her towels when she and my father were first married and they're still going strong! For nearly 20 years, they were used by a family of four and continue to be in use today.

Why, oh why, can't I buy these kinds of towels today!?!? It seems to me, from looking exclusively at my experience with towels over the course of time that the older the towels, the higher the quality. It's not a scientific discovery by any means, but it seems to be the trend.

Alas, I am replacing the Ty towels with the line of Thomas O'Brien Modern line available at Target. They are thick and fluffy and the hand towels in the line have been performing well in our guest bathroom (which is on the main floor and used the most out of any bathroom in our home). Plus, I bought them on clearance, so if they don't hold up, well, at least I don't have a fortune tied up in them!

What are your thoughts on towels? Have a favorite brand or tips and tricks on keeping them as fluffy and snuggly as when they were new? Share your comments and ideas below!