Musty smell is from using too much detergent.

Get thin cloth strips of different colors and sew them onto each towel.

I may be obtuse, but are you saying that the towels are used more than once for bathing, or that they are used outdoors near a pool where others may pick up someone else's? We use towels once, but I can see where, on a boat or by a pool, there could be confusion

Playing off Tibbrix's idea, is hanging loops on the corners of each towel made out of different colors or patterns.

How come you're using the same color towels? Keep it white for the guests (let them sort it out), and colors for you and your family.

Just show them where the washer/dryer is and have them do it themselves. There's no way males (of any age..lol) will remember which rack they hang their towels on and you don't need the trouble of doing it for them.

I think adding a colored loop to each towel would help as long as the young men remember which color is theirs!

Dee, one use, that's it? You wash it after one use, like drying of a clean bod?

I was in Costco today and their bath towels are $4.99.

Thanks all. Yes we do use more than once! Very small bathroom so hooks are close with no circulation. I will hang towels on line outside to dry then re hang. Musty smell unfortunately is from the small dark bathroom. I use bleach and vinegar in the wash. Cottage has no heat or air which doesn't help

Think I like the colored loop idea.

Web picture, just be sure the trim you use is colorfast when using bleach. (Or when you invite your guests say, "don't forget your towel!"

Linelle, yes, we use once. I think, though, that there was a recent survey that showed the norm is 3 uses.

You might want to look for bamboo towels, they don't get musty and they feel really great.

Years ago, twenty of us stayed at a vacation home together. We were all assigned a number. That number was used on our water bottles (to end "is this my water? Whose water is this?"), hangers for our towels (everyone brought their towel back to the bedroom for drying), and the duty roster (whose turn to set or clear the dishes). Maybe you could have a number embroidered on to the towels?

I like the color loop item. Maybe you can reinforce it by color coding something else - face cloths, glass ware, plates, bed sheets - something so the young men get attached to their color.

I agree with hhireno idea of embroidered numbers. You could use white embroidery so you could still bleach the towels. Assign a number to each bed...embroider the pillow cases, too...makes it easy to remember.

Dee... re one use... some time back when my ex- sister in law was staying down at the farm Dad was then living on, she kept trying to wash her family's towels after every single use. She finally got told that the septic system wasn't going to sit still for that, and please cut it out.

I like the loop system.

Artemis, we grew up using a towel once, and, in 43 years of marriage (even with a septic system), only ever used them once. I recently did ask DH, who grew up in a family of 8, how many times they reused, and he said, "Oh, week, maybe longer."

Lake and beach towels striped in all colors, used more than once. We used to make the kids towel off and stay on the deck at our lake house long enough to dry off and leave their towel outside draped over the deck rail. Those towels were generally dry by morning and used again. Inside towels generally were single use because if not they slipped off towel racks and from the tops of shower doors Into a soggy pile. Everyone dropped the inside towels in front of the washing machine and we did them at night.

I personally would not sew colored loops onto white towels because the reason you bought them was to bleach, right? And honestly I wouldn't have them embroidered either because human nature is to grab the first one at hand regardless.

I lived in a household with all men and subtleties like colored stripes and embroidery would have never been noticed or would have been quickly forgotten/ignored. The only system that worked for me was "assigned" colors for everyone and twice weekly washing.

Many suggestions either strike me as unnecessary expense or they won't be easy to see or they will undermine your desire to bleach. It'd be easier to wash them each day (or have a guest do that!)

Frankly, I doubt these young men care much. And if they do, they can put their towel in a given place and keep track of it.

I would worry about your own towels (you and DH probably do care and would take care of it). I would choose towels that are just for you two and make them off limits. My kids were always stealing towels from our bathrooms, and now DH has all grey towels in his bathroom, they are his color. So a bandit can be immediately ID'd! The towels in my bathroom are white but mostly I use a terry robe. All of the other towels in the house are white (expect lake,beach or pool towels) for the same reason you chose white!

I think the colored tabs might not work with bleach; is there no way to just assign hooks for each person to use? Maybe some with interchangeable labels for their names? Have each person make/decorate their own label so they will recognize it even better.

What about a colored safety pin or similar stay-put clip?

@ our house, towels are differentiated by where they're hung on the towel rack - but it's just 2 of us so quite easy.

The buttons are a great idea! Michaels had little chalkboards on clothes pins that a second button could be glued too and the weekend guest could write their name as a reminder what color they belongs to them that weekend.

When visiting my bff who only has one full bath in her historic home, as well as the white towell dilema, I always take my towel and hang it over the bedroom door i'm staying in. No complaints.

You could also use magic markers and color a diffent color square in the corner of each towel, or a stripe on the bottom of each. I don't think the marker color fades from bleach.

"I always take my towel and hang it over the bedroom door i'm staying in": Wouldn't a damp towel eventually do a bit of damage to the finish on a wood door? Or get dusty from the top of the door? (Or maybe you mean you hang it on the door, like on a hook?) Also, if it is hung over the door, how do you close the door?

I wondered that, too, chicagoans. If someone hung a damp towel on my wood bedroom doors (that are not painted but natural birch) I would be really annoyed, as it could ruin the wood. It's bad enough that I have a painted iron bed that some people use as a towel rack (there are plenty of hooks in the bathroom).

We have robe hooks on the backs of all our doors. My mom always hangs her towel on a clothes hanger that she puts on the robe hook. It's not too humid here, though, so things do dry out. I've lived other places where a damp towel would smell icky in what seemed like minutes.

Loonlake wins, hands down for best answer to OP's specific query. Great idea.

No door hook, but all doors and trim are painted with several coats of oil base paint, and I do use my hand to check for dust, but have a feeling my bff 6'2" husband might dust them occasionally. The towel is not drenched, and when getting out of the shower, stand on an absorbent bath mat. I'm also a small woman, so not a lot to dry off, and always put a robe on immediately. I don't close the door since it's only my friend, her DH, and myself, until the towel is dry, which it usually is by the time I go to bed,. It then gets hung on the doorknob. I'll usually use the towel for 3 days. Nothing has ever been said to me about my door hanging towel, and it's what my Mom would do when she visited me. Our doors were stained with 2 coats of an oil based varnish, because my Dad finished them and that's what he preferred to use. Obviously, it depends on the finish of the door.

Oly, I wouldn't think there would be a problem on a painted iron bed. They're usually powdered coated under a very high temp. My DD hung her bathing suit on hers 30+ years ago, and the bed is now in my GD's bedroom, and it looks as good as new. There's only one small chip, thanks to the powder coating.

I want your husband, if he truly is dusting the tops of doors!! The problem with the iron bed is that it's an antique and just painted by me with enamel paint (40 years ago). I got it from a retired strawberry farmer customer of mine who had used in their migrant farm worker housing for many years and then it was just piled with a bunch of junk beside the barn. I had it dip stripped to remove about 15 coats of paint (and found some brass under it all, too) so there are little nicks that rust if topped with a wet towel. I don't worry about the bed so much, but can't ever get the rust out of the towels. The bed looks fine and is just too much work to repaint for the limited benefit. So if I find guests hanging wet towels on it, I just ask them to not do it.

We have always used a towel once...then washed. But, in your instance, I would find a place in each bedroom where enough coat hooks could be placed on walls. Then each person should hang their towel there. We used to have a septic system, and I still washed the towels daily.

What sbout colored permanent markers on esch label?

Thanks to all for the help. I will be heading to Michaels to look for buttons or similar. I knew I would get lots of great answers here.

The buttons is a great idea!

We are in the "use a towel several times" camp. We just washed, so figure we are pretty clean. Everybody has their own color towel (and bathroom cup and toothbrush). Beach towels, well, they do get pretty Sandy, so they get shaken out (at the beach) and tossed in the washer. And, I toss in the suits, too. I figure they only have to last the season; how bad can it be?

I saw a cute idea at a cottage I visited but did not stay at so no input as to if this actually worked or not, but there was a bowl or basket of clothespins on the counter with all the family and possible guest names on them (craftily and cutely drawn and decorated to boot). When you used a towel you then hung it up and clipped your clothespin to it. The family said it worked great.

The button idea is great!

I added two towel bars on the wall in the guest room. They are mostly behind the door when the door is open. They are a light color that almost matches the paint so they don't stand out. My sister's family of four are my usual guests so this gives them additional drying space (besides the bathroom rods).

When they're not visiting, I use the bars to hang the clothes I'll be packing for a trip as I gather them in the days before packing.

When we had 10 college kids staying at our house, I bought foldable laundry drying racks for the bedrooms and sharpied a number on the tag of each towel. I don't know if the kids cared one way or the other. But if they wanted a system, they had a good start.

Oly, I don't know if he dusted the door tops, but my towel never had dirt on it~need to ask when I visit this year. It's an older neighborhood with no new builds, and the house doesn't seem to get the dust mine gets, especially with all the greenery around.

The buttons are a great idea, and those colored safety pins are super cute! They take me back to childhood days at the community pool, when we had to wear a big metal pin on our bathing suits, with the family ID# embossed on it, to get through the pool gate.

Match buttons or colored safety pins to each bedroom color and mount on hooks!!!