Washcloths are pretty useful, and I don’t think I really understood what they were for, or how they were useful until my thirties. Before washcloths, I basically just rubbed body wash or a bar of soap directly on my body while taking a shower. Sometimes I’d use loofahs, but not really.
Washcloths really help you clean or wash your body more effectively. Remember, it’s not just soap that cleans, it’s soap and water. Odorous body oil sticks to soap, soap sticks to water, and water sticks to other water and pulls off the oil.
Adding to this, washcloths make using bar soap easier. Instead of rubbing a bar of soap on your body, your washcloth can kind of “grate” soap off the bar, giving you more soap to work with across a larger surface area. Another benefit of using a cloth instead of direct-bar-to-body is that you don’t get hairs sticking to the bar of soap.’ Lastly, washcloths also scrub and probably exfoliate, whereas a bar of soap does not.
Washcloths can also help you more effectively dry yourself after a shower. Instead of being soaking wet and just using a normal bath towel to absorb all this water, you can take water off your body with the washcloth, wring the washcloth, then repeat. Then you can use your bath towel on your mostly-dry body. This means your bath towel will be less moist and less funky-smelling.
If you don’t have access to a shower or bathtub, a washcloth can be used for a basic sponge bath. In fact this sponge bath might be cleaner than what I used to do before without a washcloth.
Wringing a washcloth
I know it’s weird to document this, but hey. Anyway, the kind of washcloth I use is from Ikea. It’s got that terrycloth/towel texture on one side, and on the other side it’s essentially flat. I think this actually helps when wringing out moisture because you can fold the terrycloth part on the inside and then wring it. Most of the water I think is trapped in the terrycloth. If you had terrycloth on both sides, wringing the washcloth wouldn’t get the water out of the outer terrycloth.
Here’s how I wring a washcloth:
- Wash your washcloth with warm or hot water. Yeah, your washcloth is already damp, but if it’s damp with hot water, it’ll evaporate/dry faster than if you start with cold water.
- Fold the washcloth in half, so the terrycloth is on the inside. If your washcloth has a hanging loop, you may want that on top, so you can grab the loop to unravel the washcloth more easily later.
- Fold it hot-dog style again, optionally keeping the side with the loop up top.
- Fold it hamburger style, keeping the corners on the outside. I do this so it’s easy to quickly unravel and snap the washcloth after we wring it.
- Wring the washcloth with both hands. And yeah I should take a photo or video to demonstrate better. I’m essentially using my triceps and straightening my arms. I know that doesn’t make sense right now without a photo.
- Now that you’ve wrung out the moisture and you have one of the corners on the outside, grab that corner with one hand and snap the washcloth. This will quickly unravel it.
- Hold two corners, one in each hand, and snap the washcloth again. I think (but haven’t tested) that waving the washcloth around will cause more air to get in contact with the (warm) moisture and possibly evaporate more water off.