This Is How Many Towels You Should Own, According to Twitter

We have strong feelings about a lot of things, but until recently, towel quantity wasn’t one of them. In a hilariously earnest social media post, writer Yashar Ali tweeted about bath towels, specifically the number of towels adults should ideally own.

Fortunately, Yashar doesn’t have quite as many towel categories as Monica Geller, but he did start what became a wildly popular towel meme based on his suggested that there should be 50 towels per adult couple.

“As a couple you should own a minimum of the following,” the tweet read. “10 Bath Sheets, 10 Bath Towels, 10 Hand Towels, 20 Wash Cloths.”

For further explanation, he also tossed in this handy towel chart to support the original argument.

After Yashar suggested that people buy a Bed Bath & Beyond’s worth of towels, he outlined the need for ironing them, too, which prompted vicious replies from opponents who called the idea wasteful and debated the definition of “being over-toweled.” All this back and forth prompted Yashar to issue an SOS to Oprah for help, who probably (definitely) owns far more than 25 towels.

For what it’s worth, here’s what the experts over at the Knot have to say about towel ownership: “The basic rule of thumb is to have three sets of towels each (6 total): one hanging in the bathroom, one in the linen closet and one in the laundry. A set consists of a bath towel, a hand towel, and a washcloth.”

So, on one hand, Yashar’s extremely generous towel ownership expectation sounds like a good idea especially given the fact that a GE study from last year revealed that far too many of us are struggling to maintain an acceptable towel washing frequency. Perhaps owning more towels could help some people avoid using washcloths more than the reported five times (!!!) before tossing them in the laundry.

But based on the Twitter responses, that might be wishful thinking.