My mom bought the kids beach towels for the summer and, because she's my mom, she bought them on sale on top of a sale (i.e., pretty cheap). They're Martha Stewart brand from Macy's, similar to these towels, except they have a mermaid on it instead of anchors (not surprisingly, Ian didn't want to use it after he found out about the mermaid):
I liked them initially because they're big and bright, and at $40 a pop they should be pretty good, right? It was all fine and dandy until I washed them. During the summer I line dry my clothes so I got a good look at each piece of laundry as I hung it up to dry; a lot of it was covered in brightly colored lint. Well, I thought to myself, it was the first time washing the towels; it's not too unusual that there's lint. The annoying thing is that when you line dry -- as opposed to using the dryer -- there's no easy way to get lint off of damp clothing (short of picking it off with your fingers). I wasn't mad or anything. We just had to suck it up and wear clothes with a little bit of lint on it. (Please, no comments about using a lint roller -- I'm not that diligent about laundry. And, shame on you! My regular readers should know that about me by now.)
Fast forward to this morning and I've now washed the towels at least three times and there's still lint on everything I wash in the same load. It was bad enough that I had to dry a few pieces of dark clothing in the dryer so the lint would come off easier. (I hate having to use the dryer when I don't have to.) The back of the towels also look like they're balding in narrow strips.
And just so you know, I followed the washing directions pretty closely; the only thing I've done differently is wash in cold water instead of warm. I even dried one of the towels in the dryer (no fabric softener) and it hasn't changed anything.
[Speaking of washing directions, the tag also read "Avoid contact with skin treatment products," but the sentence is written on two lines so it initially looked like "Avoid contact with skin," which made me think ????? And even after figuring out the whole sentence I was a little weirded out because I'm assuming sun block can be considered a skin treatment product. So, are they encouraging you not to use sun block at the beach/pool if you're using your Martha Stewart beach towel? That doesn't make sense!]
Anyway, I'm annoyed enough with the lint situation that I'm considering trying to return them to Macy's. Sure, my mom paid $8 each for them instead of $40, but it's enough of a nuisance that it's almost not worth the monetary savings. What would you do?
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