If I had a washing machine in my house, I'd wash all my bathmats at least once a month. Because I don't, I just do it whenever they look filthy.

I always assumed they were meant to keep your feet off the cold floor in the middle of the night.

My parents use them. They have two for the upstairs bathroom, and pretty often stick one in the washing machine while the other replaces it.

What JanetLand said.

Throw it in the washer, but keep them out of the dryer. Throw it over your shower curtain rod; it'll take awhile but it will dry. If you're still worried about smell/freshness, that's why Febreze was invented.

I think the rugs around the toilet are gross, for that exact reason. I wash around the toilet whenever I mop the rest of the floors, which is once a month or so.

I don't like the matching bath mats either. You can't dry them in the dryer because of the rubberized bottom and I feel like they hide dirt for so long that I'm not prompted to wash them often enough. I use the kind that are just a small rectangular slightly-extra-thick towel, like they have at hotels. I buy them in white because then they can be bleached.

I quit using the contour rugs ... huh, I never have used a contour rug, but my mum did! I use a smaller all cotton mat (no rubber backing) in front of the toilet to keep feet warm. And that mat and the larger mat in front of the sink get tossed in the washer when they start looking dirty. They're both all cotton and white so they get dosed with some bleach as well. And they get tossed in the dryer. And once they're warm and clean, Oliver (one of my cats) loves to writhe all over them shedding grey fur as he goes, negating my cleaning of the mats. Cats are bastards in fur suits.

Rug free here. Nice new tile with grey grout!

this is why the mister is a firm advocate of the sit-to-pee camp of males, at least while in the comforts of his own domicile. he's a bit of a neatnik as it is, and he claims it's nearly impossible not to, err... miss, whilst standing. I've met other guys of this persuasion, and my impression of all of them were that they were moderately more, er, housebroken than their standing brethren.

not being an owner of the equipment in question, I can't comment on this from experience. What I *can* say is that he's a lot tidier to live with in a shared-bathroom environment than the vast majority of my erstwhile male housemates, so there is that.

I was always of the impression that those toilet rugs were merely to keep one's feet from freezing or whatever. We don't have one.

Also, apropos of not much, Boulder is one of the few places on Planet Earth where I've noticed that wall-to-wall carpeting is frequently found in bathrooms, even (depressingly often) in rental units.

w. t. f.

I like warm feet, but our bathroom rugs go into the wash every couple of weeks, because I like warm clean feet even more.

But now I am wondering if perhaps they are meant to, erm, ABSORB a little of that.

I am no housekeeper, but my mother is the most dedicated housekeeper ever. We had one of those rugs for the first 6 or 7 years of my life, but she got rid of it one day. When I asked her where the rug went, she told me there would be no more toilet rugs because my brother had bad aim.

So I think I can say that they are not meant to absorb. At least not to my housekeeping mother's mind.

Wash once a week, new one every few months.

Good grief people.

every few months, gomi? Yeah, that's why I don't have one at all.

Minor derail: Bad aim is only part of the problem. Equally problematic is splashback.

Also, apropos of not much, Boulder is one of the few places on Planet Earth where I've noticed that wall-to-wall carpeting is frequently found in bathrooms, even (depressingly often) in rental units.

w. t. f.

I agree, that's crazy! A bathroom is one place where there should never, ever be carpet. Hello, a toilet is destined to overflow, you are just asking for trouble to have carpet in there.

Yeah I usually buy super cheap ones though - this current one cost a dollar.

I wash mine once a week. Before BlueEyes moved in, I washed it less than that, being the only one using my bathroom. (My kids have one that is just a rectangular carpet piece - it hangs over the tub when not in use, so one of the cats doesn't pee on it. sigh. What did someone say about cats being bastards in fur suits? Agreed). And while I must say that I haven't noticed any ..um..issues since BlueEyes' arrival, I still wash it as often.

I toss mine in the dryer, on low heat, and they come out just fine, rubber backing and all.