How to dry wet towels in a small bathroom?

Question

The bathroom includes a toilet, a sink, a shower stall and a cabinet. The tile is from the floor to about 5ft / 1.5m in height. The bathroom door is 24" / 60 cm wide. There are currently no towel racks installed.

Due to the layout of the bathroom, the sink and the cabinet take up the entire left-hand side. The right-hand side is taken up by the shower stall and the toilet. What remains of the wall across from the door is either covered in tile or has a window. The shower stall glass door swings outward in front of the tiled wall under the window.

Given these space constraints I do not see where I could install towel racks. (While I might drill into the tile under the window, a rack there would impact the glass shower door.)

Because the bathroom is used by multiple people, there is a need to dry up to 4-5 large towels. Preferably, the towels would remain in the bathroom and not be distributed throughout the rest of the apartment.

How can we dry the towels in a room of that size?

Answer 1

Could you attach towel hooks to the back of the door? Depending on the warmth of the room, you don't necessarily need the towels to be completely unfolded for them to dry adequately, so any small door or wall space that has room for a hook could be used to hang them.

Another tip is to make sure that all the bathroom users are removing as much water from themselves as possible before resorting to the towels so they have the minimum practical water in them before being hung-up. Personally I use a combination of hands and a face-cloth to "sweep" water into the shower cubicle. The face-cloth can be wrung/squeezed and used multiple times. In a warm climate I often bypass use of the towel completely.

Answer 2

Use a temporary towel dowel.

After you use the towel, hang it from the end of a wood dowel with the centre balanced on the shower stall door and the opposite end against the ceiling of the shower stall. Increase the air circulation with a small fan with the window open to help reduce drying time.

Answer 3

Hang one or multiple lines, such as suction-cup clotheslines, or insert hooks with wall anchors for a sturdier mounting point. Take the lines down when you need to use the room.

Answer 4

Do a search (I used ebay & amazon) for "door back towel rack" --- you will have many different functional as well as aesthetic choices to solve your problem. Most of them hook over doors or attach to tiles. If room doesn't have an exhaust fan, keeping the door ajar will help circulate air to evaporate the moisture on the towels. Guess you can't put up a clothes line to hang out the window, but this would work in nice weather.