Clean Skin Club Towels vs a Cotton Washcloth: Which Wins on the Road

Here is the short answer. If you are choosing one to carry in a car console, a tote bag or a jacket pocket, the CLEAN SKIN CLUB Clean Towels XL do a job a cotton washcloth cannot do without a sink. You can wet one from a water bottle, wipe your face and neck, and throw it away. If you are standing at your own bathroom sink with a hamper within arm's reach, a cotton washcloth is cheaper, makes no trash and works perfectly well. I keep both, and I would not give up either one.

I am 58. I drive a Meals on Wheels route three weekdays a week in Grand Junction, Colorado, where the air is dry and the sun is not gentle. By the time I finish a route my face feels like it has a film of road dust on it. For a long while I kept a cotton washcloth in a zip bag in the car and told myself that was fine. It was not fine, and the reason it was not fine is the whole subject of this piece. What follows is the comparison I wish someone had handed me, written by somebody who has used both for months rather than by somebody reading the back of a box.

	CLEAN SKIN CLUB Clean Towels XL	Cotton washcloth
What it is	A dry single use face towel, 50 per box, with no cleanser in the sheet	A cotton square you wet, wring out and reuse for years
Water needed	None to dry your face, a splash from a bottle to use it as a damp cloth	Needs a sink to wet it and a sink to rinse it
Fits in a bag	The box stays home, a few folded towels ride in a zip bag	Folds flat and takes up almost nothing
Cost per use	An ongoing purchase	The lowest cost per use there is, by a wide margin
Laundry	None at all	Every single use goes in the wash
Trash	One towel per use, plus the box	No trash
Fresh every time	Straight out of the box, untouched	Only if you own a stack and keep up with the wash
Strength when wet	Holds together, does not pill or go limp	Depends on the cloth, thin ones give out
Best for	Car, tote, travel, days with no sink	A home bathroom with a hamper nearby

You will notice the washcloth wins three rows and ties two. That is not me being generous for the sake of it. A washcloth is a good object and it has been a good object for a very long time. The question is never which one is better in general. It is which one is better in the exact place you are standing when your face needs attention.

What Each One Actually Is

The CLEAN SKIN CLUB Clean Towels XL arrive as one box of 50 dry towels. The box is 6.25 by 4.75 by 5.25 inches and weighs about 11.64 ounces, which is the reason mine lives on a bathroom shelf and not in the console. The towel itself is a dry sheet made from bamboo and paper, 100 percent biobased, vegan and cruelty free. There is no cleanser in it, no lotion and no fragrance. You can use it dry to pat your face after washing, or wet it and use it as a damp cloth. It is soft, it holds together when wet, and it is single use. That last part is the feature and the drawback at the same time.

A cotton washcloth is a square of woven cotton. You wet it at a sink, wring it out, wipe your face, rinse it and drop it in the laundry. Mine came out of a stack of six that had been sitting in a kitchen drawer for years. It is soft after a few washes, it never runs out, it does not expire, and it costs almost nothing to keep. If you have a sink and a washing machine, it is the more sensible object. I will not pretend otherwise.

The Water Question

Almost everything in this comparison comes down to water. A dry cotton washcloth is just a rag until it is wet, and wetting it is easy at a sink and awkward anywhere else. On a route day I am parked in a church lot with a cooler of meals and a clipboard. There is no sink. There is a 24 ounce refillable bottle in the RAV4 door pocket. So I pour a little of that onto a CLEAN SKIN CLUB towel in my hand, wipe my face and neck, fold the towel, and I am done before the next stop. The used towel goes into a small trash bag and that is the end of it.

The washcloth version of that same moment goes like this. A dry cloth, a bottle, and then a wet cloth with nowhere to live. I would have to bag it wet, drive it home and wash it. In July here, a wet cloth in a closed car is not something I want to open the next morning. That is not a knock on cotton. It is a knock on cotton when there is no sink within a hundred feet.

Where CLEAN SKIN CLUB Wins

It wins away from a sink, and it wins on freshness. Every towel comes out of the box new. Nobody has dried their hands on it, wiped a counter with it, or draped it over the shower rod on Tuesday and left it there. My husband Ron and I share one bathroom, and the hand towel by the sink does a lot of work in a day. Having a separate dry towel that has only ever touched my face settled something I had been ignoring for years without ever putting it into words.

It also wins on laundry, which surprised me. I did not think of a washcloth as a laundry burden until I counted. One cloth a day is seven a week, and a washcloth cannot go into the machine on its own, so it rides along with a load that has to be full enough to be worth running. A towel a day makes no laundry at all. When my back is tired and the hamper is already full, that difference matters more than I expected it to.

One more thing, and it is small. A wet towel does not drip. When I use one on my neck after a warm morning, I am not leaving a trail of water down my shirt and I am not standing over a basin waiting my turn to rinse. It is a plain convenience and I am not going to dress it up as anything grander than that.

Where a Cotton Washcloth Wins

It wins on trash, and that is not a small thing. A washcloth makes no garbage. One single use towel per use means one towel per use in the bin, plus the box it came in, and I would be lying if I said I never think about that. If you are trying to cut down on what your household throws away, the washcloth is the obvious answer and I would not argue with you for one minute.

It wins on space as well. Fold a washcloth and it disappears into a pocket. The CLEAN SKIN CLUB box does not travel, and even a few folded towels take more room than a single cloth. When I fly, which is twice a year at most, I take one washcloth and a plastic bag, not a box. Cost over years is the other side of it. A stack of cotton cloths is a one time purchase and the towels are an ongoing one, and I am not going to pretend the arithmetic favors me.

The Third Option I Still Keep in the Car

I keep a pack of Neutrogena makeup remover wipes in the console, and it is a different tool from both of these. It is a wet wipe with cleanser already in it, so it is one motion with no bottle. It stings a little if I rub near my eyes, so I close them and go gently. It is a fine thing to have after a route when I am parked and want to be done in a hurry. But it is not what I reach for when I want to wash and then dry my face, and it is too bulky for the zip pouch. One pack also dried out in the console a while back because I did not press the label shut, and a dry towel cannot do that.

So the washcloth and the dry towel are the two ends of a simple line. One object you own forever and launder, and one you use once and throw away. A wet wipe sits in between. It has the convenience of the towel and the trash of the towel, and none of the laundry of the cloth, and it carries whatever is in the wipe onto your face. For me that is fine on a normal day and not fine on a day my skin already feels touchy. That is the whole reason the dry towel and the bottle won out in the car.

What Neither One Does

Neither one treats anything. A towel removes what is sitting on your face, and that is the whole of it. If your skin is red, itchy or broken out and it does not settle down in a few days, or if something you have used for years suddenly stings, that is a question for a doctor or a dermatologist, not for a shopping decision. I say that plainly because I have watched people spend a great deal of money on the wrong thing when the answer was a phone call.

A washcloth is a good object. The question is never which one is better in general, it is which one is better in the place you are actually standing.

How I Use Mine on a Route Day

The routine is quick. I park, pull the tote onto the passenger seat, take out one towel, and pour a little water from the bottle onto the middle of it. Then I wipe from the center of my face outward, then my neck, then fold the towel and use a dry corner to pat everything dry. It goes into a small bag for trash. In winter I use less water, in summer more. If I have sunscreen on, which is most days here, I use two towels and I do not feel bad about it.

At home the towel does a different job. I wash my face at the sink the way I always have, and then I dry it on a CLEAN SKIN CLUB towel instead of the hand towel. That is the entire change. It cost me no time, and if I had to give up everything else in this comparison and keep one piece, it would be that piece.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the CLEAN SKIN CLUB towels if you are out of the house most of the day and away from a sink. If you drive a route, run errands, walk in the morning, travel, or work outdoors, they solve a problem a washcloth does not solve. Buy them especially if you have ever put a wet washcloth back into a bag and found it two days later. And if heavy fragrance on your face leaves your cheeks tight and pink for an afternoon, the fact that there is none in the sheet itself is worth something.

Stay with a cotton washcloth if you are home most days, if you have a sink and a hamper and a washing machine you actually run, and if the trash is the thing that bothers you most. That is a reasonable position and the washcloth earns it. Most of us, honestly, need one of each. Cloth at the bathroom sink, towels in the tote bag.