Replacing the Towel Bar

I find towel bars to be 100% pointless and 100% infuriating.

Were I to be commissioned by the towel bar association to coin a slogan for the towel bar, it would be as follows:

Towel bars: where you put your towel if you want it to take up a ton of space and stay wet forever.

Seriously. Am I missing something? If you want your towel to actually dry, you can only fit one towel per bar. Which is totally impractical in a household with more than one person regularly bathing.

Yet every rental we’ve ever lived in has boasted one measly towel bar in the bathroom.

Landlords around the world, I implore you, stop already with the towel bars. They are pointless.

Such was my fury at having a perpetually damp towel that the first thing to happen in the Duplex (after installing the sanity-saving baby gates, read the harrowing story here), was replacing the towel bar.

I used to think of towel bars as permanent fixtures that could not and should not be removed. On par with a kitchen cabinet. But guess what? It took maybe 40 seconds to take it off the wall. We’ll keep it somewhere safe to rehang before moving out.

Once we ditched the towel bar, we hung three IKEA skuggis hooks. They look like fun mod art all on their own! It took maybe one minute to patch and paint the four holes left from the towel bar, and the bathroom wall is now totally inconspicuous. Like nothing ever happened.

I am loving towel hooks for taking up minimal space, holding towels in a way that allows them to dry, and they even look good with or without a towel on them.

There are lots of good wall hooks on the market, so finding ones that look good is not hard!

Let’s also talk about the towel ring. They can be kind of expensive, and ones we’ve purchased previously for rentals, we’ve just left when we moved out. I wanted a fun geometric one, but was only finding them for $30 and up. And what am I? some sort of millionaire who can drop that kind of money every couple years on a towel ring that I’m going to ditch?

This one is $4 from Hobby Lobby. I spray painted it black with my trusty $0.87 cent can of spray paint, and still am patting myself on the back for remembering to paint the screws.

The towel bar replacement was a small, inexpensive, easy project that has made a huge difference in both the function and feel of the bathroom. See you never, towel bar.