Grab Your Scissors. We're Making *Affordable* Fancy Workout Towels
As you may know, in 2020 I became a Peloton evangelist. Now I’m the type of person who exercises every day, because I want to. Peloton time is my favorite part of the day. Of the whole day!
I have spent a not small amount of time wondering if I should make a Peloton meme account, because the ones that exist are, in my opinion, not cool. I also check the Peloton SubReddit every day, because it’s a great resource to find info about rides, see what everyone is doing, and talk about our bikes to nowhere. It’s a great place to get tips on accessories too, and that’s where I found out about the (apparently well known and popular) Lululemon Towel Hack.
First, some towel background. People get very passionate about their towel preferences, and when you can’t go out and socialize, and you’ve become obsessed with your at-home workouts in lockdown, it’s all too easy to get sucked into Towel Discourse. I started my at home workouts using cheap (really cheap) Target hand towels. Then I upgraded to these Costco ones (mentioned here) and then when I read about the Lululemon towels, I wanted to try that too.
Lululemon towels, referred to, by Lululemon, as “The Towel” and it’s cousins “The Small Towel” and “The Big Towel” are microfiber, ie polyester, which means they have a very different feel from the cotton hand towels I was used to. I hate the way microfiber cleaning cloths feel on my skin, but the Lululemon towels are not shudder inducing to me. They’re not trying to be fluffy or textured, which I think is what grosses me out about microfiber cloths marketed for cleaning. The main draw of the Lululemon towels, and how this hack (that I swear I’m getting to) works, is that they will not fray. The edges are raw, but they’re clean cuts that will stay that way forever. Because of this feature, you can cut the towels up without needing to stitch the edges or worry about frays or snags.
The regular Lululemon towel (AKA The Towel) is 26x71 inches and costs $38-$42. The Small Towel is 16x26” and costs $18. But because you can cut up The Towel with no ill effects, you can get four Small Towels out of one regular towel. And if you don’t care about the color or print, you can get The Towel on sale for $29, like I did when I bought this one. Just to break that math down even clearer: You can essentially get four small towels, that would be $18 each ($72 total) for $7.25 each ($29 total). Even if you paid full price, it’s $9.50 per towel for solid colors or $10.50 for prints.
This little workaround seemed too good to NOT try, so I ordered a sale towel and cut it up. Here’s where I made some mistakes. I trusted the measurements listed on the website and didn’t measure the actual towel in my posession. It says The Towel is 71” long. This would mean I could keep the width as-is, and cut four 17.75” towels. I just kept measuring from the end: 17.75” in, cut, repeat. And I ended up with three towels of one size and one many inches larger. I think I may have made an error with my measuring? But I don’t know how. I may have read my ruler wrong, because when I measure the towels now (that i’ve used them, washed them, dried them) the three 17.75” ones are 16.5” wide. Which leaves 3.75 inches from my imagined total, which when subtracted from the 21” width of the bigger one, gives 17.25, which isn’t 17.75 but is closer to what I was planning on. The point is, the towels are great and they don’t fray and you can totally chop this towel up, but measure as many times as possible. Double check your ruler. Get a second opinion. These towels all work and are fine, but I’m so persnickety that this measuring mess up really makes me frustrated.
A Costco towel over a Lululemon cut up towel, to illustrate the size (pretty much the same)
Anyway, how are the actual towels compared to my fave Costco ones? They’re fine! It’s a very different type of towel, and the Lululemon ones don’t attack sweat like good old cotton. I don’t like to use them for super sweaty workouts, but I do prefer how the Lulu towels feel under my hands when I drape my towel over the handlebars of my bike. I find that what works the best for me is to use a Lululemon towel AS WELL AS a Costco towel, which might defeat the purpose of buying “premium” towels. The Costco ones are for mopping up sweat, and the Lululemon ones are for dabbing sweat and being gentle on my skin, and for draping over the handlebars to keep them dry and my grip supported. For $7.25 per towel, for swanky, snobby towels, why not give it a try? Plus you can do some towel mutilating arts and crafts AND feel like a true bargain boss in the process.
