This Minimalist Japanese Towel Rack Stops Towels Smelling Musty – And Takes Up Hardly Any Space

Its slim design is practical too, with rolling wheels and a storage tray for bathroom essentials

Bright bathroom with freestanding tub and large windows and mirrors, gold hardware and wooden undersink vanity
(Image credit: Future / Darren Chung)

With tile walls and hard floors, bathrooms are some of the hardest rooms to keep warm in the middle of winter. Add humidity, and towels can take days to dry completely. The result? Musty odors and potentially even mold.

Enter the Japanese-inspired Yamazaki Home Tower Towel Rack, from Amazon. Designed to maximize airflow and promote faster drying, this sleek, space-saving solution on wheels ensures towels dry fully to reduce odors.

The Minimalist Yamazaki Tower Towel Rack Is Highly Functional

When getting rid of musty smells in a bathroom, many of us look to deep cleaning a bathroom and drain cleaning solutions, overlooking our towels as the potential cause. This is especially true if you struggle to keep a bathroom warm in winter.

Even if you use your towels correctly, storing them incorrectly between uses can slow the drying process further. The result? A musty-smelling house and potentially even irritated skin as bacteria develop between the fibers.

James King, the operations manager at DeluxeMaid, explains, 'If you leave damp clothes or towels in your bedroom, expect things to smell musty. The fibers in the fabric provide mold spores with a food source, and the moisture allows them to grow super fast. The solution is easy here: make it a habit to hang wet items to dry in a well-ventilated area.'

That's where the Yamazaki Home Towel Tower, also available at Wayfair, comes in to save the day. Available in black and white, the thin-profile cart can hold up to four bath towels neatly, offering them ample space to dry completely, and more quickly than being bunched up on a hook.

The rack also offers space to dry bathmats, so you don't end up having to waste time freshening up sour bathmats between washes.

A slimline towel hanging rack stashed between a washing machine and a sink

The slimline design makes it the ideal fix for small spaces, too.

(Image credit: Amazon)

Besides hanging the towels out flat to reap the benefits of air drying, it's also vital to improve bathroom ventilation so that air can flow more freely.

The benefit of the towel drying rack having wheels is that you can pull it out into a well-heated, ventilated space when you first hand-dry towels, and tuck it away later in the day, saving space in small bathrooms without adding to visual clutter. Stuck in a pinch, it can also double as a rack for drying clothes indoors in winter, too.

It is, by far, one of the simplest tips cleaners swear by for fresh-smelling bathrooms.

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Meet the Expert

headshot of James King a young man with facial hair
James King

James King is operations manager of DeluxeMaid, a home cleaning service in Indianapolis. With years of experience in the industry, James oversees all aspects of the business, ensuring exceptional service to clients.


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Chiana Dickson
Content Editor

Chiana has been at Homes & Gardens for two years and is our resident 'queen' of non-toxic living. She spends most of her time producing content for the Solved section of the website, helping readers get the most out of their homes through clever decluttering, cleaning, and tidying tips. She was named one of Fixr's top home improvement journalists in 2024.