Fiber Babble: Throwing in the Towel

Throwing in the Towel

August 20, 2007

My camera is having issues, so on today's To Do list is a call to Canon for some troubleshooting. I didn't realize how many times a day/week I reach for my camera until it decided to quit taking pictures!

Since I can't take UFO/FO pics, I guess I'll just have to babble...

Throwing in the Towel
How many towels to do you need?

Take an inventory of the towels in your home. The ones in your bathroom(s) under the counter, the ones in the guest bathroom, the ones in the linen closet. The towels that are artfully or not-so-artfully arranged on open shelves and rods in the bathrooms. The towels that are in the laundry, clean and not, and those that are stashed/hidden/stored in other places in your home.

Are you surprised at how many you have?

I've found that towels have a way of stealthily multiplying in my home. There are the ones that I've had since the dawn of time (frequently used for dyeing my hair and drying the dog), those that are relegated to the bottom of the stack(s) because they match my bath decor from three homes back, towels that "go" in my bathroom, towels that "go" in Mr. W's bathroom. Postage-stamp-sized towels to shower-curtain-sized towels.

How many towels does one need?

Think about how many people you can sleep comfortably in your home - guest beds, couches, air mattresses on the floor. How long would they stay?

With few exceptions, I go with the "fish and houseguests" rule - in your house for longer than three days and they both start to stink :-)

Now, while your house is filled to the gills (sticking with the fish example for a second here), how often will your guests take showers? Every day? ALL of your guests?

And if you do have a full house of shower-taking guests for three days or more, how often will you go mad and throw in a load or ten of laundry? Do you amass a mountain of used towels and then do laundry after everyone's gone?

Let's do the math. Four guests plus two residents (the outside capacity in my house) taking showers every day for -ACK!- five days. If you didn't do laundry at all AND everybody used a new towel every day (come on, now, be honest - even if your guests used new towels each day, do you?), that would be (4+2) x 5, or 30 towels.

Would you just let a mountain of 30 towels pile up? If your house was that full, WHERE would you put the towel mountain? In my experience, hosting a horde also includes keeping up on the extra laundry. Maybe for no other reason than I don't want to spend a week catching up and cleaning after the horde departs. (No snickers or snorts from family members here. You don't count.)(I mean that in the most loving way, of course)(And I mean to say/write/think that with a great deal of charm.)(And anyway, you know how to use the washer and dryer...)

So, back to my original questions: How many towels do you have? And how many do you really NEED?

Are you using up valuable storage real estate in your home unnecessarily?

For the record, I have two bathrooms and 14 towels. Two are of the hair dye/dog variety and one is in the laundry room for emergency sopping purposes.

Labels: babble, THESE