Tidy Towels!

Towels are an area which can frequently get out of control and take over a lot of space in homes.

As is always the case here, before looking at storage solutions, you will need to Declutter first and to do this, find all the towels in your home and bring them into one space.

I would include hand towels and tea towels in that, as well as the larger towels and bathmats.

How many towels do you actually need? This will depend on the number of members of the household there are, how often you wash those towels and how quick the turnaround is when you wash them.

For example, we are a family of 6. We wash towels once a week and they are washed and dried on the same day. The children all have a colour coded towel and flannel so that they know which is their one and my husband and I both hang our towels back on our own pegs, so we don’t get them confused either. Therefore, each of us has one bath towel and one flannel. I have a further two towels that I keep for guests. Each family member also has a towel that we take to the swimming pool or beach (kept in the swimming box with the costumes and swimming bags) and finally, we each have a microfiber towel for taking on holiday that is stored with the holiday things (like suitcases). We have never needed more than this – on the odd occasion that we have more than two guests to stay, we can either bring out the swimming towels, or I can borrow towels from my mother, or the guests might bring them themselves.

Elsewhere in the house, I have a number of scrubby towels that I use for the dogs, cats and the horses. These are kept folded in a different basket so that they don’t get mixed up with the rest.

Bathmats are also washed once a week here, and we only have one bathroom between the 6 of us. I do keep a set of spares in the bathroom in case we need them, but that is as much because the spare mats look pretty in their basket and Spark Joy…

In the kitchen, we have 3 handtowels that are changed regularly (somehow, they get much dirtier than the ones in the bathroom!) and a few tea towels that Spark Joy, mainly because of the memories associated with buying them! I do get rid of any that are tatty.

When you have decided what you are keeping and what is going, it’s time to decide what to do with the discards. Good quality spares are often welcomed at refuges and those that are not in such good condition are often greatly in demand in animal rescue centres.