The Towel Dilemma

Last night, while shopping at Wal-Mart, the clerk commented, "You must own a hotel or something." (Well ... come to think of it ... it would be nice to make some money off of my "rooming house".)

While I have learned a lot of household organizational tricks over the years, sometimes I come across one and say, "Why didn't I ever think of that???!!!" I had one of those moments this past week while reading Always Room For One More. Heather has 9 children at home, that share 1 bathroom, and she posted pics with some of the large family tricks she has come up with. We, also, have 9 children at home right now, sharing 1 1/2 baths. So ... Heather's tips and tricks caught my eye.

At our house ... we have a major towel dilemma. No matter how many hooks we put up ... no matter how many times we tell the children that they need to "use your towel more than once" ... we ALWAYS have towels on the floor and piles of towels in the laundry room. And, I am TIRED of washing a load of towels practically every day.

Heather's post shows a picture of nicely hung towels in a bedroom, and nicely stacked towels in a linen closet. All of her towels are a beautiful white, with nicely embroidered names of each child. While ... we won't be putting the towels in the bedrooms ... we don't have a linen closet ... and we can't afford to get all of our children's names embroidered on their own towels (their towels were a very thoughtful gift from two friends) ... her post did inspire me.

We do have enough towel hooks (between the two baths) ... we store our towels under Papa and Mama's bed ... and we could squeeze enough money out of this month's budget for 16 inexpensive Wal-mart towels and a set of Fabric Markers.

So ... the New Plan ... each child is going to get two new towels with their names on them (I'll probably even get creative with some fun designs with the Fabric Markers). Every week each child will be given 1 towel, while the other towels are "put away". All random, old towels will be banned from use except in the case of flooding (clogged toilets, etc...) or another dirty job. They will no longer be available for daily baths. At the end of the week, Mama will collect the used towel for the week, and replace it with a fresh towel.

Papa and Mama will also certainly come up with a consequence for "towels on the floor". When using old, random towels, it was way too easy to say, "It's not mine." However, with new bright white towels with names ... it will be quite difficult to try to blame someone else.


I'll post pics when I finish the creative design project ... I just thought this tip was too good to not pass along right away.