How Many Towels Do You Need?
Challenging our assumptions about our stuff.
Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash
My family is working on a challenge to reduce our ‘stuff.’
Officially it’s a 30 Day Challenge to get rid of one thing each day in August and increase by one thing the next day.
On August first, one thing, on the second 2 and so on.
It has forced some challenging questions, one of which is the title of this piece.
We have a lot of towels. And they are big. I like big fluffy bath towels. They take up a lot of space.
Beyond that, though, is the question, how many do I actually need?
Asking that question is different than asking…
📌 How many do I want?
📌 How many can I afford?
📌 How many can I fit in the hallway closet?
📌 How can I better organize the closet?
Just in case
In looking at the towel situation, I realized many of them were ‘just in case’ towels.
You know the kind.
Perhaps I might use an older one when I’m working on the car.
Or some extra ones in case the kids used a lot of towels.
Do I still need it?
I rarely work on the car anymore, and the kids, save for one, have their own homes.
There is still a problem with having enough clean towels at any one time. The reason for that is all the other ‘extra’ stuff we have waiting to get washed. Ouch!
Do we need more stuff because we have more stuff?
How many towels?
We are still working through the answer to precisely how many we need. Suffice it to say fewer than we have today.
Here’s the key point.
The answer will be based on need rather than want, affordability, or space available.
That’s progress in itself.
