20 Days, 3 Ways, __ Bags: Towels and Linens

Guests are coming to town and you need your extra towels and sheets. You go to your cupboards and it takes you 5 minutes to decide WHICH towels and linens to use! In reality, you really need only ONE set, but instead you have 4 to choose from. Where did all of the excess and abundance come from?

Filling up bags to either sell, donate, or trash, can be hard. We think “oh, I really don’t have THAT much excess.” Then when you start to go through your stuff, you realize how many bags you can fill. Here are a few ideas on how to fill up some more bags when going through your towels and linens.

1. Decide how many towels you need. A good rule of thumb is 2 person and then 2 more for guests (so a total of 6 if there are 2 people living in your home.) That might be to many already, but I have found this to be a safe number.

2. For sheets: keep 1-2 sets per bed. No reason to keep more.

3. Don’t keep for the unexpected because 9 times out of 10, the unexpected never happens. They only get pushed to the back, never getting used.

4. Free yourself of the McMansion hopes and dreams. You may be dreaming that someday you will live in this huge house with 6 beds – THEN you’ll be able to use all of your towels and linens. Lets stop dreaming and live in reality. If you haven’t used them for years, you probably won’t use them in the next couple years either. Time to get rid of them!

5. If they are worn or show signs that you will be sleeping on top of your mattress instead of your sheet because of a hole, time to get rid of it and buy a new set.

6. Are your towels so worn that every time you wash them, you have to pull the strings from them, making them smaller and smaller? If you are so sick of savoring them until every last thread, watch for sales and buy new. Then throw away the old! We tend to hang onto the old ones for the “just in case.” Again, that “just in case” rarely happen.s

It is so easy to stock pile towels and linens. I used to have the same problem. It wasn’t until we moved, that I realized I did not need to have so many towels. When I couldn’t fit them all in one box (mind you, there are only 2 people living our house), I knew it was time to get rid of some. Don’t be afraid to let go of something. It is freeing and it is one step closer to living an organized life with LESS.

Do you need to go to the second-hand store yet to donate your bags? Be excited about this step. Dropping those bags off, will have you feeling that much lighter when you drive out of their parking lot. Keep filling them up!