excessive

How many do you think you have? How many do you want?

If I hadn’t been minimizing, my guess would be around 20. Because I actually laundered (finally) and folded every single dishtowel in my house. I now know I have (had) 33! That’s a little excessive, wouldn’t you say? Even worse, this suggests some big pile-up potential in the laundry room.

My new goal is to never let laundry pile up. I thought about this and how I could only minimally alter my habits to get this to be easy. This brought me to ask “How many dishtowels do I actually need?”

Every Saturday I’d like to routinely do 1 load of clothes and 1 load of household. The household would consist of something like; 1 set of queen sheets, 3 additional pillow cases, 2 bath towels, 2 hand towels, 2-5 washcloths, 1-2 dishtowels, 1-2 dish rags.

The good, I edited my kitchen down to 12 towels (7 towels, 5 rags) to support this new method. Here’s how it looks!

The bad, I know I need to get that number down further. However, it seems that trying to manage a balance of festive (those bottom two are ready for the Christmas season) with “ok to get dirty” is getting in my way.

This is exactly the benefit of committing to getting rid of only 5 items/day. It allows you to get momentum without going too far and feeling overwhelmed.

Regarding the dishtowels, and what they symbolize for me, I’m working on detangling like and want. I’m working on appreciating a thing in the moment and not bringing it home because it made me smile for a few bucks.

All that and I was only able to get 1 towel out of the house! The remaining 20 are shoved in a plastic bag in the back of my closet.

Here’s what I was able to get rid of today

Sunny-side dishtowel (because folding it to look right was more complicated than I’d like)
Duvet cover
Pillowcases that match the Duvet cover (note: separate decision equals separate item. I thought about keeping these, at first. Feeling great about letting them go!)
Flannel pillowcases
Queen top sheet (fitted fell apart years ago)

I’m not a scientist, but I did enjoy Jr. High physics class. It’s the first time I heard “matter is neither created nor destroyed”. It feels that way at home now. All the time I’ve invested in removing excessive things from my home, is coming back to me. For more than two weeks, I’ve been going through daily clutter purges. I did not lose, or waste, that time at all. It just shifted. Removing stuff means you’re removing choices. Fewer choices means fewer decisions. I’m talking about trivial choices and decisions. Ones that don’t matter one bit. For example, should I moisturize with coconut oil today or sesame? Who cares!!! right? This is exactly the type of choice that brings a false sense of freedom. I removed it, therefore I have more freedom. I have more time. I have more square footage in my house! Look at these piles I dropped off at Salvation Army yesterday (batch one above, batch two below). Does it seem like an insignificant volume? It is the size of a small hall closet. I just increased the size of my living space and removed brain tax. Ahhh! Hello Sunday!

Since yesterday, I have said . . .

Goodbye Marimekko paper placematts that I forgot I had
Goodbye THREE decks of cards. Because the two decks my husband added weren’t enough . . .
Goodbye six bath and body products that I never liked using (Moroccan hair oil scent goes from lovely to OMG WTF really really fast)
Goodbye umpteenth med item that expired in 2010
Goodbye unneeded tablecloth that I always idealized for being classic white, but ultimately was also too fearful to use

Here they are, forever in photography…and thankfully no longer in my home.