Homemaking Tip of 2011

My loyal readers (anyone? anyone?) may have noticed that I did not have a homemaking tip for 2010 like I did in 2009. (See 2009's spark of genius HERE.) Apparently, homemaking was not a strong point in 2010. I don't think anything was a strong point in 2010. Ha ha. But, I have started off 2011 with a real bang and have another tip worth sharing. Oddly enough, it has to do with towels just like its predecessor.

I swear I wash about 37 bath towels a week. These range from baby/toddler size to full beach towels, from faded blue to Loony Tunes. They usually show up in random hampers (after I pick them up off the floor) taking up space and making one person's laundry take two cycles to finish instead of one. On top of the overwhelming numbers, I'm tired of finding towels lying forgotten behind bathroom doors, souring in someones closet, or on occasion decorating the downstairs living area which is no where near the grooming facilities.

I have been thinking about this for awhile and had a vague idea of what I wanted to do but wasn't quite sure how to execute it. I knew that I wanted each child to have two towels total, and that the towels needed to be easily identifiable as belonging to a particular child. I thought I might need to have names embroidered on them, but that would have gotten costly. So I was very excited to find nice-sized, plush bath towels in a rainbow of colors at Wal-mart for $3.52 each. The best part was that each solid color of towel had a coordinating white towel with trim in a matching color.



So now, I hang out either solids or whites for the week. The kids know that they are responsible for hanging up their towel after bathtime. If the don't, by golly, Mama is gonna know right away who is the guilty slob.

Almost as exciting as the organization made possible by these towels is the opportunity that I had to photograph them. I have always admired photos of stacks of pure white towels (sometimes with a baby on top) or vivid bright ones rolled up and perfectly arranged in a basket. But never until now did I own any towels that would have been aesthetically pleasing to photograph. So I'm pretty happy about the towels!

As for the random towels that have been replaced, some are going bye-bye and the others are being put in the garage to use for big messes as needed. Although Dave and I could use towel upgrades, I didn't want to spend the money at the same time. I think I'll save up for some really nice bath sheets and do the embroidery thing. Dave's is gonna say "DO NOT leave wet towel on bed or floor !!!!!!!!!!" I will use as many exclamation points as I can afford. ;)