KonMari 2016 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

milasavesmoney

Floss wrote: »

I tend to refresh towels by dyeing them, I have some faded maroon towels that are about to be turned purple

You are my new hero! Love this idea!!

GreyQueen

I've just had a yummy meal of steamed carrots and french beans (the beans from the lottie) plus some butter-fried liver. Half of a portion which cost 38p at the butcher's this aft. Delicious and filling but low carb.

I have about a dozen towels and realised that if I used them all in rotation, I would always have about a dozen half wornout towels. Repeat of the situation with the knicks and a replica of the teatowel situation.

I'm limiting myself to one teatowel out at a time. This works for my singleton household which runs a laundry load every 4 days or so. When one retires to the ragbag, another will be brought out. I'm picking on them in order of worn-ness, if that makes any kind of sense.

I could manage perfectly well with about 4 towels and 2 teatowels, but feel a bit wobbly thinking about having my inventory so low. Which is crazy as it'd be plenty, but I was raised with the idea that you always have a lot of this kind of stuff and, when you see some more At a Good Price, you stock up.

Howsomever, having seen the level of cluttering excess linens cause, I don't want to play that game myself. I truly think that given my age, the inventory on site, andthe inevitabilily of inheriting the maternal hoard of linen, I'm set for life!

MMF007

Oh GQ, me too re inheriting towels etc. My mum actually said, "Don't buy any towels, I've got loads.". But why?? It's not as if they have loads of bathrooms, or even rotate to put out appropriate colours to match the decor.......... :rotfl: Doh.

I asked Mum to release some sheets. They are very thin, she NEVER uses them, they get in the way in the airing cupboard. Nope, they were grandma's. Grandma, bless her, died 25 years ago, aged 94. The sheets were from her bottom drawer so were probably over 70 years old when she died, and are now almost Centenarians. Could she perhaps release the newer very cheap sheets that she finds too harsh and a b4gger to iron? Oh no, because she hadn't had them long. Do you use them, Mum? Well not really but you never know when they will come in handy.

aaaaggggggghhhhhhh

I went for a lie down in a darkened room!

GreyQueen

MMF, I think our mothers must be related.

Mum has all four very deep drawers in her divan bed-base filled. And this is after I had everything outta there last summer and we sorted through the things which didn't really belong in order to make room for the linens. And there is also a narrow cupboard of linens on the landing plus some in suitcases and laundry bags in the loft. Lots of towels up there.

Take pillowcases. Please take some pillowcases, please! Now, I use a pillow protector under a single pillowcase. Mum uses anything from 2-3 pillowcases under the top pillowcase. And there is a complicated hierarchy of which pillowcases go under and which on top; the more worn efforts go under, which makes sense. Except that they invariably have to be unfolded and held up to the light to ascertain their wornoutedness. And then re-folded. Occasionally, the washer rips a tissue thin effort to beggary and it can go for rags. There is also a complicated regime of which pillowcases get laundered when the bed is changed, such as the top two levels.

I launder my pillowcase twice a week and the pillow protector every few weeks. It's on my mind as they're all on the clothes airer right now.

It's be more efficient and space-saving and just plain easier if Mum had pillow-protectors. It's not like they're expensive or hard-to-get, there's a market guy who does M & S seconds cheaply. I shudder to think how many blessed pillowcases Mum has, including the His & Hers embroidered wedding gift ones and the patterned ones which form an archive of 1970s textile print designs. Some of those have been sent to live with me (the more conservatively-coloured ones). To join the half dozen maroon ones which match my duvet cover.

The parental home has two double beds and one single. The single is used every few weeks when I rock up to declutter and eat them out of house and home. Given that it gets used so seldom, probably one set of sheets and one duvet cover would be sufficient. Two if you felt like being extra secure. But we have to keep about a dozen single sheets and three duvet covers (the only duvet in the household is on that bed btw).:wall:

I swear to you, among the linens cleared out last summer were cot sheets. The baby of the family is approaching his half-century. And we have two gen-u-whine grey wool WW2 army surplus blankets.

greenbee

I use 'under pillowcases' rather than pillow-protectors GQ. Some are older house-wife pillowcases. Others are made out of old sheets after they were sides-to-middled and then wore out again... most made by my grandmother. They are starting to wear out. Which is probably why I appear to be short of housewife pillowcases - I've got all the beds made up for this weekend and am lacking two. But I have 5 on my bed (sorry, but I like reading sitting up in bed), 4 on the double, 2 on each of the large singles, one on each of the kids beds, two on the sofabed. If we have extra kids sleeping on the floor (not unusual) then some of the beds with extras get them redistributed. Most of the time I don't need them all. Same with sheets, duvet covers, towels etc. But when I do need them, I need lots!

So I'll take any white housewife pillowcases that are going begging... even the thin ones!

mavvymoo

Ladies Ladies Ladies all this towel talk.

Dont ever ever get rid of a towel after all you need to keep at least about 20 justin case the washing machine leaks at some point in the distant future.Just like my Dad does :rotfl::rotfl:



Mav x

MMF007

Greenbee, I have a feeling that mum has a range of patterned pillowcases and defo has quite a few orange brushed cotton ones..........but I am not sure about white. There maybe some I have not yet uncovered. If I find any she will release l'll let her know there is someone who would love them and drop you a PM!

greenbee

MMF007 wrote: »

Greenbee, I have a feeling that mum has a range of patterned pillowcases and defo has quite a few orange brushed cotton ones..........but I am not sure about white. There maybe some I have not yet uncovered. If I find any she will release l'll let her know there is someone who would love them and drop you a PM!

That would be wonderful Not sure how you're going to persuade her to part with orange brushed cotton though :cool:

milasavesmoney

Sheets and pillow cases were inherited from my mother, MIL, and came with OH when we married + what I had. :eek:
At one time I had four twin beds and three queen beds. Now I'm down to two twin, one queen and two king.
I need to kondo sheets again. I've probably sent 30-40 pillow cases to the thrift center and heaven only knows how many twin and queen sheets, many of which didn't match anything else but were kept because they still had some life left. Both sets of our parents lived through the US Great Depression and that was how their families survived. Mend it and use it until it couldn't be mended any more.

GreyQueen

Don't tell your Dad that there are specialist water-sucking vacuums, mavvy, or he might decide to hoard one of those instead/ as well as the old towels.:rotfl:

I understand the thought but, people, how often have we individually known a washer to leak and how bad was the spill anyway?

A decade ago, I decided to limit my use of bath towels to just two, the green one and the brown one. I used them turn and turn about, they weren't new when I first had them, and they still took the best part of a decade to wear out. I then quartered and hemmed them and use them as drying cloths and cleaning cloths. They are still going strong and one or other of them is in use most weeks.

Compare and contrast to another hemmed towelling rag which was decades older and whose remaining pile suddenly debonded from the backing and shed bits all over my washload. Grrr! That was a tedious thing to undo and it went into the ragbag as soon as it was dry.

My experience of things like clothes and household linens is that they last a helluva lot longer in that half-worn-out-not-good-enough-to-donate stage than one would believe possible. Soooo, if one doesn't want to spend one's life (and leave ones next-of-kin) with a household's worth of tired and shabby stuff, one needs to have a plan to use it and and get it out of there. My old clothes sometimes get demoted to gardening duties, for example.

Several of my lovely pure cotton sheets have been sides-to-middled and are being used on heavy rotation. Once they have gone beyond, they will be assessed to see if there are any bits around the edges which need to become housewife pillowcases. Otherwise, I plan to retain one as a drop-cloth for decorating.

Incidentally, if you have old sheets and a passing decorator acquaintance, they might be glad to take them off your hands.