Towel Hoarder
My linen closet is basically a museum of towel history. A true hodgepodge. I still have towels from college — 1988, thank you very much — and not a single one of them matches anything else on the shelf. It’s like a reunion of every towel I’ve ever owned, all jammed together, still clinging to life out of sheer nostalgia and stubbornness.
And here’s the funny part: I love the idea of matching sets. Bath towel, hand towel, washcloth — the whole coordinated, Pinterest-worthy ensemble. But let’s be honest… we don’t use hand towels or washcloths. Like, ever. They hang there looking pretty and untouched, collecting dust while the bath towels do all the heavy lifting.
So why keep buying them? Why spend money on an entire matching set when two-thirds of it is basically home décor? In my house, hand towels are nothing more than decorative fabric props, and washcloths are just tiny squares I apparently feel guilty getting rid of.
I have the baby blue towels that came with Jessica’s college bedding set… and the gray-and-white ones she decided she wanted instead. Naturally, both sets ended up living in my linen closet because apparently towels never die — they just migrate back to Mom’s house.
And those aren’t the only strays. I’ve got purple, green, burgundy, gray, navy blue, tan, and white towels. At this point, opening my linen closet is like staring into a Crayola 64-pack made entirely of terrycloth. Nothing matches, nothing coordinates, and yet I keep all of them like they’re long-lost family members.
I keep imagining what it would be like to open my linen closet and actually see matching towels. Purple and forest green for the main bathroom, burgundy and gray for mine — simple, coordinated, and not a single “what even is this color?” towel in sight.
It sounds simple, right? Two bathrooms, two color schemes, a peaceful, coordinated linen closet where everything has a place and actually belongs there. No more mismatched relics from the 80s. No more orphan towels returning from children’s college dorms like prodigal fabric. Just color-coordinated order every time I open the door.
And then, of course, there are the completely random beach towels that somehow multiply when I’m not looking. Those are a category all on their own — neon stripes, cartoon fish, flashy prints. They don’t match anything, but they linger because beach towels feel like the kind of thing you’re supposed to keep “just in case.”
So instead of the coordinated, grown-up linen closet of my dreams, I’m stuck with a chaotic jumble of towels — every color, every size, every era of my life piled into one overstuffed cabinet.
One of these days, I swear I’m going to march in there with a garbage bag and finally create the perfectly coordinated linen closet of my dreams. But knowing me? I’ll probably pull out a 1988 towel, decide it would make a “perfect rag someday,” get sentimental, and put the whole thing right back on the shelf.
Because apparently I’m the kind of person who gets emotionally attached to terrycloth that should’ve retired three decades ago — and also believes every old towel is just one step away from a second career in the rag pile.
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