Day 5 - How To Organise Your Tea Towels For Good Challenge

Welcome back,

Day 5 of The 30 days to an Organised Kitchen

How did you get on with your Utensil Organisation from yesterday's challenge?

Today's decluttering task is to declutter your kitchen towels and dish cloths and sponges

 

This task should not take too long, but it's important that you do it.  It's unbelievable how many people have an abundance of tea towels and dishcloths stashed away in their kitchen without realising it.

How Many Tea towels and Dish Cloths Should You Keep?

I can’t give you a definitive answer to this, as it depends on you and your family.  My advice is that you make sure that you have enough to last you through the laundering of them.  If you wash your tea towels just once a week, you need to make sure you have enough to put out a clean one each day.   If you don’t have enough space to store that many, possibly consider washing them more frequently.

 

Which ones Should You Declutter?

The first ones to discard are any that are:

• Ripped
• Frayed
• Worn out
• Stained
• Discoloured
• Or any that you don’t like using – Maybe they don’t dry well, or you don’t like the feel of them

I’m sure by the time you have rooted out any of the above, you will have the perfect amount for your space.

 

Seasonal/Holiday Tea Towels

Some of you may have Christmas or Halloween tea towels which you only use closer to the time.  Instead of those tea towels taking up space where you could store regularly used ones, why not store them with your season decorations, that way you can take them and wash them for when the season beings, promptly washing and returning them with the decorations when the season concludes. 

 

What Should You do with the Cloths You Declutter?

There are several things that you can do with decluttered cloths.  Please bear in mind that this list is not extensive.

 If they are in good condition:

• Donate them to a charity shop
• Pet sanctuaries are always grateful for towels - whether it's tea towels or regular towels. I used to volunteer in a cat rescue, and we loved getting donations of tea towels and towels, it meant that we could then declutter our old ones.

 

If they have seen better days:

• They are perfect for cleaning rags – my husband keeps a stash of them in his outhouse for cleaning grubby things that would damage out regular towels - such as bikes, oil changes on the car, you get the picture.

How you fold your towels can make a big difference in how organised and tidy they are.  

 

Storage Ideas

When I was younger, and I used to visit my grandparents (both maternal and parental), I would occasionally be asked to do the dishes, and they used to store their tea towels in the kitchen drawers, and that was passed down to my parents as “the done way”.  So I used to always store mine in the drawer.   But when we moved into this house – the kitchen was so small that all of the drawers are taken up with other priority things (I only have 4 drawers) So I decided to get creative.

 

I keep my tea towels in the cupboard under the sink.  Did you notice them in the Declutter and Organise your Under-Sink Cupboard?

But you could store them in your cupboard, in your drawers on shelves (on display – if you fold them nice enough) or in baskets/boxes on the shelves if you are a shover and not a folder.

I hope you have found some inspiration and a ready to go and make a start on your task.  It won’t take long to do.

Don't forget to join me tomorrow for Day 6 of the challenge where we will be organising Small Appliances

Let me know in the comments how you got on with this task.  Did you have a large number of tea towels to declutter?  I love looking at your before and after pictures, so don’t forget to tag me #GoDeclutterblog30DayChallenge

 

I really appreciate you stopping by, and want to say thank you - because without you I wouldn't be here. Believe in Yourself, You got this, NOW Go Declutter!