The airing cupboard door had not shut properly since about Easter. You had to lean a hip on it and flick the little brass catch fast, like closing a suitcase in the airport queue. On Wednesday afternoon I leant, the catch gave up, and a bath sheet slid out onto the landing carpet and lay there as if it had made a decision.
Both kids were at school, Rob was on his round and the Aldi shop was already in the fridge, so I did what I do when a cupboard wins. I took everything out, made piles on the landing and counted. It was 15 July, a dry 22 degrees, and the whole upstairs smelled of warm cotton and dust. Mabel arrived within a minute and sat in the middle of the nicest pile.
Twenty-three towels
For four people. I counted twice because I didn't believe it. Seven bath towels, three bath sheets, five hand towels, four swimming and beach towels, and four I can only call mystery: a thin stripy one from Rob's flat-share days, one with a scorch mark, one the colour of weak tea and one with a hole big enough to put a child's head through.
The oldest were the white bath towels we were given when we got married in June 2014. Twelve years of washing have turned them a tired grey and about as absorbent as a tea tray. Nothing in this house gets thrown out while it might still be useful, and a towel never seems finished until the day it has a hole in it. In April I bought two new bath towels at £4.99 each because I couldn't find a clean one. They were in the cupboard, behind a duvet. That is £9.98 spent on a shortage that didn't exist.
What we actually use is simple once it's written down. Each of us has one bath towel on the hook and one spare, which makes eight. Then a hand towel for the bathroom, one for the kitchen and one spare. Then three for swimming and the beach: one for Isla's Saturday lesson, one for Alfie and one for the paddling pool. Fourteen. That was the number I decided to hold on to.
What went where
The rescue Mabel came from in 2021 puts a list on its door every few months, and towels are always at the top, along with blankets and old duvet covers. Nothing with zips or buttons, and no pillows. So I made three bags. Six towels went in the rescue bag: one bath towel, one bath sheet, two hand towels, one swimming towel and the thin stripy mystery. Three went in the rag bag for Rob's car and shed (the scorched one, the one with the hole and the weak-tea one). Fourteen stayed. Twenty-three, all accounted for.
Bedding got the same treatment. We had eleven sets, which sounds like a small hotel. Three beds with two sets each is six, and I keep two spare for the nights somebody is sick, which is eight. Isla's unicorn set (she is ten and says it "isn't even slightly me") went to the rescue, along with a beige set I have never liked and the spare duvet that has been in the cupboard since Linda gave it to us in 2017. The eleventh set had a torn corner, so it was handed to Alfie, who is building a den in the garden and has been calling it "the base".
On Friday, after the school run, I drove the rescue bags over in the Octavia. The woman on the desk said they get through about forty towels a week, which made my six feel slightly pathetic, but she took them with real enthusiasm. Through the glass door I could see a lurcher asleep on a striped towel, and I read the leaflets on the counter for a minute longer than I needed to.
How the cupboard looks now
The slatted shelves date from the days of the old hot-water tank, which went when the combi went in, and the cupboard hasn't been warm since. Mabel has not accepted this. I put a strip of masking tape on each shelf edge and wrote on it with a marker: spares on top, then bath towels, then hand and swim, with bedding on the bottom two shelves. Each bedding set is folded inside its own pillowcase, so a set is one lump and not four loose bits. Rob says it looks like a shop. Isla asked if she could have the label maker she'd seen on a website, and the answer was no, she could have the marker.
The routine hasn't changed. Towels go through on Wednesday in two loads on the Eco 40-60, and bedding every other week. The difference is that when I pull out a clean towel I no longer have to lift a duvet to find it. The whole job took an hour and forty minutes, cost nothing and left me feeling smugger than I've felt since the spreadsheet.
The door shut on the first push. I did it three times, standing on the landing with my hand flat on the wood, like someone testing a new car. Mabel watched from the stairs, plainly offended that the only warm-looking place in the house had just been closed to her.
