Every time I wash the towels, I do it first thing in the morning, as I am leaving the house. I grab the towels in the bathroom I share with my husband, which includes a “bath mat” (which seems to me just to be a towel with a different name) and a hand towel alongside the three bath towels, then I grab the towel, bath mat, and hand towel from Carla’s bathroom, then I grab the hand towel from the half-bath downstairs, and the two dishtowels that hang above the sink. I throw everything into either an appropriate laundry bin or into the actual washing machine, set it to wash, and that’s that.
For many years, I did this as I was rushing out the door to work. Usually, Towel Day is a Monday. And Mondays my husband tries to take Carla to daycare. (He doesn’t do procedures Mondays, so his schedule begins later than it does most days.) But I would take those extra minutes of not dropping Carla off to get to work early, in hopes of making up for the days when daycare drop-off went horribly and I got to work a few minutes late.
What I’m saying is, is that I would REMOVE all the towels and begin the washing process. But that was where it ended. Later that evening, if I got to the bathroom first, I’d replace the towels. But sometimes I wouldn’t get there first, and instead it was my husband who would go to wash his hands or bathe our daughter or whatever, and find that all the towels were missing.
My husband has long grumbled about this. Why isn’t there a hand towel in the bathroom? Where is the bath mat? Etc etc etc.
And I have long grumbled back at him: You are perfectly capable of going into the linen closet and getting a fresh towel.
Internet, I went so far as to tell him to GET OVER IT the last time we exchanged grumbles on the subject!
And then I had An Epiphany!
The Missing Bath Towels are to my husband what Unreplaced Toilet Paper/Paper Towels are to me!
Oh, Internet. I am so ashamed! All these years, and I was metaphorically using the last of the toilet paper and leaving an empty cardboard tube for him to find!
And you can bet your sweet patoot that I would NOT be okay with “getting over it” if he left me empty paper towel and toilet paper holders every two weeks for years on end.
Excuse me, as I must prostrate myself at his feet and commence groveling.
A really good example of an “it’s the little things” thing! I have to say that it gives me a strange kind of pleasure to see our bathrooms fully done, so when I clean them every other day I like to gather up all the towels and bath mats for washing and then replace them all straightaway so that the bathrooms look perfect for at least a little while! I also have a bit of a thing about mixing certain things in a washing load, so it’s always a load of all towels; a load of all bath mats and a separate load again for dishtowels (obviously more loads of towels and fewer of mats and dishtowels get done and I save them until I do have a full load so as not to be wasteful).
This is emptying the dishwasher in our lives and I think I’m the bad guy. Neither of us is a morning person and my husband is especially a prickly pear in the morning, so I don’t like to be in the same room as him for the first two hours he’s awake. Most days we wake up and I immediately go into the bathroom to shower and he does something (?). Then I get dressed and continue getting ready while he gets his breakfast ready. He empties the dishwasher during this time. I always thank him for doing so, but he also grumbles about it. I WOULD totally empty the dishwasher if he left it for me to do, but he gets to it first. And I REFUSE to deal with him before he’s eating, so…I think I’m not pulling my weight on the dishes.
I do, however, always replace the towels as soon as I’ve taken them down to be washed and replace the toilet paper AND tissue boxes, so maybe I’ll have to cut myself some slack.
How about replacing the towels as you take the dirty ones off to the laundry? It might take a few more minutes but it would avoid the grumbles…
Isn’t it funny how perspective changes things? “How HARD is it to replace the toilet paper, jeez” and “you’re fully capable of getting your own towel from the linen closet, jeez” versus “you’re fully capable of getting more toilet paper from [wherever you keep your extra. Under the sink?}, c’mon” and “why won’t you just REPLACE the towels after you’ve removed them!”. If there were sides being taken, I would be fully on yours, for toilet paper is a harder thing to replace when you are, ahem, in immediate need of it than towels are, but I definitely think recognition of the analogy is the healthier way to go…