Many Uses for Towels
It can be embarrassing to put out threadbare towels for guests, but your rag box will only hold so much. So what do you do with the other towels?
Old towels make good insulation around hot pots for the potluck at school, work or church- Cut off the fraying of threadbare area and make smaller hand towels or washcloths
- Cut them up into a manageable size and through them in the diaper bag for messes
- Make a kid’s washcloth mitt by drawing around their hand, cutting out and sewing up
- Use old towels to line a pet bed or to dry your pet
- Throw a couple in the car for cleanup or to hang on the window to block the sun coming in
- Give them away to the humane society
- Donate them to a women’s shelter
- Keep them in the garage for checking oil, drying the car, etc
- Use them as bath mats to stand on when you come out of the shower
- Roll it up, tape it and through in front of a leaky door or window sill
- Rip it up (or not) and use as stuffing for a pillow
- Cut them into strips and braid a towel rug
- Hang them in front of a window to provide shade
- Make your own terry cloth can cozy to keep your soda/beer/water cool
- Use them to mop the floor, cut into strips or not
- Cut them to size and use as a baby bib or adult bib
- Cut them up, sew them into a cylindrical shape, fill with rice and heat in the microwave for a heating pad
- Wrap around the head of a broom and clean the cobwebs out of the ceiling corners
- Layer a couple of them, tape or sew them and use for muddy shoes/boots
- Use them as shelf and drawer liners. This also cuts down on the noise from banging around cups and plates as well
- Cut them into strips and use to tie up your hair
- Place old ones under plants when you don’t have a bottom to the pot
- Cut them up into hand size pieces and use to wrap around and clean your glasses
- Stuff them into boxes as packaging material
- Wrap them around breakables when you move
- A smaller drop cloth for painting/staining
- Make a book/beach bag with a couple old towels
- Smaller sizes can be used as handkerchiefs, panty liners, diaper liners
- Use it to patch up something else that is tearing
- Tack onto recliners in areas that are going threadbare ¨C foot rest, head rest
- Make a child’s apron
- Tie up plants and trees
- Wrap around your neck and tuck into your shirt to keep warm in the winter
- Smaller sizes can be placed in a first aid kit
- Sew a few together for curtains in the kitchen/bathroom
- Emergency toilet paper
- A child’s cape or a fort flag
Essentially, only your creativity stops you.
Added Reading:
‘œMany Uses For‘ Series
————
Dawn C. is site owner of Frugalforlife.com and is residing in Colorado with her spouse, Teri, of 11 years. Dawn can be reached at Frugalforlife@gmail.com
This list of the many uses for towels reminds me of Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. To quote:
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini-raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a brush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal; and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhikers) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit, etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other itmes that the hitchiker might accidentally have ‘lost’. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know there his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase which has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in ‘Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.’ (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy).
Source: pp 29-30, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Film Tie-In Edition, Douglas Adams, Pan Books softcover, 2005
I wouldn’t make this up.
Rick
Rick-
I have never read that book… but them are some wise words.