96 Towels

My wife and I recently bought a new home. We had several people who were going to visit in a few weeks and we knew that we needed towels and bedding to accommodate all these guests. So I was sent on a Costco quest to obtain the needed towels and bed sheets.

I picked up 4 bath mats, 24 wash cloths, 24 hand towels, and arranged them in the oversized Costco cart. I then sent my wife a photo of this configuration just to make sure that the volume of towels is what she truly wants.

Then I selected 24 bath sheets (larger than bath towels), placed those in one of the boxes they were shipped in, set that box on top of the cart and sent another photo:

Um...This is getting unmanageable but maybe it could work?

But I still need to get 24 bath towels, so I repeated that work with a second box:

Okay, this really isn't going to work. So I went back to the front of the store, grabbed one of the orange flat-bed carts, and transferred all the towels to it.

Then I headed to fetch the 8 sets of Queen sheets, 4 sets of King sheets, and 2 sets of split King sheets (a.k.a. Twin XL). By the way, these sheets are made from bamboo rayon, are not always in stock, and are awesome.

So, I take this heaping cart to the front of the store and pay for everything. I got out to our car and snapped one last photo of what I now need to cram into the mid-sized Jetta.

I pull many of the hand towels and all the bath mats off the top of the boxes and place them in the car. Then I figure I can slide the top box into the back seat. Using the convenient hand-holds on the far sides I lift up the box, walked toward the open car door, and disaster struck:

The bottom of the box popped open and dumped all the bath towels on the ground. I quickly text a photo of this scene to my wife with the message "Good thing we're washing these..." and then I started cleaning up my mess.

Some lady with her 2-year-old stopped by and offered to help me place all the loose towels in the trunk of my car. I am huffing at this point due to wearing a mask for COVID so I reluctantly accept expecting to be able to direct them in a way the helps keep our distance.

At that moment, my wife calls me back to talk to me about this mess, which consumes one of my arms and most of my attention making it difficult to make headway while adding to my anxiety about maintaining a proper social distance. So I ask my wife to release me so that I can clean up everything and she graciously accepts my plea.

It took several minutes of awkwardly shuffling back and forth to get all 50-odd towels into my car, but we successfully managed to clean up that mess (even with a helpful 2-year-old).

I tossed the box aside and then gingerly lifted the other box, from the bottom, and slid it into the back seat of the car. Then I took the collapsed box back to the store (I didn't want to have a repeat when I got home).

Everything fit in, even if it was a giant mess in the trunk. Thankfully we had already planned to wash the towels before using them, otherwise it would have been an even longer unplanned ordeal.