It used to set me off the minute I walked by it. The decorative towel I like to keep hanging from the oven. Despite what I thought was a well-known rule about decorative towels not being something that we use but rather that we look at; there would frequently be some sort of food splashed across it or it would be moved to another part of the kitchen. I would immediately loudly project “who used the decorative towel”?! It would fall on deaf ears; I would rarely get a response and sometimes nobody was in ear shot or even home, but I would still shout the question when I saw it.
In the 16 years of being married or the 11 and 13 years that my kids have been in this world; how have none of them learned what a decorative towel is? These are the thoughts I would have in the moment.
PC: Stephanie O’Farrell
It put me immediately into an annoyed mood. Every single time. I would grab the towel from its home on the oven handle or wherever it had ended up after clearly being used and fling it into the laundry room. What annoyed me more is that my kids and husband all seemed so unremorseful about it. They would give me an ingenuine sorry or they forgot which was often accompanied by a look of “calm down, it’s a towel”. I believe my husband was the biggest repeat offender. There could be four other dish towels on the counter, yet he would gravitate towards the one that was off-limits. I think it made me madder that none of them seemed to care.
Then, one day, I entered the kitchen to witness what appeared to be marinara sauce on the towel hanging on the oven handle. A white towel with black vertical stripes and now a bright red something just staring me in the face.
I grabbed the towel and flung it into the laundry room sink like I had countless times. I started scrubbing the red mystery stain. I needed to cook dinner, but this stain was now my obsession and everything else would just have to wait.
In that moment of dabbing Dawn dish soap and making negative comments as I scrubbed, something came over me.
What am I doing? I thought to myself.
Why was I letting this one little thing seem so big to me? Why would a towel set me into such a fit of annoyance? Why did I care so much about it?
I am sure I could unpack those questions in therapy but I ultimately decided it was something to do with the troubles that sometimes come with my tendency to lean into a type A personality. It causes me to try to control things that are honestly pretty meaningless, things like towels.
I didn’t even have one main decorative towel. It would just be whatever towel I decided to hang in that certain spot, and everyone should just know not to use it because of the location in which it was placed. Often it was something seasonal or bright white which to me clearly screamed, do not use! Honestly, this still seems logical to me but I do recognize it also seems kind of silly.
In that moment of scrubbing this white towel with my negative thoughts and battling with myself on why I was letting this bother me so much and why I find random things like this to try to control; I decided something.
I decided to let it go.
I still got the stain out because I really do love that towel. But I decided that I would try to treat all towels equal from there on out. I didn’t even make an announcement about it because I know nobody in my house cares anyways so what was the point. I put focus on all the things my husband does do like how he unloads the dishwasher and makes the bed every morning. This helped me in the process of letting this one thing go.
I don’t think my family has noticed the shift, but I certainly have. I still hang a pretty towel on the oven. But now when it gets dirty, I treat it like I would any towel that gets something on it. It goes into the laundry room. I don’t aggressively fling it or obsess over scrubbing something out of it. I don’t try to figure out who is guilty of getting it dirty. I simply replace it with a clean one and then get to the laundry when I get to it.
Something so small and insignificant has felt so big to me. I am honestly proud of myself for letting it go. It feels like a weight has been lifted which I find so funny because, yes, we are still talking about a towel.
It gets me thinking about other small things that I might be laser focused on that I could just let go of. With work, at home, with parenting. I have not yet taken time to reflect on that but I do plan to pray on it and see what else might pop up.
If you are in the season of parenting feeling like the world is on your shoulders at times, think about if any of that weight just might be insignificant in the grand scheme. If you decide that something like a towel is important then that means it is. Don’t let go if it really matters to you. But my guess is that you have something very small you are allowing to add stress that you can let go of. For me, it was a towel. What might it be for you?
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