Prepare Towels for Emergency Stockpile (1) #84

Which towels are good for emergencies??

How often do you use your towels, throughout the day?

We use towels in many situations for various purposes. Towels are essential to our daily lives. The idea of preparing towels for an emergency may seem like a burdensome task that will take up way too much valuable space. You might think It will be hard to carry towels for each and every family member. At the other extreme, you might think living even a few days without a towel is impossible, and at that you should pack at least a few towels in your emergency bags.

Well, I’m here to tell you that you definitely want towels in your emergency bag, and they don’t have to be cumbersome or bulky.

Towels can be incredibly useful in emergency situations. They’re not just for drying your body when you’re wet. Let’s prepare towels in our emergency stockpile.

There are many kinds of towels, and it can be hard to decide which towels to get for your emergency stockpile. Which kind should you get?

Any towel is better than no towel, and an old, used towel is better than nothing. If you have lots of towels in your home, just pick out an old one for your stockpile. I will show you some convenient ways to prepare, and I’ll review ways we can use our towels in emergencies. Let’s go through it together.

Which towels?

It’s better to have a wide variety of towels in your emergency stockpile at home. I recommend keeping, at the very least, bath towels and face towels, all the time, in your home. It’s OK for these towels to be the towels you normally use, in your daily life. If you already have them, you don’t need to buy new ones for your at-home stockpile. Just keep using them normally, and they’ll be handy in an emergency.

For your evacuation bags, normal bath towels will be too cumbersome. You need the emergency towels in your “go bag” to be as compact as possible.

This is where compressed towels come in!!

Thankfully, recent technology allows us to compress towels into packaging that is very small and very light!! It’s easy nowadays to carry towels for emergency situations. They do not take up much space at all and can be set up easily in your evacuation bag.

Quality problems…

Many companies sell compressed towels that are packaged very attractively but that are not very good. Non-cotton, non-woven, compressed towels and poor-quality, knitted fabric towels are inexpensive, but they’re often kinda small, flimsy, insubstantial, and too easily broken.

Check the towels’ quality and try to find thick towels. In an emergency, you might need to keep using the same towels over and over again. So, it’s better to get stronger towels, and if possible get towels that are strong enough to be washed repeatedly.

You can get disposable, compressed towels, but you need to be aware that they will result in more trash during an emergency. In major disasters, trash is always a problem. Trash collection is often disrupted, and evacuation shelters can only handle so much garbage. Again, any towel is better than no towel, but be aware of the potential downside to the disposable option.

Do your research when picking out compressed towels. Try them out so you know what you’re getting. Some people buy the crappier quality towels and use them like wet wipes in the bathroom. We’re not shopping for wet wipes. Look for better quality towels.

Need water?

A lot of compressed towels need water for them to expand. Instant towel: just add water! In emergency situations, we will have water outages or a limited/contaminated water supply. When that happens, we don’t want to use our precious water to expand towels.

Nowadays, you can find compressed towels that don’t use water!! We need little time to loosen the towel by hand, but it does not need water. If you live near a river or the ocean, you might not be too concerned about water for your compressed towels, but many people aren’t so lucky. If your access to water can be compromised, it’s good to have the towels that don’t need water.

Examples from Goriyama

★ Compressed Gloves and Face towel (Hikari Towel 光)

This compressed towel includes gloves. And it does not need water to expand. Just open the pack and loosen it with your hands.

★ Disaster Preparedness Storage Compressed Towel (from Rakuten or Amazon)

This towel also does not need water!! It’s durable, and you can use it repeatedly. The package looks big, but it contains 5 compressed face towels!! It’s good for the whole family.

★ Small Compressed Face Towels (RABLISS Kobayashi Yakuhin)

You need water to expand this one, but it is very compact and can be used repeatedly.

Compressed towels are very small; they will take up very little space in your emergency bags. These compact, compressed towels are also good for travel, business trips, camping, and even for house guests. One potential downside: are these disposable towels good for the environment? Are they ecologically friendly? Do we care about sustainability in an emergency…? What constitutes an emergency for you??

I tried to make my own (faux?) compressed towels, using my everyday face towels. I’ll explain next time. Please check my next post.

See you next time

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