Can I make compact towels by myself for emergencies??
Let’s make DIY compressed towels for emergencies!
Is it OK to just use the towels already in my home?
Do I need a special machine to make compressed towels?
Oh my!! It will be hard, right?
Buying towels for an unexpected disaster or emergency is a bit of a pain. Do you agree?
We use towels everyday, and you probably have old towels somewhere in your home. Assuming you already have some lying around, do you really need to go out and buy new ones for emergencies??? Hmm…
There are many compressed towels on the market, and they are very small and compact, perfect for your evacuation bag or emergency stockpile. But if you can make compressed towels by yourself, it will be a good way to save money, right?
Let’s try to make DIY compressed towels!
Find an old towel in your home, and let’s do it!
How to make DIY compact towels?
★Make your own compressed towels (faux compressed towel)
1. Fold an old towel and make it as compact as possible.
Find an old towel. Fold it, then roll it up tight, and finally tuck the corner into the top to secure it.
Actually, it’s easy to make homemade, compressed towels using old towels from your home.
2. Soak the towel in water and squeeze it out.
Soak your towel in water and then wring it out, squeezing out all the excess water.
If you have time, add starch (e.g., rice, potato, or corn) to the water that you use to soak the towel.
Starch helps keep the shape more effectively. Check my next post for details!
3. Wrap the towel with string, rubber bands or plastic wrap to keep its shape.
Wrap it tightly, keeping the ends open.
If you are worried about germs in the towel, use your microwave to warm up the wet towel.
I am less worried about germs than I am about living without towels in an emergency.
4. Put it in the sun to make it dry, and you’re done!
It depends on your towel’s size how long to keep it in the sun.
If thick, it might take a week to become completely dry.
I am sorry, my DIY compressed towels are not perfect like the ones you can buy, but they’re not bad. I consider this experiment a success. We can make towels compact by ourselves.
★Use compression bags
Put towels into a vacuum compression bag, and make them small. Then you can carry them or put them in your emergency stockpile.
I use compression bags for bath towels.
It’s good especially for guests’ towels. (I don’t always know in advance when I will have guests.)
I use vacuum bags for towels and sheets, to save space.
I picked up the compression bags that don’t need a vacuum machine. You just roll the air out. (Sometimes these are called “rolling vacuum” storage bags.)
REMOVE AIR OZONE ASSICIA (Amazon)
You don’t need to buy brand new, fresh towels for emergencies. If you took the time to prepare so that you have towels during an emergency situation, then good job! You will be very happy to have them. My DIY approach for preparing compressed towels is not perfect. The towels don’t end up quite as compact and portable as the ones you can buy at the store and online, but still my technique can help you out. Maybe you can use this approach to set up compact emergency towels in your car or in your garage where they can remain out of sight. If you don’t want to go to the trouble of sun drying your emergency towels, the compression bags do a good job too.
I will show you my experiment in making hard towels with corn starch, in my next post. We’ll try to improve our homemade compressed towels, keeping them portable and small.
See you next time.
Remember, “Protect your life by yourself” （自分の命は自分で守る). You need to survive first, and then you need your emergency supply. No matter how well you prepared your emergency supplies, if you die, then all of your preparations will have been for nothing. First and foremost, keep your health up all the time. Build your stamina so that if you need to, you can evacuate as quickly as possible. Stay healthy.
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