The Guest Towels That Never Match

There is a drawer in my linen closet, second from the bottom, that holds six towels, and not one of them matches another. A faded blue one with a frayed edge that used to belong to my mother-in-law. Two yellow ones from a set I bought at a discount store the year we moved into this house. A striped one my daughter picked out when she was eleven and thought stripes were the height of sophistication. They are soft, they are clean, and they have never once matched, and for a long time I felt a small pinch of embarrassment about that every time someone stayed the night.

I used to think a good hostess kept a matching set for company, folded into thirds, tied with a ribbon almost, waiting for someone worthy of them. I know women who do this. Their guest towels are white and stiff and monogrammed, and I have used them exactly once at a friend’s house and felt afraid to actually dry my hands on them. I dabbed. I did not want to be the one who left a smudge.

What changed my mind was my brother-in-law Hal, who stayed with us for eleven days the winter his apartment flooded. I gave him the mismatched towels because that is what we had, and on the third morning he said something I still think about. He said it was nice not having to be careful with anything. He could use a towel like a towel. He did not have to worry about putting it back exactly right or whether he had picked the wrong one.

What a guest actually notices

I have come to believe most guests do not notice whether your towels match. What they notice, even if they could not name it, is whether they feel like they are allowed to actually use the things in front of them. A stack of towels that looks untouched, arranged for effect, tells a guest to be careful. A drawer of towels that look like they belong to a real household, one that has been lived in a while, tells a guest to relax.

My mother kept a guest room that was really a shrine. Nobody sat on the good chair. Nobody opened the good soap. When my cousins visited as children we were terrified of that room, and I do not think it made anyone feel welcomed so much as it made the house feel like a museum with a cot in it. I did not want that for my own house, and somewhere along the way, without deciding to, I stopped trying to build one.

What I actually keep ready

• Two extra pillows in the hall closet, the flatter kind and the firmer kind, because I never know which someone prefers and I am tired of guessing wrong
• A basket with a spare toothbrush still in its wrapper, a small bar of soap, and a comb, kept on the back of the guest room door
• A lamp with a bulb I actually check every few months, because nothing says afterthought like a guest fumbling in the dark for a switch that does not work
• A blanket folded at the foot of the bed even in summer, because some people run cold no matter the season and I would rather they have it and not need it

None of it is coordinated. None of it was bought as a set. It is just what accumulated in a house where people actually stay, gathered the way most useful things in a home get gathered, which is slowly and without much planning.

The comfort of the unremarkable

My husband’s aunt Ruth used to say the best guest room in the world is the one you forget you are a guest in. I think about that every time I make up the bed for someone.

I used to think hospitality meant presenting your best self, your best linens, your best version of the house. Now I think it means something closer to letting someone see the actual house, the one with the mismatched towels and the lamp that flickers a little before it settles, because that is the house where they are allowed to put their feet up.

Last spring my niece stayed with us for a week between apartments. She used the yellow towels every day without a second thought, hung them crooked on the bar, left one on the floor once, and I did not think twice about any of it. That is the whole point, I think. A towel that gets used without ceremony is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

Starting your own mismatched drawer

If you are starting from nothing, I would not go buy a matching set just to have one. Start with whatever soft towels you already own that are past their prime for everyday use but still perfectly good. Add to the collection slowly, whenever you replace your own towels, instead of retiring the old ones. In a year or two you will have a drawer like mine, full of towels with small histories, and a guest room that feels like part of the house instead of a display case attached to it.

The towels do not need to match. They need to be clean, and soft, and there in the drawer when someone needs them, without anyone having to ask.