Martha Stewart's Clever Space-Saving Secret For Storing Kitchen Towels

An unorganized kitchen towel drawer is a harrowing place — all of those disheveled squares of cloth either falling out the minute you open the drawer or getting jammed up on the underside of the cabinet. And a tippy, wrinkled stack of dishcloths on a closet shelf isn't much more palatable. We've all been there, right? Well, it is time to put those days of poorly organized towels behind you, because today we're sharing an incredible folding technique straight from the queen of all things home.

A woman who needs absolutely no introduction, home interiors, decor, entertaining, and organization legend Martha Stewart has the perfect technique for folding towels into a shape that actually fits and stays put when in storage. Whether it's in a drawer or on a shelf, in the kitchen or for the bathroom, Stewart's method, shared in a video on her YouTube channel, works universally to transform your towel storage game for good. So, what's the big secret? It's all in the first fold you make. While most of us likely start by folding the towel in half and then repeating until it's small enough to fit in our storage space, Stewart folds her towels in thirds lengthwise before finishing with one or two in-half folds. It may seem like a basic deviation, but this step helps create a rectangular shape with fewer layers, which makes all the difference when it comes to storage. And let's be honest, if it's good enough for Martha Stewart, it's got to be GOOD. Grab a tester towel, and let's get folding!

Martha Stewart's towel folding hack couldn't be simpler. Begin by laying the towel flat on a workspace, such as a table, bed, or ironing board. Fold the towel into thirds lengthwise to create a long, skinny rectangle, taking care to make sure the edges are neatly lined up and the creases are smoothed. Side note: if you're folding a decorative hand towel for the kitchen or bathroom that will immediately hang on a bar or ring without a trip to storage first, this is where you should stop, draping the long rectangle over the bar (seam-side down) for impressively neat results every time. Now, back to the towels for storage — next, fold the long rectangle in half across the middle, aligning the short ends together. For longer towels, repeat this step, once again folding the rectangle across the middle to finish.

Instead of an uneven, bulky square that comes from only folding the towel in half several times, the result of Stewart's in-thirds-first method is a compact, neat rectangle that slides perfectly into kitchen drawers. The extra length helps take advantage of the cabinet depth, while the flattened thirds technique avoids the extra towel layers that plague the inefficient in-half method. The elongated, flat rectangle shape will also help for tidy, sturdy stacking in the drawer or on a shelf, without the headache of a mountain of jumbled, tumbling towels. Plus, since the towels stay so neatly stored, you can fit more of them in your orderly, organized storage space. It's that easy to achieve a perfectly folded towel like Martha Stewart.