Writing titles has always been a challenge for me. In this case I gave up because I spent more time trying to figure out what to use for the title than I did writing the post . . which will become apparent as you read it and follow me into the twilight zone if you dare.
Folding the towels
There are many things in life and in business that we do without thinking about. Sometimes it is the little things that we don’t think about that can have the biggest impact.
The other day when I was folding some towels, the same way that I have always folded them. I noticed that they kind of hang over the edge of the shelf that I put them on. It looks kind of messy.
The home I grew up in had a linen closet just outside the bathroom. We kept the towels in the closet. The shelves were deep but towels could not be stacked very high. We were taught to fold the towels into large rectangles with two folds.
For my entire life I have been folding towels the way I was taught to fold them as a child. It stopped working 15 years or more ago. The towels have to be folded into think squares to fit on the shelves in my bathroom.
Seems like a simple enough thing. Change the way the towels are folded so they fit on the shelf yet my original idea was to use a different shelf. Most problems have more than one solution. It is the obvious and easy solution we forget as we form habits over the years.
We all have the opportunity to examine how we fold the towels as we reengineer our businesses to fit the current housing market. We can reexamine the little things we do each day and how they impact our business life. It is possible for small changes to have an impact, or maybe that only works with towels.
Full time REALTOR and licensed broker with Saint Paul Home Realty Realty in St. Paul, Minnesota. Author of StPaulRealEstateBlog.com, Columnist for Inman News and an avid photographer.

sheilabragg
February 4, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Witty Title: Get out of your feed reader and comment on this post- we PROMISE that the ShamWow guy won\’t pop ou.. https://tinyurl.com/dkgph9
Kim Wood
February 4, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Thought provoking… and balance between “don’t reinvent the wheel” and “getting stuck in the rut”…. thanks.
fred
February 4, 2009 at 6:09 pm
this is a waste of my LCD. find something worth writing about.
teresa boardman
February 4, 2009 at 6:32 pm
No one said you had to read it.
Russell Shaw
February 5, 2009 at 12:10 am
In my experience it works with more than towels, Teresa. Thanks. Nice analogy.
Lisa Sanderson
February 5, 2009 at 6:16 am
This reminds me @heyamaretto ‘s post about the broken escalator: https://heyamaretto.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/staircase-to-heaven/