Laundry math

We've been using cloth napkins for a few years now. We made a set from material we had on hand (it's how I taught myself how to use a sewing machine, which, as it turns out, wasn't as scary as I thought it would be (though it can certainly be frustrating at times)) and I bought a new set. And then we thought we were set! 

But apparently we're messy eaters, or lazy laundry-doers, or something because we were always running out of napkins. So whenever I see someone post napkins on the Buy nothing Group, I usually throw my name into the ring. I've picked up a lovely set of Thanksgiving napkins this way, a set of Christmas napkins, and not one, not two, but three sets of "everyday" napkins. 

The Thanksgiving and Christmas napkins aside, since they're put away with our holiday things, we have at least five sets of napkins in our napkin drawer, but really more like six because we made something like 20 homemade napkins (so that definitely counts as two sets for our family). 

That's a lot of napkins! And we really haven't run out of napkins in a quite a while.

I was surprised, then, when we were setting the table this evening and...found out we had no clean napkins! 

Incredibly, all the napkins we own fit in our laundry bin...even though it used to seem like all the napkins we owned (before we owned as many napkins as we do now) barely fit in the laundry bin. I'm not really sure how this works out, mathematically speaking, but it's the predicament we found ourselves in this evening.

But now the napkins are all washed, dried, folded, and put away to start the cycle over again tomorrow.