When I received my orders to report to Fort Benning to attend Infantry Officer Candidate School (OCS), I was given a list of required items to take with me including a box of Kotex. This item drove my mother crazy. She purchased a box for me and I packed it away with instructions to write her as soon as I learned their purpose.
I wish there was some way I could post a second response so that you could fret over this the way my mother did.
In OCS we were required to spit shine everything including the floors of the rooms and halls in our barracks. Every piece of furniture was fitted with a wood block to which we stapled a Kotex on the bottom so that they could be moved without scraping (ruining) our spit shine.