A new strategy for dishtowels

[JAZ]

I have, by conservative estimate, at least three dozen dishtowels. Some decorative and virtually useless, others ugly but absorbent. Flour sack and terry, Jaquard and waffle-weave. I always kept a few out at any given time, and crammed the rest of them into a drawer. When I moved, I realized how many I had, and how few I actually used.

Meanwhile, whenever I taught or assisted with classes, we'd always have a big stack of towels to grab whenever we needed them, which of course is a fabulous way to work. Yet somehow, I never thought to use my towels at home that way. I used a lot of paper towels for everything from drying greens to wiping up spills, but most of the cloth towels lived in the drawers. Until I moved.

In my new place, I don't have the drawer space for the towels. Plus, it finally sunk in how much easier it is to work in any kitchen if you have a stack of towels out and easily accessible. So now I keep a couple of stacks of them on top of the fridge -- flour sack for things like drying lettuce or dishes, thick terry "bar towels" for grabbing hot pans (dry) or wiping my hands (damp), plus a small stack of miscellaneous old towels for spills. The clean towels are stacked up on the left, with a basket on the right for dirty towels. It's working like a dream, and I just wish I'd started doing it years ago.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this, right? How do you store and use your dishtowels?

[Carolyn Tillie]

When I moved out of Napa and into San Francisco, I went from a monstrously large kitchen into a tiny one (actually, here in the city we have converted one of our smaller bedrooms into "the pantry" complete with a second 'fridge, IKEA shelves of drygoods and service ware, and all the rarely-used bakeware).

In the kitchen itself, with only three drawers, a very thin drawer next to the stove has been relegated to the dishtowels. Most of mine are the sack-towel variety which I prefer. The new boyfriend made the BRILLIANT suggestion of rolling them up. I can now store eight rolled dishtowels in a drawer that would have only held four, had I folded the towels. Smart, huh?

[Jon Savage]

I've got a bunch of white terry shop towels that I use/abuse in this fashion. Works for me

[Fat Guy]

I really like your strategy. I've got a terrible towel strategy in place right now, which consists of two blue towels always hanging over the oven-door bar. I need to find a place for a couple of stacks of towels, yes I do. The top of the fridge is already taken up by three plastic bins in which I keep potatoes, onions and such. But I'll find a place.

I also need some basic education on towel types. I'm ashamed to admit that I went most of my life never internalizing the fact that there are different types of towels. I was dimly aware that some towels didn't work for some things, but didn't really consider the issue. Now I have a slightly better idea of the differences, but I still dry my wine glasses with paper towels because I'm too stupid to figure out which towels will work well for that.

[SuzySushi]

I don't really have a strategy for storing dishtowels (Carolyn's BF's suggestion to roll them up is, indeed, brilliant!).

But a neat trick I learned from my son-in-law (also in San Francisco -- must be something in that SF air!) is to use black dishtowels: they don't show food stains!!!

[Anna N]

I, too, am space challenged in the kitchen but I wanted one of those fancy 3-tier hanging wire baskets to hold my fresh fruit. It was a great theory but in practice the fruit would rot very quickly in there. So now it holds my clean dishtowels in the large bottom basket and my smaller dish cloths in the smaller baskets. It hangs from the ceiling very near my prep area and has been a godsend.

Note to Fat Guy: from growing up in a pub I learned - LINEN tea towels for glasses - no lint!

[Carolyn Tillie]

But a neat trick I learned from my son-in-law (also in San Francisco -- must be something in that SF air!) is to use black dishtowels:  they don't show food stains!!!

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Ooooohhh... where in the world does one find black dishtowels???

[SuzySushi]

But a neat trick I learned from my son-in-law (also in San Francisco -- must be something in that SF air!) is to use black dishtowels:  they don't show food stains!!!

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Ooooohhh... where in the world does one find black dishtowels???

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My SIL bought his at Bed, Bath & Beyond, I think. I found mine at...... Wal-Mart!

[Fat Guy]

Hmm. The problem with black towels is that you can't tell whether they're clean. I like white or light blue towels, because if they get gross you know to wash them.

Interesting that 6ppc mentioned shop towels. I see boxes of these at Costco all the time. I've occasionally wondered if they'd make good kitchen towels. They're so cheap as to be nearly disposable.

[K8memphis]

Cloth towels can hold bacteria like madmen even though freshly washed.

So be careful. I use copius amounts of paper towels for that reason especially for food and hands depending on the project. I guess the germs in paper are not as scary? Well I guess they are fresh germs anyway. Early on someone read me the riot act about bacteria in cloth and it stuck with me.

[EllenC]

I keep my towels in a drawer, but I always also have a bunch out.

Fat Guy, I bought those shop towels from Costco and they are great. I use them for so much stuff and when they feel gross even after washing, I throw them away.

I keep an extra plastic bucket in the corner of the kitchen and throw used towels in that. I use all white towells and I bleach them in the wash.

[hummingbirdkiss]

I dont fold anything..ever ..not even my clothing... so a drawer is out for me ..unless I can just shove the towels in there but then they stick out looking bad ..and I have no wall space in my current kitchen (but will in my new one!) so hanging them up is out ...I have two rattan baskets one for clean and one for dirty and just pull one out when I need a clean one and then when it is gross just it in the dirty one ...where the baskets are kept is always a problem if they are on the floor they get kicked around ...if they are on a counter they take up space..this is not an ideal solution but it is what I am doing now until I find a better one! like my new kitchen!!!!

Edited April 6, 2007 by hummingbirdkiss (log)

[mrbigjas]

Cloth towels can hold bacteria like madmen even though freshly washed.

So be careful. I use copius amounts of paper towels for that reason especially for food and hands depending on the project. I guess the germs in paper are not as scary? Well I guess they are fresh germs anyway. Early on someone read me the riot act about bacteria in cloth and it stuck with me.

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we have a drawer full of dishtowels and every night bust out a new one or two, and use them for everything. then every week or so we do a load of laundry that's just dishtowels, in hot water with bleach, colored along with white, because they're just dishtowels, who cares if they fade?

mostly they're those towels they sell at williams-sonoma (like this), which people have bought us as gifts over the last several years. funny how people do that when they know you like to cook. because really, $15 for four dishtowels is silly, but at the same time $15 is a nice price point for a throw-in when someone is getting you a gift but doesn't think they've spent enough on you.

[Priscilla]

I also work with a stack of easily-accessible towels in the kitchen... as JAZ points out, accessibility is the key. That and keeping the stack stocked. But among laundry tasks kitchen towels are the easiest -- all together, hot, bleach, quick to fold.

Mine are all linen and linen-cotton, a few terries for major liquidy spills, a couple oversized that are landing pads for freshly-spun greens. The collection is disparate, not to say motley; vintage ones I pick up up at antique fairs and so forth. My secret price point is <$1, but I will go higher for pink or striped or other value-added. But I am ecumenical beyond insisting upon 100% natural fiber. Ikea's got cheap kitchen towels, if disparate and/or motley is not one's thing.

My motivation has always been primarily environmental. But kitchen textiles add a lot to the cooking experience, too, and that sort of satisfaction is where it's at, for me.

[snowangel]

I also need some basic education on towel types. I'm ashamed to admit that I went most of my life never internalizing the fact that there are different types of towels. I was dimly aware that some towels didn't work for some things, but didn't really consider the issue. Now I have a slightly better idea of the differences, but I still dry my wine glasses with paper towels because I'm too stupid to figure out which towels will work well for that.

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Steven, nothing does a better job of drying dishes or glassware than flour sack dishclothes. And, for some odd reason, if they are ever so slightly damp, they seem to do an even better job of drying. Mine are embroidered with the days of the week, but that's not necessary. And, if I'm salting something (cabbage, for example) to draw out moisture, I just put the stuff on a flour sack dishcloth and sqeeze all of the liquid out. My laundry shoot is in the kitchen, so dirty towels are easy to get to the washer.

Terry towels are for major spills and drying hands.

I'm really liking Janet's idea for storage. I have them in a small drawer, and stuffing them in there (rolled up) in a pain in the butt.

[paulraphael]

Years of refinement have led to my current system: a few more towels than will comfortably fit, crammed onto the oven handle. They are in various, ambiguouse states of filthiness, and hung in a way to ensure that they drag on the floor when the oven opens, and that grabbing any one towel willl cause all the others to fall into a heap. It's anyone's guess as to which towel (if any) is clean enough to dry a plate, or dry enough to grab glowing-hot pan handle.

Why mess with perfection?

[Marmish]

I have around 60-70 dishtowels last time I counted, and I doubt I've lost any since then. I keep them in a drawer, folded in half longwise, then thirds and stacked. I can fit 3 stacks in the drawer front to back. It is rare that they are all clean at the same time. Putting a basket on the top of the frig for dirty towels is genius. I either pile them at the top of the basement stairs, or throw them down the stairs, depending on how wet or crumby they are. It's really not a good solution either way.

I try to use them for everything, but use papertowels for chicken and the like. I usually throw some vinegar in with them in the wash, rarely bleach. They make good souvenirs, and I always think of who gave me the towel when I use it. I also scrounge around TJMaxx, Marshalls, and Kohls clearance sections for cheap towels. It helps that if I like it, I buy it, even if it doesn't match the kitchen.

[ludja]

I, too, am space challenged in the kitchen but I wanted one of those fancy 3-tier hanging wire baskets to hold my fresh fruit.  It was a great theory but in practice the fruit would rot very quickly in there.  So now it holds my clean dishtowels in the large bottom basket and my smaller dish cloths in the smaller baskets.  It hangs from the ceiling very near my prep area and has been a godsend.

...

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Great idea for those three-tiered hanging wire baskets.

My storage place is unique but just happens to work out well for me. In a hallway that goes by the kitchen on one side I have a chest that mainly contains out of season clothes. But in one top corner I store clean, folded dishtowels. It's very easy to snag a towel whenever I need a new one.

[Priscilla]

The Out Basket is a vital part of the system. I take great pleasure in chucking a towel into its pre-staged basket, three steps down there on the laundry porch.

[Rebecca263]

I keep an old pressed glass bowl full of rolled up towels of varying types, on my counter. UNDER my kitchen sink I keep a bucket full of torn up 'rag' towels. Too useful for cleaning(we don't use paper towels or paper napkins, for that matter!), too ugly for the countertops!

[Emily_R]

Anna -- That three-tiered hanging fruit basket for towels idea is genius!! I will have to keep my eye open for one!!

Emily

[JAZ]

The Out Basket is a vital part of the system.  I take great pleasure in chucking a towel into its pre-staged basket, three steps down there on the laundry porch.

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Exactly. I think that's why this is working so well for me. Without an easy, out-of-the place to toss the used ones, it would drive me crazy.

[mamster]

I'm intrigued. I keep all kinds of random stuff on top of the fridge even though I've been telling myself not to for years because it always ends up coated with grease. Plus, I use way too many paper towels.

What kind of basket do you use for the dirties?

[project]

Sure! I bought several bags of square, white, terry cloth, 100% cotton towels with a few dozen towels per bag.

I keep a stack, flat, not folded, usually 1 to 2 feet high, on the stainless steel table I use for a kitchen island.

Sure, whenever I need a towel, I take one from the top of the stack. When I eat a meal at my computer, I take two (messy eater!).

If there is any doubt about how clean a towel is, then I toss it into the collection for washing.

For washing, I start with about 16 ounces of chlorine bleach and about 8 ounces of Tide. After this first pass through the washing machine, I just start the machine again to get more thorough rinsing of all that bleach. My guess is that not many harmful microbes will live through all that bleach.

Then I dump the damp mass into the dryer and let it get everything all nice and cuddly warm, dry, fluffy, and white!

Then I stack them, flat, not folded, and add them to the pile on the stainless steel island.

Nearly everything I get on the towels washes out amazingly well.

I use paper towels only for really yucky stuff I wouldn't want on the terry towels.

The terry towels are saving me a 'bundle' on cost of paper towels. Still, I buy paper towels in bundles of about 18 rolls each far too often. I can fit all of one bundle in a narrow under counter cubboard just wide enough for two rolls.

Actually, I looked long and hard for some 'kitchen' towels, hopefully color-fast red and white terry (ah, in the seventh grade, Terry was blond and gorgeous -- actually her mother was tall, slender, blond, gorgeous, and smart -- she married a physician!). I used the Internet to explore all over the world; talked to some high end textile people; etc. I concluded that the situation on 'kitchen towels' was hopeless and settled for the square white terry cloth towels I did get -- at Sam's Club.

Behind Terry lived Ann, and at her ninth grade party she wore a shear, pastel, florel print dress outlined and tied with satin ribbons. I've never been able to forget her in that dress. With Ann, I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life: In twelfth grade trigonometry, I had a big shoot out at the board with the best student in the school and won. Word traveled quickly through the halls, and Ann came up to me -- we had not spoken since the ninth grade -- and congratulated me on the victory. Mistake: I was too surprised and neglected to invite her for a cherry Coke at the pharmacy across from school and, then, walk her home! BIG mistake!

Too bad I can't use all those Terry towels and all the food information on eG to cook something fantastic for Terry and Ann!

[Cleo]

I really never gave this much thought because I truly never use dish towels for drying dishes. I just think that there's something gross about the wet towels. Maybe the bacteria thing. We do, however, always have a black dish towel hanging over the oven door handle. Occasionally it will get used for picking up a pot or pan with a hot handle, but that's about it.

We go through unbelieveable amounts of paper towels. Probably a roll every 2 days. But now after reading everyone's methods here, I'm sort of inclined to start using dish towels. Maybe I just never had the right kind. Plus, we live in an apartment now and only have laundry in the basement of the building, not in our apartment. So lots of dishtowels just creates more laundry. But we will soon be moving to a house and not only does it have a huge kitchen, but the laundry room is near the kitchen so the dirty towels can go right in there.

Now I need to study up on the different kinds of towels that I will *need* to get...

Edited April 9, 2007 by Cleo (log)