The Dish Towel

[Kim Shook]

2 minutes ago, cakewalk said:

So many uses for dish towels. But the truth is, I rarely - if ever - use them to dry dishes. I have a dishwasher, but since I'm a one-person household the only time I use it is when I have guests for a meal. Mostly I wash up by hand, and then I let the dishes dry in the dish rack and put them away later. The dish towel's main use is to dry my hands or to clean up spills, etc. while I'm cooking or preparing things in the kitchen. (Which is why they get so ugly, I suppose.) If I need space in the dish rack then I'll dry whatever is in there, but I'll always take out a new towel because I know the one already hanging in the kitchen has seen all sorts of muck. Do most people really use their dish towels to dry dishes?

Almost never.  Drip dry is my method, too.  Even in the dishwasher, I choose the energy-save option, open the dishwasher at the end of the cycle and let them air dry.  

[blue_dolphin]

21 minutes ago, cakewalk said:

Do most people really use their dish towels to dry dishes?

Most dishes air dry but I use dish towels to dry wine glasses and other crystal.  We have hard water so air drying always leaves water spots.

[weinoo]

51 minutes ago, cakewalk said:

 Do most people really use their dish towels to dry dishes?

I definitely use dish towels to dry dishes; even coming out of the dishwasher, my dishes can have a little water or dampness on them.

 

And the stuff I wash by hand generally gets washed, dried and put away fairly quickly. Stuff such as knives, wooden spoons, the pots and pans which don't go in the dishwasher, etc. etc.

[andiesenji]

I have loads of dish towels.  I used to buy Curity diapers which were bundled by the dozen and CHEAP.  They could be repeatedly bleached and not fall apart and they were wonderfully absorbent and did not leave lint behind.  I still have some that must be 30 years old and still functional.

I have "flour sack towels" that Smart & Final used to sell ten for a dollar.  

I have a dozen or so of the microfiber towels that I got for free to "test" and write a review.

I have some terry cloth kitchen towels received as gifts.  

There are a bunch of coarsely woven 100% cotton towels from the Mexican supermarket that are thick and work nicely as hot pads. 

There are quite a few "odd" towels that are patterns and solid dark colors, which I used when I was catering to line trays on which there would be containers on which condensation would form. The color did not show the "leakage" and looked nice.  

I don't think this is a problem. If one likes to have plenty of towels, that is personal preference.

You should see how many bath towels and bath sheets I have.   I rotated them in and out of "service" a few times a year, laundering ones that haven't been used, just to keep them fresh.

There are enough that I could probably provide towels for a baseball team, if needed.

[Katie Meadow]

Who doesn't love dish towels? A good quality dish towel is always a nice gift; at least half of my day-to-day dish towels were gifts. These are mostly multi-purpose towels that hang close to the sink and stove and can often be found slung over my shoulder while I'm cooking. Some are cool, some not so much. One came from France! One came from Hawaii! I do have a couple of nice linen towels that are great for drying glassware, but that only happens if I am using the inherited stuff with the gold rings that can't go in the dishwasher. I also have a good supply of bleachable bar-moppy type very absorbent towels that I like for water spills and squeezing greens, soaked slaw, potato slices, etc. 

 

If I am bored of my dish towels and they are still decent they go to the family beach house to live out their lives. If they are beyond that stage they fulfill their destiny cleaning the car windows, wiping up paint drips and rubbing wax or oil into something. Who doesn't love a rag that's hemmed on four sides? In my house a roll of paper towels lasts for months.

 

What's really amazing is that I am writing about dish towels. Isn't it obvious that there is no down side to dish towels? Unless they are not cotton or have jokes on them or are poorly rendered Disney souvenirs.

[Cronker]

Anyone who has worked in the industry might be able to appreciate my OCD on this one.

We have about twenty, various colours etc.  But there are about six that are white and have a blue stripe and the word "glass" printed on them.

woe betide anyone who uses them for anything other than polishing the glassware.  As soon as one is used to clean up any kind of food spill or wipe out frypans, they become useless for polishing glasses.

[weinoo]

7 hours ago, Katie Meadow said:

Isn't it obvious that there is no down side to dish towels? Unless they are not cotton or have jokes on them or are poorly rendered Disney souvenirs.

 

No, not necessarily any downside.  But in my case, there is a storage space issue.  Our apartment would probably not contain all of @andiesenji's towels  .

 

And our beach house...oh right, it's non-existent.

[BeeZee]

I keep the clean dish towels in the linen closet (upstairs). Two reside in the kitchen: a terry one hangs on the handle of the (bottom pull out drawer) freezer, a flat weave cotton one goes thru the handle of a drawer in the cabinet near the sink. The terry one is usually pulled out when I wash fruit/veg to drain/dry them. The other one is for hand drying. But I'm not obsessive about that, can do either. I also use the dishwasher primarily as a drying rack so the towels just clean any leftover water caught in creases or dimples. I probably have around 10 towels total. They definitely get better with age, more absorbent.

[BetD]

On 1/15/2018 at 10:42 AM, cakewalk said:

Do most people really use their dish towels to dry dishes?

 

Can’t answer for most... but some do.  

[blbst36]

I have a LARGE basket full of dish towels.  I seem to wash my hands so much that I routinely have 2-3 towels out in the kitchen at any given time.  I love having so many.  If I am not sure what is on the towel, I toss it in the towel hamper and get a new one.  It still takes me a while to get through them all.  And that is rare because I am doing a load of towels before the basket is empty.  I have some "nice" towels I got from Penzey's that don't get used.  I had them hanging on the oven, but they kept falling.  I have some flour sack towels to put over dough and stuff.  The rest are terry cloth.  

 

I, also, recently bought a bunch of small square towels to use in place of paper towels.  I didn't want my dish towels to be used for spills anymore and I spill A LOT, so the paper towels were making me uncomfortable in both trash and money reasons.  I still use paper towels for some things, but for the most part, I use regular towels.

[sartoric]

Here in the antipodes they’re commonly known as tea towels. This one is a favourite, the kindergarten class of my brothers child, where each child draws a self portrait. First column, second row, how my niece sees her parents...nothing much has changed.

 

[Kim Shook]

Some of the ones that don't get used:

 

 

 

Mr. Kim is now sure I'm crackers.  He said, "are you taking pictures of dishtowels?"  

[robirdstx]

45 minutes ago, Kim Shook said:

Mr. Kim is now sure I'm crackers.  He said, "are you taking pictures of dishtowels?"  

 

You are not alone!  My husband just caught me taking this photo and just shook his head and smiled!

 

 

[ChocoMom]

Before the house fire, I had well over a hundred  dishtowels. Some from my grandmothers, some from my Mom, plus my own.  My grandmothers used to embroider them. Many were linen, some with lace, and all kinds of flower designs.   I had them stashed in a huge bag with my Grandma S's many aprons. One of my friends was going to make quilts from them for me. I had planned on giving them as gifts to my cousins - to have for a memory of Grandma.  Bummer they're gone. 

 

We used some for packing when we moved up here, and astonishingly, there were a few out in the barn - used as packing material for items we brought up here 15 years ago. A silver lining around the cloud, I suppose.    Now, I have maybe 20 between the main kitchen and the chocolate kitchen. They get used constantly.  Good thing the laundry room is right around the corner from the kitchen!   

[andiesenji]

I have some that won't get used.  These are "decor" in my kitchen and on a wall in the hall between my kitchen and laundry room.

One is from the DISCWORLD EMPORIUM in England and refers to a Dwarf restaurant that shows up in many of the Terry Pratchett books set in the city of Ankh-Morpork

the setting of many of the books.  Dwarves consider rats a delicacy, especially the "free range" rats!!!

It is  18 x 31 inches

 

The others are oversized tea towels - I have four sets -   They are 25 x 36 inches.  They came with one patterned and one solid color. This one green.  The others are the same pattern 

with orange solid color, yellow solid color and tan solid color.

[BetD]

The mention of “decor” towels spurred me to share this one, mounted on the wall above a door... it has never even been threatened by the proximity of wet hands/dishes.  

[Thanks for the Crepes]

I have about a dozen dish towels. I store them in the drawer in the microwave cart, and normally hang one either on the oven handle or the refrigerator handle closest to the sink. Now that I'm in a wheelchair, the in-use towel has to live on the counter by the sink so I can grab it without moving the chair with wet hands. I have a couple terry ones that don't get used very often because I don't like them for kitchen use as well as the thick, flat cotton kind. The dishwasher reluctantly dries my dishes, and I wipe up spills with a sponge or one of the rags from the laundry room. Worn out dish towels make the best rags. Mine last a long time, though since I only use them to dry clean hands.

 

My favorite towel, and I do use it, is the one with cats and fish woven into a design in the towel. It's one of the Cat Things my stepmom gave me before she passed on. It means a lot to me and reminds me of her, but it's also the thickest, softest most absorbent one in my kitchen.

[Katie Meadow]

On 1/16/2018 at 3:59 AM, weinoo said:

 

No, not necessarily any downside.  But in my case, there is a storage space issue.  Our apartment would probably not contain all of @andiesenji's towels  .

 

And our beach house...oh right, it's non-existent.

Now we are talking about the downside of a New York galley kitchen. Yours looks to be about the size of my mother's midtown kitchen (apartment sold years ago). With your renovation I am guessing you have made just about the best use possible of your space, which I know is a major challenge. And it looks fabulous. I am blessed with a large kitchen in Oakland, but it would probably fit in Andiesenji's pantry or spare bedroom; comparing anything to her space and her collections is just plain silly.

 

It is indeed very great to have the use of our in-laws' beach cabin, which is, as is typical, full of all the things family member didn't really want in their own houses. A wall clock made of old horseshoes come to mind, but those things also include some truly gross dish towels that my mother-in-law seems attached to, if she still thinks about it, which is unlikely unless anyone brings it up, and no one would. There is a tenacious streak of sentimentality in my husband's family coupled with my MIL's depression mentality that means an old grease-embedded dish towel from 1960 should remain in use.

 

Unfortunately it is a very long walk from the beach house to Russ and Daughters or Great NY Noodle. I miss New York terribly, and my once a year visit is never enough. Here's to your new kitchen! Here's to having only dish towels that make the grade!

[FauxPas]

I have been using the same eight cotton dish towels for a few years here. I bought them from Costco and they don't seem to wear out. I almost wish they would because I am getting a bit sick of them.  

 

Here's one that I sent to a girlfriend, who was going through a dry patch for meeting men. (It may be a bit of a scroll-down image.)

 

[FauxPas]

On 1/16/2018 at 3:32 PM, sartoric said:

Here in the antipodes they’re commonly known as tea towels.

 

We grew up in Canada calling them tea towels, also! 

 

[weinoo]

Just to assuage anyone's fear...

 

 

Turns out I have plenty of room with all the new drawers,  Above, at least 2 dozen towels of varying quality.  At the bottom of that pile, some very nice, practically new cotton flour sack towels. I only use them to dry and store greens.  Below, overflow in the drawer below - at least another dozen towels. And 3 or 4 aprons.

 

[Toliver]

I can't count the number of times our mom chastised us for grabbing a "tea towel" instead of a "hand towel" out of her towel drawer in the kitchen.

Who knew there was a difference? 

[Anna N]

23 minutes ago, Toliver said:

I can't count the number of times our mom chastised us for grabbing a "tea towel" instead of a "hand towel" out of her towel drawer in the kitchen.

Who knew there was a difference? 

 I have a relative with the same hang up.  It baffles me. 

[Katie Meadow]

I assume the distinction between tea and dish is quality (maybe linen vs cotton) and purpose. I keep a couple of nice linen towels for the rare times I dry glassware or nice tableware that can't be done in the dishwasher. They are stashed on the very bottom of the stack of dish towels and deep enough down so that my husband probably is unaware of their existence. The rest of the towels in the stack are multi-use cotton towels that are used for anything and everything and eventually get stained or tainted with enough grease to become rags. They may start out nice but they don't get treated with love. They are dish towels.

[Anna N]

7 hours ago, Katie Meadow said:

They may start out nice but they don't get treated with love. They are dish towels.

 And would your world fall apart if you dried your clean hands on any one of them? My germophobe relative believes it might.  But I have yet to figure out how to dry dishes with a towel while avoiding any hand contact with the same towel.