How do you manage kitchen towels?
Welcome to this exciting episode of "Someone Asks Basic Life Questions to the Internet"! In this installment, we ask for help from members of the audience who really know where their towel is. Do we have a Betty Crocker in the house?
Right now I have 2-3 crusty and mostly useless kitchen towels strewn around my counter space. For some reason, kitchen towels just kind of evade my attempts to manage them well. I tried to keep them folded in a corner of the counter, but I never liked the idea of putting them back there after I used them even if it was just to clean a water spill. Putting them in a drawer was this but worse because they bunch up and seize up on the frame it goes into.
On top of that, I'm never sure exactly how to keep them clean. Most of the time I avoid using them to touch food or to clean up with; I clean up with sponges and use paper towels for when it needs to touch food. But I think that paper towels are kind of wasteful, so I want to stop using them. There are also some applications where paper towels simply don't work that well to begin with, especially when you need a sturdy wet towel. I'm wondering if I should just be sticking them in my weekly laundry loads, but I tend to forget about them for a day and don't want to have a need for them while they aren't usable.
My solution was to buy a whole bunch of towels. Like 40. Go to Ikea (or Amazon or wherever) and buy plain white kitchen towels. Pretty much every professional kitchen I have worked in uses white and there are two really good reasons: they can be bleached to hell and they can be washed in the hottest water you can make.
When you have a stack of towels, figure out where they will live. I keep mine in a drawer near my cooking space for ease of access. If they are easy to grab and there are plenty of them, I tend to rotate through them much better (better for food safety.) I tend not to use them for cleaning up meat/meat juice but if you rotate to a clean towel after washing your hands there shouldn't really be an issue. Then make sure you have a spot for dirty towels; I use under my sink with a small plastic bin. Mine don't tend to get too smelly but I also wash them every weekend, again, in as hot of water as my machine can make and a good glug of bleach. Your towels will probably end up looking somewhat grungy but you're sanitizing them, so, about as good as you can ask for.
Additional tip: why don't more home cooks keep latex/nitrile gloves in their kitchen? They are relatively cheap for how versatile they are. Better tossed salads, less cross-contamination... Sure it's against health code probably everywhere, but grabbing a chicken breast, putting it in the skillet, removing the glove, and seasoning immediately without as much concern for cross-contamination is pretty clutch. Not to mention, they're just nice to have for situation where you don't want to put your hands directly into something.
We do the exact same thing with one difference: we have a "rag" drawer and a "dish towel" drawer. This evolved from covid when paper towels were hard to get and we found that we didn't really need them and felt better about not using them.
Dish towels are used for things like hand washing, laying out to dry hand washed things (such as pots or sharp knives), or grabbing hot things. We have about 12 of these. The usually last about a week with 2 hung up on the oven handle before it's time to throw them in the washing machine and get out fresh ones. They usually have a cute pattern and by and large are attractive enough to leave out.
Rags are a different beast, they come out for specific tasks and have ~3 hour shelf life. The come out for spills, to wash the counter top/stove, for the really dirty jobs. Usually the job requires them getting completely wet through rinsing so even if they are fully wrung out they usually start to smell. We'll use one for an afternoon, or even just a specific job, and then toss it in the washing machine. These stay in the other drawer until needed. They are usually old wash cloths, old shirts, and can have stains or holes. The point is fully function over form here.
This is exactly our tactic. We bought a pile of identical ones from Ikea and pretty much just use them instead of paper towels.
The paper towels only come out when there's something that's annoying to wash off or otherwise nasty.
When the towels are used enough times or just look suspicious, they get thrown in the wash and washed at 90C. That'll kill everything living in there.
This is a good suggestion, I think. I hate folding towels, though, so I'll probably just find a second bin so I'll have both a dirty and clean one.
I don't generally like to put my hands into food when I don't have to, but I would still prefer to just wash my hands well to using gloves. Besides that, it goes against my other goal of removing wasteful single-use items.
I do this but I have two trash cans, wire ones. One is for clean towels. One is for dirty towels. When the dirty towels are full enough, toss them into the washer. Dump clean towels into clean towel trash can.
Buy more cheap towels at Costco as needed
We keep gloves around too, but wanted to highlight that they're not inherently safer than clean/washed hands. They're just easier.
I have a box of nitrile gloves, partly because they’re a little bit more chemical resistant and partly because I know a few people who have latex allergies.
That said, I avoid using them as much as possible simply because I’m not a fan of stuff like that being so incredibly disposable. I’ll go through paper towels like nobody’s business, but that’s because I know I’ll either compost them or pop them in the recycling. But plastic gloves will just go to landfill and I’m not a huge fan of that if I can help it.
Honestly, gloves are fucking disgusting. People keep them on too long, they think the gloves are magic and cross contamination ends up worse not better, and your hands are in a warm and moist environment and not being washed. On top of that there's the plastic waste.
There are loads of examples of not-great practice on YouTube from Internet cooks wearing gloves and cross-contaminating their kitchen. I guess people cut out the "washing my hands" / "changing my gloves" shots, but still, it's a bit gross.
Yep, this is what we do. I buy a 24 pack every time I place a restaurant supply order (once or twice a year). Same with gloves for mixing ground beef or handling hot peppers.
I have mine that are currently in use hanging on my oven handle. Once they have served their purpose for a day or two (or are dirty enough to merit it) I throw them in the wash, usually with my other towels. I don't wipe grease or anything with them, so they stay nice enough laundering them once a week.
Second on oven handle. Very easy solution to “where do I put this used, but not quite ready to be washed” towel
Plus, if you're not hanging up a wet towel, how is it supposed to dry? Towels were meant to hang up.
I used to hang them on the oven too, but last year we had to replace it, and our new oven unfortunately has a handle that is too narrow to fit towels. Well, it can technically fit them, but you have to feed perfectly folded towels through it slowly, or they get all scrunched up... Which is pretty annoying to do for something everyone uses so frequently.
So to solve the issue of having nowhere to hang our kitchen towels anymore, I recently bought some "over cabinet" towel hanger bars that match our cabinet handles/knobs, and they're great. And since that original purchase a few months ago, I even bought another set for my bathroom to hang hand/face towels too, since I don't have room on my bathroom walls for a towel bar or ring due to the mirrors, and power plugs placement.
So @Akir, if you have nowhere to hang your kitchen towels, and also can't use the oven, but have leg-height cabinets in your kitchen, I would highly recommend looking into getting a similar set of towel bars for yourself.
I was actually considering printing some sort of specialized towel holding fixture. Maybe some clips that will allow me to attach some bins to the inside of the doors under the kitchen sink.
Oven handle was how my parents did it many moons ago. I also hang The Current Towel In Use when it's wet over the water faucet (assuming you have one of those long neck inverted U shaped heads).
Another option is those sticky wall hooks or nails. Put a few up in convenient locations, and you can hang your most used items within reach (spatula, wok, strainer, etc.) Hooks are also good for managing kitchen appliances with electrical cords when you only have a few outlets, you can loop multiple cords over a hook, so they are all the right length to reach the outlet, while the appliances are in their destined position on the counter. Then just plug whichever one in you need to use as needed (this is better than having many things plugged in at once even though you may never use them simultaneously IMO).
I'm a bit confused reading this thread, because I think some folks (and I can't tell who) are conflating kitchen towels with dishcloths. Dishcloths, aka rags, can be used for wiping up messes on the counter or floor, scrubbing old food splatters, whatever. They get gross and need to be rotated / washed frequently. This is where I would agree with the suggestion of buying a large quantity to cycle through. We have an attractive glass "rag jar" for the clean ones out on the counter, and a bin for the dirty ones under the sink.
Towels, on the other hand, aren't for messy jobs. These are for drying up water. I'd use one after handwashing a pot, to get it fully dry before it goes back in the cabinet. Inevitably the dishwasher leaves puddles within certain items, so the towel's used to make sure everything is moisture-free before putting it away. After I wash my hands, I'll dry them on the kitchen towel. The towel should be considered mostly clean, and always hung up to dry (on the oven handle or wherever) so it doesn't get mildewy. It should require much less frequent washing than the rags, and can be more decorative.
Oh we don't have rags, under your definition. We have one new sponge a month for dishes, and the last month's sponge gets downgraded to wipe up day duty, and the third month floor wipe up, and then it's in the garbage. Towels are only for clean hands and clean dishes and washed every week.
I don't have a spot for towels, so my rags are my towels. The cleanish ones will probably sit on the counter by the sink, but realistically I just toss them in the direction of the washer (it's directly in front of the sink on the other side of the bar that runs that length of the counter. )
I do have a few kitchen towels, they live in the rag trash can with the rags
Interesting. By your definition, I don't have towels. I have "rags" and "slightly cleaner rags", which I would refer to as "towels". Typically I will have 2-3 rags in use in my kitchen at any given time. The "towel" role is fulfilled by the cleanest rag currently out, or a fresh rag from the drawer if none of the existing rags are suitably clean for the task.
My strategy is by no means as fastidious as Requirement's comment, but I like differently coloured / designed towels to help me remember what Ive been using them for and how clean they are.
I tend to "downgrade" towel activities by how clean they are. Newly to very clean towels get used to dry veggies, drape over resting dough, dry dishes, etc. Slightly used towels I drape on the oven handle and use to wipe countertops. Towels needing washing I place in a wash-me pile.
I never use cloth towels with raw meat.
I only buy 100% cotton, as i find poly materials in general tend to hold odors badly.
I do use less clean towels to wipe up grease splatters, but try give them a bit of a wash under the tap with dish soap to help remove oils before properly washing.
Your last point...don't wash greasy towels with clothes! (if it even has to be said xD)
I would appreciate more installments of this series!
I made a tag for this thread so if anyone wants to ask their own questions they can feel free to make their own installment.
(Paging @chocobean)
@mycketforvirrad removed it because its a whole sentence with spaces I think. Maybe #BasicLifeTips?
I'd like to ask about what to do with a million different types of socks and towels. I get gifted them from [redacted] well meaning older adults, for decades now, and then I'm unable to buy a whole set of the same size and type. I would love a big set of just all one size and type. At what point should I flat out tell them to stop giving me socks and towels? Do I just suck it up and keep quietly re-gifting them to food bank? What about all the ones in current rotation I would hate to throw out stuff but it's really getting on my nerves to not have my own towels from the time I'm a teen to now when I'm nearly middle aged.
I like
basic life tips. It's a good length – snappy and catchy!I haven’t got the same issue of being gifted socks, but my sock strategy is that once they’re worn enough to be getting thin and no longer provide the cushiony goodness I want socks for (or they get little holes in them) they leave the rotation for being wearable and join the dusting pile.
I’m definitely horrendous at keeping on top of dust in the house, so sometimes I slip on a (retired, but clean and laundered!) sock over my hand to wipe down dusty surfaces.
That big box of dusting socks came in extra handy recently when I moved house!
do they then get washed, or are they like, single use? I have lots that fit that description
You can wash them or pitch them (or toss them into fabric recycling bins) if they get to worn
Does anyone have a way to either keep towels from getting rancid or freshen them up?
I've tried boiling with dish soap, which didn't do much besides cause a mess. I tried the super hot setting on my washing machine that's supposed to kill dust mites. I tried the soap that's for athletic clothes. I tried washing multiple times.
I also tried hanging them in the sun for a couple of days. This was an improvement but not a fix, and right now we're getting less than 2 hours of sun a day that would hit the clothesline even if it wasn't cloudy all the time.
I use flour sack towels for everything. They're cheap and so incredibly useful. Potholders, drying dishes, trivets, holding cutting boards in place, and drying hands. They get dirty. They get knocked on the floor. They get oil on them from splatters and sometimes from wiping up something I didn't realize was oily. Rags, towels, whatever you want to call them, I just want them to smell better.
To answer the original question, I have a big stack of flour sack towels. Nothing I've found seems to work quite as well for so many things. When they get dirty they go in a small bucket I keep under the sink. When the bucket fills up they get washed and put back on the stack. When they get holey they get downgraded to non window cleaning rags. As mentioned above, I have no idea what to do when they get smelly.
So, when you say the dirty goes into the dark bin, do you mean that you first go to the sink and you rinse and clean the rag by hand with soap and hot water as best as you can, then wrung by hand as dry as you can make them, THEN you hang it somewhere to dry completely (assuming a not totally humid area), and THEN they go into the bucket to await machine washing at high temp?
If true, please skip the rest of this comment. If false....
There's your problem. The bucket is an incubator.
Think about the issue from the perspective of the smell causing microbes. They want nutrients, they want to be warm and moist, they want to be left alone, they want to be somewhere dimly lit.
Unless I misunderstood you, you've been culturing your own strains of organisms that thrive on this cycle.
For your existing towels, try bleach. Read label instructions for dilution concentration and time. Test for colour fastness if it applies. Kill all the microbes, dry them completely, then maintain dry clean towels the best you can, with occasional bleach refreshing sessions. Never leave moist towels on the counter or overnight everything has to be hand wrung best you can then hang to dry. If they're still mildewy you might have to throw out this batch and try again with the next. I've rescued out in the wild for a season in the mud cloth with bleach and sun and drying though so I can't imagine it would fail for yours.
Other note, what are flour sack towels I might need something like that.
Yes, they get hand washed, rinsed, wrung out, and hung to dry. They are not hung in a cabinet. You're right, that would cause issues. We also wash everything in whatever my washing machine calls cool water by default, the hot and boiling water were experiments to try fixing this.
This isn't a mold/bacteria issue, it's rancid oil - oil that has oxidized. Same smell that happens when a bottle of oil goes bad. It takes a few months to happen, there is no smell at all until it does.
I have tried bleach, I didn't mention it because bleach does kill mold and bacteria, but it doesn't really do anything for oil.
I have spent almost half my life living in humid areas. When I lived in Louisiana, hanging damp bath towels didn't even keep them from getting gross in the summer. Where I live now isn't quite as bad, but it's also humid in the rainy season. I'm unfortunately very familiar with that mold/bacteria issue, but I've learned how to manage it. I appreciate the help, wish it were that simple.
Ah, much apologies,
In that case I'd like to know as well and hopefully someone can answer.
Also thanks again for bringing up flour sack towels you might have changed my life just today
They're great, the same thing my grandpa used to use. They'll soak up just about anything and they dry really quickly. You can even use them in place of cheesecloth if a tight weave is what you're after.
Flour sacks used to be made of fabric. During the depression they were painted with pretty patterns and folks would make clothes and quilts from them.
I heard about that from social studies, about the pretty flour sack patterns. For whatever dumb reason I always thought it was sack cloth, like super rough single use quality garbage we get these days. Jokes on me the recycled cloth quality back then was probably better than anything I can buy new these days. I just put my first order in and looking forward to throwing out all my existing mismatched kitchen towels (or downgrading to rags)
Let me know how you like them!
So there's a process for getting stinky body oils and sweat stains out of bedsheets and pillowcases, and it might help with your kitchen towels. [Florida was a great source of housekeeping challenges.]
But more generally, you might be having problems with hard water if standard detergent and hot water can't get rid of oils effectively. You could try strip washing if you've got hard water.
Thank you! Can you put dish soap in a front loading washer?
The article mentions that you can use as little as a teaspoon of dish soap to avoid creating too much foam in a high-efficiency washer. It didn't say how to add the dish soap if the front door is locked... I think I'd pre-dilute the dish soap in a cup of hot water and add it in via the bleach compartment.
Note that this is all Internet advice - I've done something like this in a top-load washer without destroying bedsheets, but can't guarantee you'll get similar results in a front-loader without testing.
You could do the dish soap soak in a sink, bucket, or tub before machine washing, as well.
One of the reasons why I left r/frugal was all of the people saying you should make your own cleaner with vinegar. You can get good cleaning supplies at the dollar store rather than spend the same or more on stuff that will be less effective and smell dramatically worse. I don't know why you would need to use so much cleaner that you'd need to save money on it. Outside of body/dish/laundry soaps, I probably spend less than $20 a year on cleaners.
My opinion:
Because it works in some cases, folks think it's great for everything. I've seen suggestions multiple times to put vinegar and baking soda in a spray bottle, shake it up, then keep that in your pantry for cleaning.
Nonscented liquid Tide (The HE version)
Thank you for this. I didn't know about it and always enjoy learning more about chemistry and cleaning products. How can I tell which is which? I presume Oxi-Clean is oxidative.
I hadn't thought of using baking (soda?) for the towels, that's an excellent idea for pulling the oil off the towels first.
This is incredibly helpful, thank you so much.
Hmm, I do have some panko.
Haha, good warning. I wouldn't mind at all if my towels bleach, though.
I really appreciate the help. I'll grab some Oxi-Clean or dump then into some peroxide if I get impatient.
Have you tried washing them with a cup or two of vinegar added to the beginning of the wash? I used to have to do lots of laundry for someone who was incontinent and the smell would linger even after a wash on hot. His mother suggested adding a couple cups of white vinegar and that fixed the issue.
I have. I also tried borax.
@Requirement had some great points, but I want to expand a bit on the storage concerns. I used to stuff them in a drawer, only to end up frustrated with it being like another sock drawer. My solution was to use a nice decorative bowl to house them all when they are neatly folded. This might take up some counter space, but at the same time they're easily accessible. You can also opt for over your fridge if you have that type of space. I keep my oven mits and my cutting gloves in the same bowl as well to make it more multi-use in a way.
We hang one on the dishwasher handle, and store the unused ones in a kitchen drawer that also holds things like oven mitts, ziplock bags and rolls of foil or cling wrap. That keeps them out of the way but easily accessible when it's time to switch out towels.
In regards to keeping them clean, I'll second the suggestion to get a bunch. Not 40, but enough to have enough to cycle through them between laundry days. Number depends on how you use them. We use ours mainly to wipe down dishes coming out of the dishwasher (mainly cups, they just don't tend to dry completely for some reason), dry pans/pots and lift hot stuff, so we typically only need to switch them out every other day or so. If you're using it to wipe the counter regularly, might be better to switch it daily.
If you have a designated area for dirty laundry, just toss the used ones there to be washed later. I think we usually wash them with bathroom towels, too, so you could start washing all the towels together. Then you won't be as likely to forget about the kitchen towels.
As a final note, they don't have to be in perfect photo-ready condition, just clean. We have some that are pretty ragged around the edges, but they do their jobs fine.
Agree with getting a bunch of them, that's what we do. I also didn't have a place to hang it, so have a command hook placed on the edge of a bottom shelf - right by the kitchen sink. Now, it's muscle memory to grab it, use it, and hang it back.
I’ve done a few different methods and I’ve settled on a combination of plain white kitchen towels from Amazon and paper towels. The main reason is cleanliness and laundry.
Paper towels for anything gross and cleaning. Yes I get paper towel waste, but it’s less than I expected. They also have other uses for dabbing raw meats to dry them and absorbing oils from fried food.
I use hand towels for drying hands and dishes. Occasionally to wipe up water spills.
I avoid anything that could stain or soil the towels.
I used to use a massive pack of terry towels. Basically small dish rags. I’ve found that towels don’t last forever, and get funky pretty quick—regardless of if I did or did not use bleach, quality of detergent, rinsing with vinegar. They can’t be washed with anything else either or my clothing would pick up residue off of them. And it just adds to the laundry queue.
If you have a compost bin, throwing them in there is a good option!
I have hand towels for just drying my hands, tea towels for drying washed dishes, and paper towels for spills/cleaning.
Then I just put the towels through the laundry every couple of weeks.
Actually I have been considering a compost bin, but I don't have much of a use for it since I don't actually have much of a yard. Besides that I know I will be too lazy to turn it or maintain it and my husband is practically phobic of all bugs.
Some municipalities have kitchen waste recycling programs. Others will let you burn the pile of paper towels in a big big yard.
I've never turned my compost before, but they do get some non-gross soil-helper type bugs, which may still not be what your husband finds acceptable.
the lots of hung up towels that get washed frequently option gets my vote.
On a meta note, I love the idea of "Someone Asks Basic Life Questions to the Internet" threads. I need them.
Some places have a council/municipal run composting scheme, where they take away suitable waste and give you a bag of compost in return. Maybe something like this is available in your area?
I bought twenty plain cotton tea towels. I then cut them in half and re-hemmed them, so I have forty little towels. I keep these in a kitchen drawer.
Because they're small they get dirty very quickly -- I found with larger towels I was thinking "there's a clean bit here, I don't need to put this in the washing yet". This way I use them, they get dirty, and I put them in the washing pile.
These go into the boil-wash pile, along with regular towels and bed sheets and pillow cases.
I feel this is like tea-spoons -- you can never have too many.
I am curious what you do with teaspoons to warrant needing an "infinite" supply of them.
Not who you asked, but I go through a lot of teaspoons too... Mostly due to constantly using them to taste my food while cooking, to make sure the flavor/seasoning is right, and adjust it if not. I went through about a half dozen of them while making risotto tonight.
I sometimes reuse the same teaspoon if I am cooking just for myself, but out of habit I often toss them into the sink immediately after using them, so usually still end up using a few. However, when cooking for others (which is fairly often these days) I never use the same tasting spoon twice.
p.s. My family once booked a special table inside the kitchen of a very well known Michelin Star hotel restaurant in London (Claridge's), and one of the chefs there kept reusing the same spoon over and over to taste every dish before they got sent out. This was pre-COVID, but even back then we were all a little grossed out by that, and told the maitre d' about it afterwards (since we didn't want to bring it up in front of the chefs). It was the one dark stain on an otherwise fantastic meal, and to this day has remained stuck in my mind, which is why I never use the same tasting spoon twice when I cook for others.
I just have a ton of cotton kitchen towels. I use a mixture of terry cloth towels (the ones that are fuzzy like a bath towel) and woven tea towels (the ones that are smooth) because they have complementary pros and cons. They all live together in a basket under a counter. Every time I need one, I grab it from the basket, and as soon as I'm done with it, I throw it in the dirty laundry for the next load of laundry (I might first give it a good soak and then a wring if it's quite dirty).
I don't care if their colors fade, so I put them through one of my washing machine's harsher settings (hot water, fast spin, long wash time), and they come out extremely clean and fresh-smelling. A couple of them developed holes over the years, but the great majority of them have been going strong for 5+ years.
Using this method, I go through a few kitchen towels per day (basically one for every time wipe down the counters, dry off plates, etc.) — some days more, some days less. That's a lot, but because they are so small, they don't actually make much of a dent in how often I have to do laundry; a single bath towel is still more material than a whole weeks' worth of kitchen towels.
Meanwhile, I go through a single roll of paper towels in about 6-12 months—and that's mostly because I use them for crafts (e.g., applying wood stain to a project). In the kitchen, I use them exclusively for messes I deem too gross to go through the wash, which does not actually come up that often.
I've got a couple cabinet handles above my sink to hang towels from. The idea is to rinse well and hang to dry so nothing can grow on it. Toss in laundry when it looks too dirty and have a stash of clean towels somewhere.
Costco white towels. Three sizes. Hand, face, and almost bath. Bleachable and in different tubs. They get their own load.
I keep two in use at a time: One for drying clean hands and one for drying clean dishes. They're hung on the wall and rotated and washed with the laundry.
For countertops (or washing dishes, really) I use what I have just learned from amazon are called Swedish dishcloths in english. I wash them a few times with dish detergent and then throw them away and break out a new one. I also have a little hanger for those on the wall that I got from amazon (also has a sponge holder).
For quick spills that don't require mopping I just use paper towels.
I grew up working in a vet clinic, so it's very hard for me to use towels. You don't even want to know what I accidentally wiped on my hands once.
I know it is wasteful, but I just use paper towels. I am looking forward to a few commercial composting operations that may be opening up in our area so we can compost paper towels, paper plates, and compostable Ziploc replacements.