Boring one… do you have separate tea towels / hand towels in the kitchen?

[fulltimeparttime]

We need a better system in our house as we’re getting through too many tea towels and I’m sick of washing them so frequently.

What system do you have in your kitchen?

We don’t have a downstairs WC so use the kitchen sink often for hand washing. We use tea towels for all sorts, drying hands, wiping up spills, drying up the pots that don’t go in the dishwasher, taking dishes out the oven. I’m sick of them having so many uses and want to buy some separate hand towels but would like to know what other people do for all of the above.

Thank you!

I can't solve your problem, I can't even understand your problem, it's not like you're having to walk a mile to the nearest river & wash them by hand.

Yes, I have a hand towel near the sink. I live alone, so it just gets put in the wash when I think it should be. Every couple of days I suppose (it only really gets used when I'm cooking)

I get a fresh t towel for any dish I want to dry. Then it gets hung up & used for any miscellaneous use (hot dishes etc) gets thrown in the 't towel basket' when a fresh t towel comes out.

i have a system for dish cloths too. T towels & dishcloths get washed together, but not with anything else.

it's hardly onerous.

Hand towel tea towel oven gloves.
Rarely use tea towels for drying as I work in professional kitchens where tea towels are seen as germ harbourers.
I leave washing up to dry naturally.

This ^^ but usually air dry pots and dishwasher does the rest. I have a lot of tea towels that I rarely use! Hand towel gets changed daily as DH isn't the best handwasher when he's doing dirty outdoor jobs.

In my house we have:

• toweling (terry cloth) towel for hands at the kitchen sink
• actual tea towels (linen/cotton) for clean dishes, especially glasses, on the kitchen door - well away from the sink.

A cloakroom with proper hand towels for anyone who washes hands there.

Yes we do. Tea towels/oven gloves etc. also washed separately from other laundry. I think this rule goes back several generations on my mother's side.

Yes, separate tea and hand towels and separate cloth for wiping surfaces and sponge for washing up. Don't wash them separately though - they go in with everything else.

I have a only hand drying (after hands have been washed) towel (all from the same set so they don’t get mixed up in the wash) on a hook on the back of the door

there are two others hanging on a thing hooked over the kitchen cabinet one is to dry clean dishes but I have a dishwasher so it’s only used to wipe drips when iv for example rinsed a coffee cup for example
and the other is for everything else, the miscellaneous one gets changed more regularly than any of the others as it’s more likely to be used for spills etc then chucked in the washing machine ready for the next time it goes on but I try to use kitchen roll paper for things like that

there are oven gloves for hot dishes or trays in the oven but I normally have a clean tea towel that’s easy to grab in the drawer to for example remove a hot bowl from the microwave for times when the gloves don’t fit properly.

the tea towels get stuck in the washing mashing when it goes on so are changed at least two to three times a week or more. The one that gets used for a dirty or particularly wet job which gets changed there and then

Hand towel for after washing up, tea towel for drying anything I don’t want to leave to air dry, both on separate hooks. Cloths for spills, oven gloves for hot stuff.

Although my last foster kitten was obsessed with leaping up & grabbing the tea towel to fight with, so while he was here we had the hand towel, my tea towel (higher up on a new hook) and the kitten’s tea towel, which was always one of the bright red ones so it couldn’t get mixed up with anything else 😸.

In theory I also have this system, but in practice, like TeaHagTeaBag, DH's system is rather different.
I try not to notice.

K roll for hand's
Dish towel for dishes.

Same here

We have tea towels for dishes, normal towels for hand, j-cloths for wiping surfaces, kitchen towel for spills. J-Cloths can be put in the washing machine and last for ages.

Separate Tea towel and hand towel. I'm still trying to train DH & adult DS that you need to wash hands thoroughly before drying them on the towel rather than giving them a quick wet under the tap and wiping the dirt off on the towel!
We mostly use a dishwasher so don't go through many tea towels.

I have some reusable kitchen roll stuff which I panic-bought one day when a child was car sick, plus a stash of old baby muslins which I try to use first for wiping up spills, and I have an oven mitt thing, but other than that the tea towels get used for everything you say.

I think washing them frequently is no bad thing anyway - it's not really hygeinic to keep reusing them for days at a time. I wash microfibre cloths as well, which I use as a replacement for washing up sponges and cleaning cloths in general. So I'll collect all these up (keep them in a plastic basket for airflow) and wash them at 60 with bedding, which I find benefits from a hotter wash, and period underwear if I've used any in the previous week or so. If the wash comes out and still smells then I put it through again at 90, but that happens rarely.

Doing a regular hot wash is good for the machine and if I notice any of my tops are getting whiffy in the armpit area they can go in the same load as well.

Not another one- yuk! There’s an exhaustive thread on people’s mucky habits, so I’ll leave it there!

Hand towel, tea towel and microfibre wine glasses drying cloth all hanging on the Aga rail.

I do have separate ones, and now I think about it it's a bit pointless because I don't really make any serious gestures towards hygiene in the house, we are shoes on, dog on the bed and no hand washing before meals. All the towels go in a general load of laundry.

Yes. Separate hand towels and tea towels. The tea towels are more linen like. The hand towels are more towel like.

Mostly people manage to keep them separate.

In the kitchen, a hand towel for drying hands, a tea-towel for drying pots and an oven cloth and oven gloves for hot dishes.
That sounds nice and orderly so I won't mention the dodgy dish cloth.

I have a range cooker with a bar which I use to hang kitchen towels/cloths on. The one in the middle is a kitchen towel used for drying hands, I have tea cloths on either end used for drying, mopping up spills, taking things out of the oven. Every couple of days I put all three in the wash and lay out new clean ones.

We have a dishwasher but still wash certain thing by hand so only use a tea towel as a tea towel for dishes when it's fresh out the drawer. After that, it's a hand towel free for all. We get through a couple a day because they do get grubby quickly.

Don't really dry pots all go in the dishwasher - t towel does everything else and changed every day

Several generations ago, towels and whites would have been washed first in the cleanest hottest water with colours being washed in cooler, murkier water. We don't wash things like that any more.

I do a hot towel wash every other day (stupid washer is on a wooden floor and doesn't like more than a half load of towels) and tea towels and people towels all go in that together. If I'm doing a 40 degree lights and whites wash I'll sometimes chuck wet tea towels in that rather than have them sit around going musty.

We use tea towels for all sorts, drying hands, wiping up spills, drying up the pots that don’t go in the dishwasher, taking dishes out the oven. I’m sick of them having so many uses and want to buy some separate hand towels but would like to know what other people do for all of the above.

Drying hands - hand towel (thicker, made of towelling)
Taking dishes out of the oven - oven gloves
Wiping up spills - dishcloth
Drying pots that don't go in the dishwasher - tea towel (thinner, made of cotton or similar)

Very frustrating to try and work in a kitchen without a hand towel.

We don’t have separate, but mostly due to the layout of our kitchen - there’s only one hook/space for one hook.

So we get though 2-3 T towels a day and wash them when the pile is a reasonable size. Not really a hardship to bung them in. And “I’m running the tea towels” gets me out of having to organise a different load