To be annoyed when people dry their hands on the tea towel

[clapback]

Is it just me does this bother anyone else?

They're for drying dishes not for drying hands!

YANBU = Dishes only
YABU = Dishes, hands, who cares?

Hand towels for hands, tea towels for dishes! I don’t use the same sponge to wash myself as the plates, so I don’t use the same towel to dry either..

I do have some knowledge of microbiology and sterility.
I do not practice sterile technique in my home, nor wash anything hotter than 40C, nor use anti-bac cleaner, nor have a dish washer i.e. my crockery is rubber glove hot not whatever a dishwasher does.

I know my hands have microorganisms on them. I know my tea towel does. I know everything does. I wash my hands with soap and water and dry them on towels which are regularly changed. I take particular care when handling raw meat and when the kids were younger and bringing back lurgies I was a bit more cautious with things.

I don't live with a small boy anymore, but I have successfully raised one to adulthood, and the jury's still out on the 13 yo - it's looking quite positive so far.

I'm on your side! (I think!)

The whole 'your hands are too diseased for the tea towel but it's ok that they touch the dishes before and after you dry them with that same tea towel' argument is what strikes me as particularly mad.

The difference is that sponges are used to clean food from plates or grime/sweat from bodies. The comparison doesn't hold.

Now I'm thinking visitors to my home think I'm grubby.
Mind you, no one has stopped visiting, or ever commented.

If I'm drying dishes, I take out a clean tea towel.
Nothing worse than using an old, dirty tea towels to dry dishes.

People are always going to wipe their wet hands on an available towel.

...and are the tea towel and hand towel used only once, or are they hung in such a way they are not touching anything in order to air dry?

Surely if you're draping it over a radiator or the oven door you're introducing a whole other world of biohazards.....

I think we draw our lines in different places.

We have a tea towel and a small hand towel in the kitchen , so the towel is obviously for hands

You are absolutely not being unreasonable! I’m the same. If you are cooking meat and wash and dry your hands on the hand towel, there may be some contamination if your hands weren’t 100% sterile (highly likely) so then why would you want to smear that contamination on your clean dishes so you can get food poisoning when you eat of them? It’s gross.

You do not need to have sterile hands to ensure they are not contaminated, you need to wash them well with soap and hot water.

This makes me livid.

Yabu a bit.

Tea towels are a used for everything -
Drying hands, getting pots out of the oven drying water spills.

If I do need to dry pots I get a clean one out!

We rarely use a tea towel for actually drying dishes. We have a dishwasher.

Tea towels for for drying hands, we have loads of tea towels so they get chucked in the wash constantly. It's not like the same one will be used for drying up and hand washing.

If I have washed up by hand , I finish the dishes , then with hand's that are still wet, I grab a tea towel and dry the dishes and so my hand's dry at the same time- I have done this for years and we are all still very much alive and well.

I would use the tea towel but I do wash my tea-towels very frequently, like every day.

Do you wear sterile gloves to hold the tea towel when you're drying dishes with it? If not, then obviously YABU, because if it's fine for your hands to be holding the tea towel, then how can it possibly be gross for your just-washed hands to be dried on it? Bonkers.

My tea towels are only used for taking hot things out of the oven. My dishes are dried in the dishwasher. If my hands are wet, I use the tea towel.

Super grim imo. Right up there with loo brushes in the dishwasher.

Exactly, why does it matter if you touch the tea towel with wet or dry hands ?

We don't have tea towels, problem solved!

Tea towels are used for everything in our house. Drying dishes (would get a clean one out for this), drying hands, drying the induction job after cleaning so it doesn't smear (towel would go in the wash after that), mopping up spilt things (towel in the wash after that), improvised bib for the baby (again, straight to wash after that!) ....

We use tea towels in place of kitchen roll unless it's a really manly job involving oil or similar.

All my kitchen clothes, cleaning cloths, tea towels, flannels etc get washed together for an hour at 60°, then I add a light coloured load of washing and they get a full wash at 40°. I am confident that my cloths are the cleanest items in my house!