Do you wash your bathroom towels with your kitchen towels?

[Bluerose27]

Just that really.
I like to keep on top of washing, especially when the sun is shining. So today I had half a load of bathroom towels and half a load of kitchen towels so I threw them all in on a high temperature.

I feel like it's two different types of germs mixing though.

But I feel a bit silly as I type this. If I'm crazy to worry about this please let me know gently!!

Never heard of a kitchen towel I must say, I would just go to the loo to wash my hands or whizz them under the kitchen tap with a bit of fairy. Sounds revolting having soap and towels in a kitchen. Tea towels or drying up cloths as my ma calls them do the job surely?
Have to be honest and I know this marks me out as a raging snob but honestly all this obsession with washing and germs is so lower middle class. Life's for living not disinfecting the arse out of it.

Quite frankly, if you're going through enough kitchen towels that you fill a washing machine every day, or just running the machine virtually empty, you'd be better off using paper towels.

Oh fucking hell. I put the dog blankets in with the clothes. We're all going to diiiiiiiiiiie.

My kids often use the tea towels for drying the swing seats and slide off after rain. Generally they then end up on the (probably wet, possibly muddy) grass until one of the children is nagged enough to bring them back in. The tea towels are then thrown into the machine to await what ever is being washed next, which will always be a mixed load of towels/bedding/pants/clothes/general household laundry. The machine will go on a general 40c wash and everything will come out clean and be put away. I bet some of you are beside yourselves that my tea towels are ever used for such an unhygienic purpose. We've even got a tea towel in the downstairs toilet today as the hand towel was used to mop up an attempted water fight in there this morning. Again, thrown in the machine to await the next load. Good job we don't use cloth nappies still or there would be even more poo going round the machine!

Oh fucking hell. I put the dog blankets in with the clothes.We're all going to diiiiiiiiiiie

Oh God, where are my smelling salts?

My Mum would never put teatowels in with other washing, unless she'd soaked them first in a bucket filled with a bleach solution. then washed them again by hand after they came out of the machine.

She'd have a blue fit if she ever came to stay with me.

Reading this how did people survive before now!

I don't remember the last time I used the 90+ degree wash, actually. Though I am one of the Zoflora fans, but it has many uses.

all this obsession with washing and germs is so lower middle class
I'm surprised this hasn't come up before, it's usually mentioned

Ahem

Re my double washing of towels (which only happens once every 2-3 weeks - 8kg load)

Each batch gets a half dose of detergent, & my machine has a reduced time option, so the 2 batches combined take 2 hours.

I'd be interested to hear how that compares with everybody else's "normal" washes

Haven't RTFT yet but what is this magic of zoflora in the machine u speak of? Is this done after the clothes are removed?

Could do, but I put it in (sometimes) with the washing, depending on what it is. Check the zoflora threads

Poor planet.

I'm wondering what goes on in some kitchen to warrant this practical incineration of tea towels? I don't eat meat and if it has to be cooked here, it goes from fridge to oven to plate. Cooking utensils and pans are put into the dishwasher and they come out magically clean and dry.

When hands are washed in the kitchen before, during or after the preparation of food, there is a separate hand towel to dry them on which gets washed with other towels.

What am I missing?

In my house the men often cook, & delightful though that is they will use tea towels to wipe their filthy hands & spills on the counter (paper towels not allowed for the sake of the poor planet...)

They're also so cack-handed with oven gloves that those generally dip into food (esp eg roasting trays, with fat, & if you'd ever tried to use a fatty - or damp - oven glove you'd know that heat passes straight through, which is why they need regular washing too)

I use tea towels similarly, Lapdance. I take a clean one out of the drawer if I want to actually dry stuff. After that, it's used for hands, drying wiped down worktops and cascaded down the hill of filthiness until I just chuck it in the wash, for the next time I have at least a half load of towels of any sort to wash.

I'd like to think I live in a world where all my towels can wash together. Even if you're an oven mitt that wants to be a towel, you're going in on my wash.

I have a tea towel for drying up and a hand towel for drying hands in the kitchen. all get washed together with other towels on 60c.

Perhaps we're incredibly messy cooks, but yes, we do get through enough aprons, tea towels, dishcloths, cleaning cloths, napkins , oven gloves etc to fill a washing machine load.

And as I think I mentioned earlier, the 90 degree wash doubles as the maintenance wash for the washing machine, which I believe is recommended to prolong the life of the machine.

I've off set my debt to the planet by not flying anywhere for the last 15 years.

I prefer to wash them separately but it usually doesn't work out that way so they go into together. If I've a house full and can make up a wash with kitchen towels/bath mats etc then I would do that and keep them separate from the bath towels.

Generally though I'd use paper towels for dirty kitchen work so my kitchen towels don't get that grubby.

I guess I'm a bit fussy but so what. It's my house and if I want to wash things separately I shall.

Lol, I love these threads. So many posters get so outraged 😂

Tea towels, dishcloths, cleaning cloths and anything else white with colours gets washed together at 60. Some of our bedding is white with blue pattern so that goes in too. I reckon 60 degrees is high enough to get everything clean.

White sheets, towels, handkerchieves and washable baby wipes are washed together with a little Napisan to keep them white - usually 60 but occasionally 90 to give the washing machine a treat.

I would wash really dirty stuff separately but wouldn't worry about washing towels with anything else at 60.

whites/towels go in at 60c
light colours/dark colours/ anything black ish go in at 40
when i get round to it i do a service/hot wash with cleaner stuff (once/twice a year) ish

Fractal bacteria and fungus. Mmmm live on a farm. D dog just come in from fields sheds stables and jumped on my bed. Washing machines have to be pretty ballsy round here.
Bedding
Towels. Human and cleaning
Dark wash
Light wash
White wash
Wools wash
Farm wash
Horse and dog wash.

I know this is an old thread but my husband is a physician and he nags me all the time about washing these towels separately. He says that it's best to not have the germs from 2 different environments combine in a wet environment. And while that does make sense, that wet environment is not really habitable for these germs, at least from my point of view. Like what germs from your kitchen towel would end up still being alive after you wash them. And if they are still alive, you couldn't have killed them any way. So separating bathroom towels and kitchen towels doesn't make sense.

What do you guys think? Am I wrong for thinking that and still washing those 2 towels together lol? Let me know!