We use the dishwasher for storage. Yes, there are several towels in the kitchen, 2 for hands, one for dishes and one for a bread cover when bread is rising. I weave so have plenty of towels available.

Kathy_g, we have two of those neat towel holders. Ours have a pine tree burned into the face.

I use cloth towels and paper towels. A lot of both. We've gone through more paper towels during this Covid last year than I can ever remember using.

I hand wash most of my cookware. Some of my favorite pieces are Magnalite that discolor in the dishwasher (learned the hard way with one lid), or black which come out looking cloudy. The cloudy washes off again after a few uses, but pans continue to look like new hand washing.

So yes, I have a clean dishtowel every day and have many. I sometimes lay it down to dry on top of it. But I have a small plastic dish rack, a drying mat, and a roll up grate type thing that lays over the sink too.

Really messy hands and I grab a paper towel. Dish towel other times. They also double as potholders occasionally, and dry my greens vegetables. I swung a batch of green beans I was prepping last night in one, was stir frying them and didn't want to be spattered.

Before Covid, I had friends who liked to cook in my kitchen. Friend was here one day breading clams. He proudly announced, I protected all the counter and didn't make a mess. Why, yes, he had. He had covered the counter with almost every dish towel I owned before setting up bread crumbs, eggs, panko and I had them to wash. I had butchers paper and a Costco supply of paper toweling, but A for effort....

We're like minded, zalco and I try to do the same. Problem here is the other person in the house can't resist wiping hands or items soiled when cooking or doing stuff, on a nearby kitchen towel. It then becomes a challenge to remove same from easy access and replace with a clean one so it's not used to wipe otherwise just washed hands or dishes.

We wash dishes in the dishwasher but cooking pots, pans and utensils by hand, They're usually left to air dry on a drying pad or rack.

I have no guilt about using paper towels and we use a lot of them. Paper towels decompose readily in landfills (or in your backyard compost pile, if you have one) and come from a renewable, often carbon-capturing resource.

yup, I am the odd one. haha

Not for those who want everything in their place but I allow my dish and kitchen hand towels to dry before tossing them in the laundry basket to be washed. Either the old fashion way of hanging on the oven door handle or hanging from the counter. Too much chance of mold if I did not. I tried using paper towels to dry my hands but I must make them wetter than most because I would use two to three and my hands still felt damp where the hand towel's dry them much better.

Yes, we use kitchen towels for drying hands, draining pots & pans that don't go in the dishwasher and are too big for the countertop drying rack. We go through one or two towels a day. They rarely get very dirty or very wet, so in the evening I generally toss them down the stairs onto the top of the dryer to await their turn in the laundry. A couple years ago I splurged and bought a dozen from IKEA, they are holding up well. During the day, I hang them on the oven handle nice and neat, DH tosses them anywhere.

"I have no guilt about using paper towels and we use a lot of them."

Same with us, Elmer. I'm constantly grabbing a paper towel for umpteen reasons.

For damp kitchen towels, I have a small folding A-frame rack in the laundry room. I bought it for that very purpose.

Elmer, I definitely feel no guilt about my paper towel usage either, and it is quite high.

Ha, posted at the same time as chloe :-)

Yes! I love my dish towels. I have both cotton and linen, and I use them often. Linen towel really makes the crystal sparkle!

I buy packs of white cotton washcloths and hand towels that I use in the kitchen in place of most dishtowels or paper towels. My dishtowels are hand woven so I use them carefully. I will use old stained cloths and towels for really messy things and paper for serious muck. I have a laundry chute nearby with a wire bottom where they dry if necessary. I do not dry dishes usually because when I was vacationing on the Kintyre Peninsula in Scotland I stayed in a Bed and Breakfast where the wife had a cabinet over her sink that when opened exposed a dish rack that dripped into the sink. What a great idea. I have a stainless rack over my sink where I put things that I have washed. Paper towels take trees-not recycled paper. They are also completely unlikely to compost in a dump once buried. They can dig up 30 year old carrots and other compostables.

I'm not sure your lack of guilt about using paper towels (from an environmental standpoint) is warranted.

http://blog.pulpandpaper-technology.com/how-harmful-are-paper-towels/

I use them all the time. One for drying dishes (on the left), the other for wiping up counters, drying hands, etc. A dish cloth for washing the dishes (green cloth). They don't get caked with dried food or such, I change them out before that builds up. They're tossed into the washing machine when I feel it's "time". Paper towels for wiping up spills.

Terry cloth ones for drying hands and flour sack ones for drying things.

Sue

"I'm not sure your lack of guilt about using paper towels (from an environmental standpoint) is warranted."

Please read your own "information" carefully. In it, you'll find that it says paper towels biodegrade in one year.

Trees are a renewable resource and there are extensive commercially replanted tree growing areas dedicated to paper and other wood products. Growing trees like other plants capture carbon from the atmosphere and if wood is not burned for heat - as is too common and environmentally damaging in your area - the carbon stays out of the atmosphere. If you burn wood, the environmental damage you cause directly far exceeds whatever consequences there are of my buying paper towels in plastic packaging.

I use a lot of dish towels and dishcloths. I have a variety of dish towels, from microfiber and terry, to heavy weave cotton and flour sack- a lot of the flour sack are embroidered. Couple big stacks. Dishcloths are generally a small stack of terry front/mesh back kind, with some mom-crochet ones for delicate washing. We also use cloth napkins on the regular too.

I run a kitchen load of linens through the washer on the regular.

I keep a Terry kitchen towel at the sink for hands. The cabinets are recessed a tad, so I put a long pull handle on the top rail of the door and hang the towel on that. Then, I keep a flour-sack type dishtowel, like a tea towel, on a hook across the room (my towels were too long for the same place as the Terry towel, they brushed the floor!) That one is for drying anything that didn’t fit in the dishwasher at the end of the day (I run it in the evening), drying glasses etc where the the water pooled in the dishwasher, and as a potholder for my Dansk and LeCreuset.

As I “close up” the kitchen at night (turn on the DW, wipe the counters, sweep), the towels go in a hamper in the laundry room and fresh ones come out, ready for the next day.

I guess some of us read more carefully than others; it's not just the plastic packaging:

1. Paper towels are also dumped in water sources causing polluting water and causing harm to marine as well as human life.
2. Humans consume millions of tons of paper towels that are aiding in fast depletion of forests and polluting water sources.
3. Coupled with anti-bacterial chemicals, paper towels can be considered a bio hazard when disposed in landfills.

I've been buying bamboo paper towels that are packaged without plastic which makes me feel a little less guilty.

I have a dishwasher that I use only occasionally, but air dry most dishes and pots and pans, so my dish towels get little use, especially since I never use them for wiping up messes or my hands. For that I use my dishrag that I wash dishes with. I'll use a piece of a paper towel for some messes, but during this pandemic I bought TP that I didn't think is suitable for my septic so I've been keeping a roll in the kitchen and using TP bits instead of PT's, and it's saving me a lot on paper towels.

"I guess some of us read more carefully than others; it's not just the plastic packaging, ......etc. "

Nice snarky comment but you failed to read the question I asked, so don't put yourself into a group of careful readers.

The paper towels I use can't possibly get dumped in water sources, there are none around other than reservoirs and my paper towels don't wind up there. I can only control what I do and my use of paper towels and so many other things I do are responsible conduct overall.

How about you? You ducked my question so should I assume you burn wood for heat?

I'm going to guess the answer is YES, but even if no, how hypocritical is it for wood burning tree huggers in places like Washington State whose PERSONAL conduct causes measurable damage to the environment and human health to criticize small things others do elsewhere that overall are less environmentally damaging. If you do burn wood, you'll never use enough bamboo paper towels in your lifetime to make up for one month's worth of burning wood that you or others do multiple months each year and multiple years in your lifetime.

"With the dishwasher really no need. How about you?"

LOL!! Of course there is a need. I wash many things by hand - and I sure don't put cast iron in the dishwasher!! Or my copper pots. Or even my large stainless fry pans for that matter. I also keep a couple hanging to use for drying my hands. My gosh - I can't imagine not having dishtowels.

We don’t use paper towels. Haven’t bought any for years. We do use a lot of both dish rags and dishtowels, for wiping, for spills, for washing. We have a separate set of awful raggedy holes ones for kitty throw up and other gross messes. For really heinous things I do sometimes use then just throw out a raggedy one.

Dish rags and towels are replaced with fresh clean ones at each meal. Wet rags are hung On a small laundry rack like in the link. They dry quickly and no smell mostly. When dry, there’s a small basket. When the basket is full, I do a load. I use a bit of oxyclean when I wash.

i grew up not using paper towels because my parents were cheap about some things and never bought them. They just seem wasteful to me now. And if you have enough of them and the right set up, there really isn’t a need for them. Just a want to have some convenience.

Since it's been mentioned, I guess I should say that I do not toss wet cloths in the washing machine right away. I lay them out over the edge of it until dry, or hang them on a hook on the shelf nearby.

1. Paper towels are also dumped in water sources causing polluting water and causing harm to marine as well as human life.
2. Humans consume millions of tons of paper towels that are aiding in fast depletion of forests and polluting water sources.
3. Coupled with anti-bacterial chemicals, paper towels can be considered a bio hazard when disposed in landfills.

Paper towels dumped into the water is really the fault of the person who is littering, not the fault of the paper towel. Additionally, the "pollution" caused by the paper towel is nothing compared to that of a plastic bag or detergents (sulphates) that are the result of other options. At least the paper towel rapidly degrade and won't cause algae blooms.

Face it, humans (American) consume a lot of thing and create on average 8 pounds of garbage per person per day. Lots of that is the massive amounts of packaging we use when conveying goods. The US uses 3 million tons of paper towels per year (The Atlantic). Yes, this is a lot of paper towels both absolutely and relative to the rest of the world. But only makes up 0.1% of our total waste stream.

Your argument that paper towels are considered "hazardous" when mixed with hazardous materials is ridiculous. You are trying to make that the fault of the paper towels, when the hazardous nature is solely caused by the hazardous chemicals you just added.

Don't get me wrong, I also try to curtail my paper towel usage, but I weigh the merits of paper towels with alternatives like cloth towels. In the US,at least we are assured that are garbage will go in a sanitary landfill where its decay products will never contaminate the soil, water, or air outside the landfill.

If you are really interested in reducing your carbon or pollution impact, there are much better ways than arguing over paper towels. For instance, garbage decaying in US landfills could be recaptured to produce 30% of the US energy supply. Bothering to clean up landfills would save the US 600 million tons of CO2 each year among other benefits, This is an easily addressable problem that is 200x bigger.

I put a lot of things in my dishwasher but there are still some things to hand wash. I hang my dishtowel on the oven handle along with a hanging towel for hand drying. I rarely cook in my stove oven; mostly I bake in my countertop convection oven.

One of the questions I would ask/state is that if you have someone who works in a professional kitchen if you ask what they are allowed to do they will tell you that wiping of dishes to dry is not allowed. They may use a cloth to polish silverware and dishes but never to dry. Staff can wipe or dry their hands if they have something on them but that is it.

The difficulty is that the temperature that commercial kitchens must use is higher than home kitchens along with some of the cleansers are harsher to the skin. So do what you feel is best for you and your family which depending where you live and the season may or may not include wiping dishes with something. A wet glass here in the summer if the a/c is not on can be wet the following day if not dried in the dish washer.

Like Marilyn, I use flour sack towels for hand wash/dry items and terry cloth for my hands. They are changed daily.

Before covid I used a lot of paper towels but after they became hard to find I started using cloth towels again. That's a good thing. Hope it stays that way.

Everyday

I only use paper towels for things such as wiping up floor spills or draining fried foods so it takes me a long time to get through a roll of paper towels. My dish towels mostly get used for drying my hands after I wash them- I don’t have a dishwasher so I hand wash all my dishes but I leave them to air dry. Dirty dish towels go to soak in a bucket with Oxyclean until wash day.

I use paper towels and compost them. They take a lot less than a year to decompose.

I have a paper towel dispenser for drying hands at work and used to collect the used towels as browns for my compost. I used a bucket lined with a bag next to the sink.

Obviously haven't done that for a year now.

Wow, Fudd. You're wrong on so many counts! Ping!

Yes, I mainly use them for drying my hands and drying anything that I don't put in the dishwasher.

I use them every day! I have a stack of Sam's Club wash cloths that I use a clean one daily just to dry my hands at the sink. This is very handy. They are large enough for the job and very absorbent. I think 24 of them were around $12. I also have large dish towels around the kitchen for drying dishes etc.

I use dish towels every day, I use one for drying pots and pans that never go in the dishwasher, and another for drying hands. I can't imagine changing towels 7-8 times a day. I don't know how often all those towels are washed, but that's an awful lot of extra water, detergent and electricity used, which seems to go against wanting to save and protect the environment. I hang wet dish towels on the oven door handle to dry overnight, and put in a separate basket from other laundry.

I do the same as woodrose. My 'separate basket' is the garage floor in front of the dryer, where I toss them after a couple of days or if they get dirty. (Yeah, I'm talking about my dh who doesn't quite get the concept of only drying clean hands and dishes on them.)

I don't have a dishwasher so we still use dish towels and we hang it on a hook on the kitchen door to the basement landing to dry. I also use terry cloth type hand towels that I hang from the oven door to dry hands. When I am cooking I use a paper towel to wipe my hands. I keep one of those reusable shopping bags near the washing machine kept under a chair out of the way to put the dry used towels in until laundry day. I always launder my kitchen linens separate from when I do other laundry.

Very rarely use them. I do keep one strategically placed on the oven door handle to hide whatever large pot or pan I have stored in the oven. It also doubles as my hand towel. Dishes, pans, etc., that I hand wash are allowed to air dry. So for me, there is very little need for them.

Rusty

I can't imagine functioning without them. I have a dozen or so hand woven dishcloths and dish towels at any given time. I buy them online from Etsy, and they are very absorbent and sturdy.
I run my dishwasher daily, but I handwash knives, cast iron, and vintage pyrex, etc.
I am clearly much lazier than most. I grab the used towels, open the door of the laundry room and toss them in. By the time I go in there to do laundry, they are dry. I pick them up off the floor and I toss them in the wash.

I use dish towels, hand towels, dish cloths, and wash cloths every day in the kitchen. They all get replaced with clean ones daily. ALL dirty laundry goes into two large plastic laundry baskets that are located on the floor of a bathroom closet. I never have to go from room -to-room in search of dirty laundry, and it is easy to see know what laundry we have. It is good exercise to quickly put the dirty laundry in its place.

Too often I have seen people walk by a hanging towel and use it for whatever reason. Because a towel looks clean does not make it so. We use a clean bath towel every day, too. I do laundry almost every day thus eliminating the worry about storing damp towels, etc.

I’m doing an experiment this week. I mentioned earlier that I keep a towel on the cabinet door under the sink, for hand drying, and a tea towel across the room for any dish drying. But DH uses the towel by the sink for dishes, then hangs it up next to the tea towel, across the room. He uses a paper towel for hand drying.

So, we are polar opposites!

So, the other day when I reached for the hand towel and it wasn’t there, I decided if you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. At least for a little while. So, for the time being, the only towel out is a tea towel across the room. He probably won’t notice. Oh well.

I use towels, dish rags and paper towels. I don't like the terry cloth, knit fabric or waffled fabric for dish towels. I like a flat woven cotton towel for the dishes, but It's hard to find new ones. otoh, I only go to W. I need to try a different store. We have a new TJs so maybe I'll stop in there to check out those not eatable towels. I usually just grab a dish rag out of the drawer for wiping up the counter top but don't use them for washing dishes. the towel I usually spread out over the top of the washed dishes in the rack for an hour or so to dry. I'm in a dry climate so it doesn't take it long to dry.

I love IKEA's tea towels for dish drying. They are flat woven cotton, wear well, and don't cost much.

I always use dishtowels despite having a dishwasher and many times, we use a towel to wipe any excess moisture from items. We also use towels for drying hand-washed items, and table, counter and stove surfaces. We have a hand-towel available in the kitchen and try to minimize our use of paper towels. We keep a supply of clean rags on hand for wiping up floor spills and similar purposes.

I got rid of my counter top dish rack so I would never be tempted to stick clean wet dishes there. If it is hand washed, it is immediately dried with a lint free towel and put away. I sometimes use a small drying mat for a few hours if necessary. A pristine kitchen is very nice to wake up to each morning.

I totally agree Elizabeth. I've had a brand new dishwasher for 5 yrs and have never used it. Pretty much added a space and a dishwasher in our remodeled kitchen in case we decided to sell. Always handwash, hand dry, and put my dishes away after we eat.

I do use my dishwasher for most dishes but I have often seen folks who also stack up a dish rack. It is really just the good knives, anything aluminium and the non-stick egg pan.

Yes, I use dish towels. Knives don't go in the dishwasher. Also, the Tupperware type things don't seem to dry immediately in the DW.

Shortly before Covid, a little store in my neighborhood that sold nurses uniforms went out of business. I never had any reason to go in there, but they had a sign in the window advertising plain white cotton dish towels, 10 for 5 dollars, and I bought some on a whim. Cut to Covid, living out in the middle of a woods, no paper towels available. Those dish towels were a godsend!

Of course to dry my hands, or dishes.