Tea-towels and hand towels

We have a dishwasher - me! I always have a tea towel and a hand towel on the go, and like others, I get very ratty when hubby just snatches up one randomly to use for whatever, despite my lengthy lectures on their uses and functions!! Both are washed every couple of days at the very least, and usually thrown straight into the washing machine ready for a wash after use! And despite HATING ironing, I do find it necessary to iron tea towels, as they are made of linen, and crease wildly, and I can't have crumpled tea towels on display for all to see!

Thanks for the advice LJP1 - we do eat a lot of oranges. Actually my hands have been better than usual this winter.
Thingamajig - my husband does that too, how did they get that habit?
And he does the same with a table napkin that I've carefully ironed (we only use them occasionally.)

We have tea towels (lots) and hand towels - plus DW and J-cloths. All towels go on a very hot wash very regularly and if a tea towel looks in the slightest bit grubby it is banished to the laundry room for a jolly good boil.

No-one has mentioned this, as far as I know, but we also iron our clean tea towels. Always. This makes them so much nicer to use. But you probably think we're bonkers.

We also iron knickers and pants.

I had a friend whose house was immaculate, no dust was allowed to settle. However, her tea towels were brown with filth and were hardly ever changed. She didn't have a dishwasher either. How can you explain that!!!

In 45 years I have failed miserably to train DH to identify tea towel or hand towel depending on what he needs. So I have given up. We have a tea towel only which goes in the wash daily, which hopefully means he has limited time to dry his hands on it.

We also have a thin cotton tea towel on which we dry salad leaves etc (can't be doing with those spinning things). This cloth is quite diff to any other towel/tea towel and he knows it's purpose but can be occasionally caught wiping his hands on it - I go ballistic and immediately confiscate it. He realises the error of his ways for a while.

We have a tea towel on the go but we use it to dry hands only ... dishes are in the dishwasher, or left to air dry. Husband invariably scrunches it up and leaves it on the worktop and I have to remove it and put it on the radiator! It's washed/changed as required or every time the washing machine is on. No one has ever died from my kitchen germs ... yet!!! ?

We keep both hand towel and tea towel and even a dishcloth in the kitchen. We do have a dishwasher, but I like to do pots and pans by hand. I see that in DS2s house they have none of these things and everything goes in their dishwasher. When I'm visiting, I have found a problem cleaning surfaces of drips and dribbles. I guess they would use paper towels for this

Hello, I have a dishwasher but also have paper towels, tea towels for drying the odd bits and a hand towel for hands.

Thanks GrandMattie . Ugh, wiping the kitchen sides with a crocodile!

TriciaF - try eating tomatoes, strawberries, oranges, etc. or take Vit C tablets, it helps skin heal. You should notice the difference in a few days. It can't harm you and usually works

My DH also needs several towels on the go. It may sound OCD but all my hand towels are dark colours because nobody chooses to wipe dishes with them and all my tea towels and white because nobody wants to risk leaving dirty marks on them.

Yes, I use a throw away dish cloth.

I won't have a dishcloth and use throw-away cloth if I really need to. I have a dish-washer but love white linen tea towels (just for finishing) but regret that by the time they age to that really soft and perfect texture they are also not quite as white as I would like, and even bleach boiling doesn't bring that back.

I have two small gym towels that I alternate as hand towels in the kitchen. Wouldn't dry my hands on the tea towel, though I rarely use that as most dishes are done in the dishwasher.

i have both a hand towel and tea towel hanging on the oven door handle. i only use a yellow hand towel and a white tea towel so anyone visiting and my family who live with me know which towel is which.

i also use a dishcloth for wiping spills and cleaning the work surface - together with antiseptic spray or flash with bleach [whichever is the handiest in the cupboard].

the towels and dishcloth are washed on maximum and then tumble dried so they're "squeaky clean" when they come out.

i don't have a downstairs loo so i do wash my hands in the kitchen - as do daughter and grandaughters - especially when i'm about to prepare food.

We wash our hands in the adjacent downstairs loo which is opposite the sink. I wash my work tops & hob down after supper & dry them with today's tea towel which is then flung in the washing cupboard awaiting the next appropriate wash.

Although we have kitchen towel I rarely use it except on the animal's dishes if they gave been washed in the sink. It is my 'saving the planet' mentality.

Maybe some of us carry follow what our mother's did?

I have both, and get very annoyed if I see anyone using the wrong one. Also I never wash my tea towels in the general wash - they are washed separately. When I stayed with my son last year he caught me washing his mugs and plates and wiping them with my own tea towel. Not ones I had used, but the clean ones from his cupboards which I was about to use. He had admitted to me that he washes everything together and at low temperature! Call me OCD but boxers and tea towels at 40 degrees leave me with a very unpleasant image!!

Just googled it. Ectothermic or cold blooded like insects, lizards and crocodiles

No I don't keep separate hand towels and tea towels, everything they are used to dry is clean, if people are using them and not washing their hands properly, then the answer is to teach them how to wash them properly not to have a separate towel, I always use the NHS guidelines for handwashing and my grandchildren have all been taught the same and use this method, for more info here is a video www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAwS0UslEDs

We always have one tea towel and one hand towel in the kitchen despite the fact we live in a small bungalow with the bathroom adjacent to the kitchen so handwashing is not really a kitchen-based activity. They are rarely used although I pop them in the wash every time I am using the washing machine. We have a dishwasher so the tea towel occasionally comes into service just to wipe residual water off crockery. I have noticed that my cleaner sometimes wipes down the kitchen work surfaces with the tea towel. This is not something I would do - I use disposable kitchen towel to do that.

P.s. What is ectothermic anyway?

Not ectothermic!!! E-cloth!

Separate tea towel, hand towel, ectothermic for wiping sides and spills, all changed daily despite the dishwasher. I tend to wipe sticky hands (mine or anyone else's) on kitchen paper. My serendipitous solution to people using the wrong towel is that my hand towels are stupidly thick and you couldn't possibly use one for wiping up!

Strange question?
Of course there's a hand towel and teatowels. And oven gloves all of which hang from the rail along the range. And I have a dishwasher, also I have rubber gloves for the odd bit. And dishcloths for wiping surfaces. Where appropriate they get a boil wash, as do the hand towels and tea towels.

I have both, and also the dreaded dishcloths for wiping down worktops etc.
Which get changed more regularly than the others.
For my hands, I try to wear rubbergloves for anything to do with water, or anything dirty or smelly. Because I've had badly cracked fingers.
eg today I cooked a piece of whole salmon and wore gloves to remove the skin and bones.
There was a thread last year about washing teatowels - quite a revelation for me!