Do you use a different kitchen towel to dry your hands from the one you use to dry the dishes?
My mother in law was horrified that I use just one towel for both purposes. But in my opinion they are for the same thing: drying off clean things. Why would I need two different towels for that?
the towel that dries your hand (or wipes them without washing) could be contaminated with food (at least as far as microorganisms would be concerned). she doesn’t want to contaminate clean dishes.
Generally speaking, I don’t dry the dishes… The use of a towel can spread bacteria. No, I don’t have a cite. This is just something that I learned in Culinary School and it makes sense to me.
But I use it for drying my hands after WASHING them… how could that contaminate dishes?
i’ve hear that as well, that air drying is better for that reason especially if it is not a fresh towel.
We probably shouldn’t - but we do.
I use seperate towels.
Even worse, my husband uses the dish or hand towel to take out hot pans from the oven rather then grabbing the oven mitts then puts the towel back on the rack for me to unknowingly use as a hand or dish towel later on.
skin cells and other microorganism food could be on that towel. also a hand drying towel would have a tendency to stay wetter and be a better place for microorganisms than a dish drying towel that might dry between uses.
anyway mother in laws are always right, at least about the small stuff.
Skin cells? SKIN CELLS? Of course my skin cells will get on my dishes. I have to handle them to put them away.
This is starting to sound like some weird germphobic practice.
i think the idea is that a towel that has nooks and crannies can rub off and hold skin cells and microbial food, this towel stays damp and then is a good environment for microorganisms to live and breed on for hours before its next use.
a smooth dry surface of a dish will not rub off as many skin cells or be a good breeding environment.
no cites at hand. i do recall studies where microbial assays were done and things like dish rags, sponges and dish towels could have large amounts of microorganisms.
Towels are for drying hands. The dish rack is for drying dishes.
Yeah, I use the same towel. Sometimes I’ll even clean the stove and counters with it too, if I’m feeling particularly bold. When I’m dead you can all say “I told you so”, but until then I’ll take my chances.
What can I say, I like to live dangerously.
Very much so.
I let my dishes air dry, but because I’m lazy, not because I am concerned about germs.
I do keep two different towels at the kitchen sink, where I not only do kitchen stuff but wash my hands after working in the garden. The second towel is for post-gardening-hand-washing-hand drying, where there can be fairly serious dirt involved.
Two towels, but for a different reason.
I use a non-terrycloth towel to dry dishes because non-porous surfaces do not benefit from the greater surface area of terrycloth towels. A tea towel makes more contact with the surface of the dish, drying it more efficiently.
But I use a terrycloth towel to dry my hands because it’s more comfortable and more absorbent for my porous skin.
Well, I don’t dry my dishes. My dishwasher is set to “air dry” so after it’s finished running, I partially open the door to allow air to circulate. When they’re dry, I put them away.
I do, however, have a towel rack just above my sink, and I keep one towel on it. I use it to dry my hands after I wash them, or to wipe up water that splatters around the sink while I’m rinsing or soaking something. When that towel gets dirty (usually every couple of days), I’ll put it in the dirty clothes, and get out a clean towel.
Whatever the opposite of ‘germophobe’ is, I’m that. I figure God gave me an immune system for a reason, I might as well use it! I don’t buy antibacterial hand soap, either.
I don’t specifically dry my dishes, but some pots or pans need to be washed by hand, and I dry those, so that sort of thing is what I’m talking about.
But I’m like you norinew, I’m anti-germphobic. Maybe germphonic?
Whenever my mother in law visits she seems amazed that the children have survived being raised in what she considers squalor. Luckily she lives on another continent so these visits don’t happen frequently.
Sorta depends.
There’s usually one cleanish towel in the kitchen that we use for hand drying and not-too-dirty cleanup. Most of the time dishes are dried in the dishwasher, so there’s really not much dish-drying going on.
That said, I go through a LOT of towels. If I’m cooking, I probably go through 3 or 4 towels in a cooking session, maybe more. I use them for hand-drying (I wash my hands a lot while cooking, since my hands get dirty while cooking), vegetable/herb drying, patting meat dry, wiping up spills, etc. etc. I know all about the dangers of cross contamination, so unless I know a towel is really clean, I tend to grab a new one rather than re-use an old one.
I do re-use them at times. For example, if I’ve used a towel to dry off some vegetables after washing them, I’ll use the same towel to dry my hands and then it becomes the hand-drying-towel for the cooking session. Or I’ll grab the veggy towel and use it to dry off some meat, after which it goes right to the washer. Towels used to dry glasses (let’s say I hand washed a wine glass) also are fair game for hand washing and/or veggy/meat washing.
We wash kitchen towels a LOT around here.
Same here. Tea towel for drying dishes, totally different one for drying hands. I prefer the dish rack, out of laziness, but sometimes it gets full. Then the towel comes out.
At my house, we usually let the dishes air dry - because we’re lazy, not because we’re concerned about germs. If we don’t, we just dry our hands with the same towel we use to dry the dishes anyway. It’s not like I dry my hands unless I’ve washed them. Plus, I start with a new kitchen towel and wash cloth every day (I have tons and I bleach them), so I’m not concerned about contamination.
It does seem a little paranoid to worry about my skin cells getting on my dishes. I mean, they’ll get on them anyway when I put them away, or if I touch a dish I just dried, right? I’d imagine, too, that cooking would kill most contaminants that somehow manage to transfer from my hands to a dish.
I use the same towel for drying dishes as wiping off my clean hands. I also have a ton of kitchen towels and they get rotated a lot. And, I use super-hot water to rinse my dishes so for the most part they don’t need drying.
My momma told me that leaving your dishes to air dry is pretty useless in the fight against germs because they just sit there collecting germs from the air. That was probably a ploy to get me to put the dishes away sooner than later, but it did make sense to me. So I tend to put my dishes away pretty quickly.
I do toss the towel into the laundry once I’ve used it to do any sort of non-dish cleaning (such as wiping down the counter).