Kitchen towels - am I just being OCD about this?

Question

Lately I've started to be skeeved out about not washing my kitchen towels by themselves. After all, I sometimes put food directly on them and I often touch them to clean dishes.

Problem is most weeks I only use 2 or 3 towels so it's not a full load.

Does this bother anyone else or it is just me being weird?

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Weird. There are many things which can be washed with kitchen towels. I put them in with bath towels.

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I wash them with the rest of my "whites", which involves bleach and HOT water setting, so if anything they are the cleanest things that come out of my machine.

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I always wash dish towels and washcloths by themselves. It is annoying, but it icks me out to do it any other way.

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We use cloth napkins as well as dish towels so each week I have load that I do on sanitize. My washer has a small load setting so its not wasting water. However I don't sweat it and often throw them in with bath towels/sheets, again on sanitize.

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Kind of curious... does anyone wash their kitchen towels (I'm imagining they're not that big, maybe a square foot) in the dishwasher? I've heard ppl wash their sponges this way (in addition to nuking them in the microwave) so depending on your towels maybe this could work, at least as a pre-wash before adding it to other laundry?

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I just put them in with the other laundry.

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I just put them in with the regular laundry -- my dish towels are white, so they get put in with the whites in hot water with bleach.

But washing machines and dishwashers do not sterilize anything, ever.

Bacteria exist on almost every surface of the planet, as well as in the air and water.

There's no avoiding it, and reams of research exists proving that obsessing over bacteria in fact makes us MORE susceptible to infection and disease.

Wash it, but don't obsess.

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I try to do towels separate from clothing (undergarments especially) and use hot water.
We go through A LOT of towels/bar mops as I cook from scratch, and use paper towels much, much less.

So, i don't think you're weird!

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Perspective: How long has mankind walked upright? How long has the human race had access to washing machines and detergent? As a species we survived pretty well in a non sterile environment.

Go ahead and wash your dish towels with your sweat socks.

LOL

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I go through a lot of dish towels (say, about 3 a day or more if I'm on a cooking binge). 
I also use them to wrap vegetables - for example, I will take carrots out of the plastic bag they come in, wrap them in a dish towel (or what some folks call a tea towel) and then put them back in the plastic bag. This method keeps the vegetables fresh longer. 
I'm very careful about how I wash dish towels. 
I do them separately, in hot water and use vinegar as a final rinse. If I washed the dish towels in a mixed load, they might get lint or the stray hair on them. I'm not so worried about bacteria.
BTW, in case it matters, all my dish towels are cotton or linen - not terry cloth.

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Not weird! I wash my kitchen towels by themselves and I put a little bleach in the water with my detergent in hopes that it will kill anything icky!

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Never in a million years would this occur to me. Kitchen towels go in with the bath towels and napkins once a week. Laundry soap takes care of it.

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I get the impression that people have way more kitchen towels than I do. I've only got 3- I keep 2 out and have an extra.

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I wouldn't dream of risking contamination of my kitchen towels from clothing in the same laundry load.

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Wow this is just the type of thing that has never occurred to me - it's laundry - goes in dirty, comes out clean at the end of that processes a kitchen towel is no different than a pair of boxers to me.

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I bet there is someone out there who uses them once and throws them away .

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I wash them separately. I use a lot of dishtowels instead of reaching for paper towels, so a load a week is normal. I mostly wash them separately because I have 4 dogs and 2 cats, and I really, really don't want any hair on my dishtowels.

I figure the soap and the DRYER kill the germs.

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Bliss 149, I have been wondering about kitchen towel washing recently. I find myself saving up a few (used) towels and then throwing them in the wash - by themselves. The towels are never really dirty, but after a few uses it seems like the sanitary thing to do. I believe that it's unsanitary to wash kitchen towels with any other laundry. Do a search for what they found in laundry water and you'd be amazed and maybe a bit grossed out. NEVER wash them with the bathroom towels. I used to do that, until I read about the contamination risk.

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2014/10/study-kitchen-towels-harbor-plenty-of-bacteria/#.VPS3epV0zcu

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I dry my dishes with underwear.

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Omigod I must be such a pig. I had no idea.

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Yup I have issue with this too. I save them up - usually once every 2 weeks it is a smallish load for our large washing machine. I put in the tea towels - used to dry dishes and for drying salad along with handtowels that are exclusively used in the kitchen. I wash them at 50 degrees c with a non-bio detergent - should I be washing them hotter...I can't bear the thought of chucking them in with other towels. Bedding, bathroom towels and underwear can get chucked in together no problems!

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I have one of those utensil type holders on one side of my dish washer. I dunno how common this is but two of the compartments have lids that snap into place. I just stuff my rinsed off dish towel into one of the compartments when I run the washer. Comes back clean. There's enough room for the towel to move around and get knocked about in the water streams as the dishes clean.

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This is a funny (and thought-provoking!) thread.
I guess I'm a pig too - it's never occurred to me to worry about fecal contamination in my laundry water. And I'm not going to worry about it going forward, either. ;o)

I wash small laundry batches (usually undies and such) by hand anyhow. I'm a painting contractor/decorative painter and it's a great way to get all the paint crud cleaned off of my hands, plus I find it weirdly satisfying.

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I just wash the dish towels and kitchen hand towels with the bath towels. They're all washed in hot water and dried in the dryer. The load is towels only -- no clothing, sheets, etc.

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Good gawd, your great great great grandparents' next door neighbors lived in a hut and slept with the livestock for warmth. And you're worried about kitchen towels that get washed in a washing machine? Oy.

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Does the bleach stuff kill the green boogers on used handkerchiefs? Or should I use Kleenex and fill the landfill?

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You're not OCD, you're just like me. :)

I'm weird about things that touch food as well and I have my fair share of kitchen towels. I even designate them. The white Williams-Sonoma and flour sack towels are the only ones that come in direct contact with food. 

I have a 40-pack of the costco chamois type and that's used for scrubbing surfaces. Also, the ones used in bathrooms cannot be used in the kitchen - ever. Each room has their stack.

Then I have the ones I used as hand towels and multi-purpose. LOL 
They all have different colors so it's not hard to tell what's what.

I wash them all by hand in the kitchen and hang them dry. If they need bleach, I use bleach but after rinsing completely I soak in vinegar solution to get out the bleach scent. LOL

It's not as neurotic as it sounds - I'm just weird about things touching food.

Answer

"Problem is most weeks I only use 2 or 3 towels so it's not a full load."

Once upon a time I was a young mom who used cloth diapers.

I used the "slurry bucket" method. Basically a covered pail with non-chlorine bleach and gentle detergent. Rinsed cloth diapers were deposited in the bucket til there was a larger load.

Not sure if that could be helpful in your case.

Currently I use gobs of white (chlorine-bleachable) kitchen linens every week (dish towels, pot holders, napkins, table cloths etc)and seem to have no problem filling up my washing machine (which is kind of a bummer since I have to fold all the stuff too...).

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OK, here's the short version of the answer: laundry detergent and hot, or even warm water, followed by medium or hi dryer temp., will kill a LOT of bacteria, and will remove a LOT of greasy crud. 

Will it make your dish towels, funky draw's, and sweaty socks operating-room sterile? No, but neither is the food you eat, or your mouth. (BTW, when I was little, we had a dryer that had a UV light in it, supposedly to kill more bugs, but incidentally, it made anything washed with bluing glow in the dark, and it was front-loaded, with a window, so you could SEE the glowing underwear leaping around! Anyone make those any more?)

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I have an eclectic collection of cotton napkins, dish towels, dish cloths, and table cloths. Mostly picked up from yard sales and thrift shops, and almost all in the pastel to white section of the color scale.

So, all week, we use them profligately -- wipe hands, wipe counter, throw in the basket, get a new towel. Use a napkin once or twice; replace. Then on the weekend, load 'em all into the washing machine and wash on hot with bleach. Tumble dry -- extra dry. They come out lovely. Not germ free, certainly, but VERY CLEAN and sweet smelling. Key to this method is to have only linens that are all like enough in color to wash together, and are bleach-able. I manage this by sticking to light colors, and not caring if they fade.

Like pedalfaster, I was once (three times, actually) a crunchy mom, washing diapers, and I found the diaper pail was the way to go. I think it would be overkill for kitchen linens, though. We just hang the wetter towels/cloths on the side of the kitchen towel basket to dry overnight, then drop on in. Wash on the weekend. 

Since it takes us most of a year to use up a roll of paper towels, and we never buy paper napkins, I am certain we save enough to cover the cost of doing laundry even when I have a smaller load.

I also do one load of bath towels and one load of sheets on the weekend. Because each of these is a full load, with its own color and temp/bleach/no bleach needs, I have never thought to combine them. It would not bother me a bit, though -- my laundry comes out clean.

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I am another who segregates dishcloths, dishtowels, and napkinps from the rest of the laundry! This is so I can use hot water, and even bleach on rare occasions.

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I am majorly OCD. I have two bins of white dish towels and I use a ton of them. I drop them in the washer by themselves. By the end of the weekend, I probably have a full load...sometimes two.

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If you can't wash the kitchen towels with the bath towels, can you eat carrots if they touch the peas, and can you be intimate without subsequently boiling the sheets? 

Oh, I'm sorry, I see our time is up for this session. Let's explore this next week, shall we?

Tee hee.

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Want to hear more about how people USE their towels.

Monaveno, priogirl and some others use many, many towels. Tea towels, dish towels, bar mops, floursack towels have all been mentioned. What are the differences and for which tasks do you use them?

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Got burrowed in little beads of lint on my kitchen towels the last time I washed them in one load with bath/tub towels. I think i am just going to stock up, let um pile up and wash separately. 

Any recommendations on a brand of good reasonably priced dish towels? It's so hard to know what your getting without feeling it person, But I wouldn't mind saving myself a mediocre shopping trip and buying them online instead.

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Funny how people don't seem to have much faith any more in the effectiveness of soap and water to sanitize things. I work in public health, and some of the most persistent and drug-resistant microbes are resistant to most chemicals used in hand sanitizers -- and what CDC recommends instead is lots of hot soapy water. So you're just fine.

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After reading the 180 comments (and counting), I have come to realize that I have quite the death-defying existence: bath towels and kitchen towels are usually (but not always) in the same laundry load. I would have thought that I had many more habits that put me in far greater danger than how I do my laundry, but maybe not. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to fetch another pair of tighty whiteys to dry the breakfast dishes.

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Sunlight is a natural sanitizing and bleaching agent according to some sources, so just hang them on the washline! Very green solution!

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Death defying . How do you survive in the hotel room with bath towels and restaurants with the cloth napkins . Do you know where those towels and napkins have been ? Personally I deal with it . And you germaphobes ?

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I put kitchen towels in the washing machine along with everything else. Why not?

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I have a confession. 

I wash everything together with abandon. In cold water. I separate nothing. Colors, jeans, towels, sheets, *gasp* socks and undies, all of it!

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