Dishcloths
Dishes are a pain in the neck, because they multiply more than rabbits. Dishes are easy to clean, but there’s something to be said for keeping one mug, spoon, and knife, and serving everything on a bread trencher. But then I’d have to either make or buy flatbread, and we’d have to eat it. I’m even tempted to make bread bowls!
In my youth my little sister and I sometimes worked well together, but more often felt crowded and stressed in the corner where the sink was, with cupboards above it. There was not a lot of room for two people; the dish drainer didn’t have a lot of space above it to stack wet dishes, so we constantly had to dry them and put them away to make room for more. My children became artists at stacking all the wet dishes without putting any away.
My mother insisted on tea towels to dry dishes. They were large rectangles of flat cloth with hand-embroidered flowers or children or animals at one end. I imagine they were designed to hang on a towel rack with the picture showing neatly. My mother had no room for such a rack and did not put them on the oven door, either. I hated the tea towels. I received a week’s worth of hand-embroidered tea towels as a wedding present, from a dear old lady I loved. I kept them in memory of her until after we had our first child. When the six month subscription to diaper service ran out, I folded the tea towels and used them to cover my baby’s behind.
In my own home we dried dishes with terrycloth towels. There are three sizes of terrycloth: small squares for washing your face, huge lengths for drying your body, and middle sized towels, for hanging in the kitchen. I am not house-proud; when the huge lengths we’ve used for years get too threadbare or the cotton starts to tear, I tear them into middle sized towels. I especially like to do this with the most colorful ones. Colorfast cloth is one of the great treasures of our time. Occasionally a middle-sized towel, whether acquired that size or diminished, becomes too worn for even dish drying. Then they split in two to become washcloths. The only way to get lower than a washcloth is to become a half-sock dishrag.
We have noble feet, of heroic size. Hence we go through a lot of large white crew socks, and a smaller number of black men’s Sunday socks. Sooner or later they acquire holes, so I cut them in half and use them for cleaning. The black ones get thrown out, because the black dye occasionally comes off in cleaning solution. The white ones get used until they die of old age or rancidity. My husband used to use them to change the oil in our van, after which I insisted he throw them out.
Hence I have enough cloth items to use a clean washcloth and a clean dishrag every day. Kitchen towels get changed every day or two, and bath towels every few days. Theoretically bath towels are only used on clean bodies, but even so, they get washed at least once a week. When I was little, my mother pointed out that wet items stink after a while. I squeezed and squeezed to get extra water out; she came with her piano accompanist hands and squeezed another couple tablespoons out every time! She insisted on them being hung up afterwards. I tried to set the same rule in my own home: squeeze wet cloth and hang them up. After living six months with my mother-in-law, I added this: wash them every day. My mother-in-law washed her dishrags once a week; they often grew slimy and stank even after being washed. On the other hand, she got down on her hands and knees and scrubbed her kitchen floor every week without fail. I sweep my kitchen less often than that.
