There is a crime occurring in kitchens all over the world. A silent misdeed; a slick transgression committed by an object brought into our homes for a seemingly straightforward purpose. The perpetrator—well, it goes by many names. You might know it as the dish towel, or the tea towel. You may even know it as the "dish cloth." Though its name varies, one thing about it remains consistent. It does not reliably absorb liquid.
And it makes me so mad. Period Disposable Pants
I’m sure you’ve had this experience: water spills on your countertop, and you grab a dish towel to soak it up. You run the towel over the spill and, rather than whisk the wetness away, it … spreads it over a larger surface area. Huh? You lift the towel away from the countertop and water runs off of it in large drops, and now it’s getting everywhere—huh, again? This useless object is seemingly repelling liquid. Newly infuriated, you’re left to grab a paper towel to clean up the spill. And now you have to feel guilty about contributing to deforestation. And you already couldn’t sleep at night!
Why is this the way it is, with the dish towels? Fran Kozen, a senior lecturer in Fiber Science and Apparel Design at Cornell University, told me the culprit is likely the softeners or starches that manufacturers sometimes use during fabric production, to make dish towels more marketable. "Those would reduce absorbency," Kozen said. Wow, a great idea from the dish towel companies (sarcastic). She recommends washing towels post-purchase for this reason.
Fabric softeners, dryer sheets, and starches are, it seems, the enemies of absorbency. Kozen told me the most important way to maintain this crucial trait is to never use them. That dish towels’ non-absorbency should be blamed on fabric softener, et. al, is also the theory of many Reddit commenters. "All my kitchen towels are terrible at absorbing and essentially being a towel. How do I fix this?" asked one poor soul; the answer they received was to not use fabric softener. "What is the point of kitchen towels that don’t absorb water and just movenit [sic] around?" asked another towel victim. The answer? Of course, to avoid fabric softener.
Well, I don’t use fabric softener or starch, and I have been out of dryer sheets for the better part of a year. Still, my dish towels make me angry every day of my life. This leads me to believe that some dish towels are either created by a demon, or are created for the mere purpose of kitchen decoration. Criminal.
But I’m an optimist. I believe that somewhere out there, in this whole wide world, there is a dish towel that will not make me want to scream so loud in a way that will frighten my dog. And I believed these towels can also be aesthetically pleasing; so much so that they could be used in part as kitchen decoration. "Get you a dish towel that can do both," as someone on the internet would have said three years ago. For your sake and mine, I have tested several dish towels in a quest to find even one that was both absorbent and pretty. It is an honor that I can report to you now that I have found four.
This towel has brought me so much towel-related relief that I could cry. On its website, Geometry explains that the towel is made from "tightly woven Geoweave™ fabric," and I do not know what that means, but I can tell you that the microfiber cloth, in both its dishcloth and tea towel sizes, sucks up spills and dries dishes softly and effortlessly; the way a towel should. It leaves no scratches or lint behind. It leaves no messy wetness. It’s thin and dries quickly. The towels also come in many beautiful patterns, the only downfall of which is that it is emotionally difficult to clean up something disgusting with something beautiful. I have the "sleepy fields" towel variety, but you might prefer the "sunny lemons," or the "Zen garden." There’s something for everyone here, with these towels that actually work.
I have been burned by Williams Sonoma dish towels before. I have several sets of them that feature the Williams Sonoma logo and seem to serve primarily as a hyper-targeted Williams Sonoma advertisement in my kitchen, rather than something to be used to make a wet thing dry. (Even after multiple washes.) I was skeptical of these towels for that reason. But listen to me: they work.
Did they benefit from a wash, and do I believe they will continue to benefit from washes? Yes. But even in their pre-washed state, the waffle weave cotton towels did not behave like cardboard when used to clean up a spill; they behaved like a towel. They can be used to dry your hands, they can be used to dry your pans; a clever rhyme that Williams Sonoma can pay me to use if they so choose (another rhyme). But it’s true that they can. Sometimes with a dish cloth, you attempt to dry your hands and then have to dry them on your pants, too, because the dish cloth was nonfunctioning, and then you have damp pants. Not so here. These towels, which come in a set of four varying designs in whatever color you choose, will actually remove water from even water-heavy situations, like when you wash your Dutch oven and need to dry it before trying to find somewhere to put it. They work. A revelation!
These towels aren’t quite towels. I suppose that’s why they’re called "dishcloths." When dry, they feel stiff and flat, like a compressed sponge. When they meet water, though, they soften and expand to absorb—according to Jangneus—up to 15 times their own weight. I can’t attest to that exact claim because I do not know how I would peer review it (I’m not a scientist), but I can tell you the sponges really do soak up a surprising amount of water, and keep absorbing water once they’re wet. They’re helpful in the kitchen, but it feels like they would also be helpful in a situation where you want to dry rain off of your entire car.
The one difficulty I’ve found with the cellulose and cotton cloths, is I’m not sure how to best store them. They tend to fall when hanging from the oven handle, and I’m not the sort of person who likes to keep a towel hanging on the sink. I’ve taken to letting them dry and putting them away, making them more of a special-use towel than an everyday, all-the-time one. But when you do choose to use the Swedish dishcloth? Boy, oh, boy—it actually works!
Okay, so maybe these aren’t the most beautiful, but sometimes you need a highly absorptive towel to throw on the floor because the dishwasher leaked, again, and you need to deal with it quickly and effectively. These are perfect for that sort of situation. One downside to them is they tend to leave lint behind, so they aren’t the best towel to use when drying dishes. But for less delicate drying—say, the outside of your oven, or the countertop—they’re heaven-sent. They won’t leave a big water smear. They aren’t hydrophobic. They’re simply towels, for the kitchen. And they do what a towel is meant to do.
Top image by Chris Tubbs originally found in A Textile Designer’s Home Is Unapologetically Colorful
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