I have a thing where I like to have a dish towel readily available and devoted solely to drying my hands after washing dishes, rinsing off food and other things involving water and the kitchen sink. So, for as long as I can remember, there’s been a towel hanging from the oven handle right in easy reach of the sink.
That is, until my husband moved in with me. All of a sudden, I’d reach for the towel with my wet hands only to find nothing there. The first time, I didn’t think much about it. The second time, I got a little irritated. And then from the third time on, it began to seriously annoy the crap out of me. Why did my towel keep disappearing? Well, apparently, my husband likes to use the dish towels to wipe stuff up. Spilt coffee, dog food, pasta sauce, you name it. If it’s even semi-liquid, he’ll use the dish towel to wipe it up. He also uses them on the rare occasions that he cleans: spray some of that Lysol and then wipe it up with the dish towel. Of course, all this renders the towel completely worthless after only one use until we do laundry so he’d go through our whole supply of towels in just a few days.
“What about paper towels? Can’t you just use those?” I’d ask my husband.
No, he didn’t feel that paper towels did the trick effectively enough.
“Aha!” I thought to myself. “Problem solved! I’ll buy a box of ShamWow towels!”
Except he hated the ShamWows and refused to use them. (Is this man mental or what? What’s to not like about ShamWow? I think they rock.)
After trying everything I can think of, I may have to accept that this is a battle I’ve lost. For the rest of my life, I’ll be drying my hands on my pants while my husband uses the good dish towels to sop up the beer that he always pours a little too vigorously so it ends up overflowing onto the counter.
(That’s ok, though…sometimes after I eat some particulary cheesy Cheetos, I wipe my hands on his shirt….)
haha, we have a dish towel issue in my house too! The dish towel is there to dry off wet, CLEAN hands. I’ve caught my husband cutting raw meat, rinsing his hands just with water then drying them on that towel. It took forever to finally get him to understand how many germs and bacteria he was spreading around. I ended having to use my poor son’s health as the motivation. Right after one of the times he used it to clean his dirty hands I got up, rinsed an apple and grabbed the towel to dry the apple to give to our son. The look of horror on his face knowing that he had just cleaned up all the doggy doodles from the back yard then used that towel after only splashing some cold water on his hands. Thankfully, on this one issue he was able to see the light and no uses soap when washing his hands. (cringes… I dread to think about all the times he didn’t use soap).
I have a solution for you an apron made out of a towel. It would look like this http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4EzvMJugyio/SERDM0M1LcI/AAAAAAAAA8E/Vc7ffiSo5fQ/s400/TeaTowelApron.jpg
only it would be made out of a towel instead of cotton. This way he won’t use it to clean messes in the kitchen. I can make you one if you would like. We have a towel problem in my house too except I’m the problem. I will get a new towel out of the drawer to wipe my clean hands and then put it back. My husband gets mad b/c when he reaches for a new towel to dry something they’re already wet. I refuse to dry my hands with the one hanging from the stove since I don’t know who touched it and with what….
I have this problem too, only my husband doesn’t like the way the towel looks hanging completely open on the oven handle (this way it drys quicker) he wants to tri-fold it and re-hang and all it does then is slide off onto the floor where I eventually walk on it and then it’s dirty!!
My husband has and always will use a dish towel as a napkin. My children do this as well. I have perfectly good napkins and paper towels that go un-used because they all prefer the dish towel. No amount of training/re-training can change this.
My kitchen is very nice – black granite, cherry cabinets, stainless steel everything. The dish towel I keep on the stove handle is all black. It looks lovely.
Until the boyfriend moved in. Day 1 of us living together, I came home from work to find an old dish towel where my black one usually is. Not only is this “new” dish towel old, tan and ratty, it has a bear with an apron on it that says “Home Is Where The Heart Is” on it. It was a moving-away present his mom gave him when he was 18.
*sigh*
My fiancee will take the dish towel to dry his hands, then walk off with it and leave the towel wherever he ends up. I will generally find a nice wet dish towel on the couch.
OMG.. I have the same issue! My boyfriend constantly is burning through the dish towels to clean stuff up! And when I get mad that I have to do laundry, he is like “Why can’t you just use this one.. I only cleaned up water from the fish tank?” It drives me bonkers! I don’t want fish tank germs.. or any germs for that matter on my clean dish towel! It is to dry your hands!!!! It terrifies me to think what he might wipe up with the hand towel in the bathroom….
This seems to be a common problem. I thought I was the only one. My husband cooks a lot. (I know I’m lucky and should NOT complain BUT) He uses my GOOD dish towels for everything from sopping up things he spills… to cleaning the floor! I went so far as to buy a package of those bar towel/rag things and he STILL uses the GOOD dish towels, therefore I no longer HAVE good dish towels. He even used them to clean up the grill! ARRGGHHHH
Maybe try using safety pins and pin the towel to the oven door (can be removed for washing, but makes it a pain to grab for quick spills)???
My husband just uses his Tshirts…. 0.o
why don’t you put a sham wow where the dish towel goes? you can dry your hands on it, and your husband won’t use it!
I guess I have already given up on that one. I just buy paper towels to dry my hands and for cleaning up messes. I am totally freaked out about germs and I couldn’t imagine what my kids wipe up with the dish towels or dish clothes. So i got rid of them and just buy paper towels. I save a little on laundry to. Oh and I don’t allow my husband in the kitchen it wouldn’t be a pretty picture if I did! LOL
HAH! YOU GO, CHEETAH GIRL!!!!!!
I guess that is a ‘green’ solution…not using paper towels and whatnot. I have a couple of lovely dish towels that I only use for drying hands, yet my ex used to ALWAYS use them for cleaning/mopping up spills.
Luckily, for me and my towels, he’s not around anymore!
I have the same issue with my husband, only he uses it to dry up the kitchen floor stepping on it with his dirty shoes. I have lost several nice dish towels, usually one part if a set, to shoes prints that won’t wash out in the laundry or the red clay staining them that was tracked in by one of our dogs because he didn’t use the rags in the drawer next to the door to clean their feet before he let them back in!
Oh thank goodness it’s not just me. The same towels should NOT be used for dog slober AND for wiping off dishes. And what’s with dropping the towel on the floor and holding it down with his shoe to swipe around on the floor? Gross! I had to segregate the towels and make a sign for the good towels – it said “NO NO!” and the sign for the old towels said “YES USE THESE” with a smiley face. Seemed to help – a bit. Jean – love the idea of the safety pins. I’m going to try that!
Yup, same issue in my household with my sweet-but-clueless husband. I am convinced that partners (men, mainly) subconsciously do things improperly just so we never ask them to do anything again because they cannot grasp this thing called “common sense”. I have a similar issue with the cleaning sponge I keep near the sink, which is used for (guess!) cleaning up spills on the counters and stove (food areas). But I once found HAIR all over it once and gave the husband a skeeved-out look and asked what happened. “I spilled some bean juice on the floor. What else am I supposed to use to clean it up?”
Not only did he completely forget about the roll of paper towels we have for exactly this purpose, he also didn’t even bother to rinse the sponge, which should be a supremely basic skill, even for men. *SIGH*
My fiance does the same thing, except when he cleans with my dishtowel, he uses bleach! Unfortunately, id ruined a few before I realized what he was doing. So now he has a designated cleaning rag (my old *ruined* dishtowels) which he uses with bleach, but still uses my clean dishtowels to clean up spills. And not just water spills. Then, back into the kitchen it goes, as if nothing ever happened. Except for the spaghetti sauce crusted on the towel.
Hey Sunshine! I have an award for you on my blog!
I am constantly looking for my kitchen towel, too! It’s not that my husband wipes things up with it (like he’d ever wipe anything up! or put a dirty towel in the laundry!). He just wanders off with it when he wipes his hands, and I never know where it will be.
I LOVE this one…I can identify so well with this..!!
OMG my husband does the same thing! I do have a solution passed down from my granny though. Get crochet-top towels! The top part of the towel is crocheted and has a button so it loops around the oven handle and cant fall off. Husbands are far too lazy to figure out how to detach it. Conveniently place papertowels nearby and they WILL resort to using them after the irritation of a stationary towel
This is what I mean: http://angiepedersen.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345264d169e201156f372a7a970c-320wi
The safety pin idea sounds good too!
My husband does this with the towel I use to dry the dishes. He gets them all dirty and wipes EVERYTHING up with them! ARGGHH!!
He also uses our good bathroom towels to clean up spills! AHHH!!!