Remember those cute dish towels you got as a wedding present?

Yeah, neither do I.

If you are not married to or dating someone who works in a professional kitchen, you now think I’m crazy and can’t for the life of you figure out why I would write a post about dish towels.  

But if you are somehow connected to a chef, you know exactly what I’m talking about and are laughing like crazy right now because YOU CAN RELATE!

The last set of cute dish towels we owned was 19 years ago.   We registered for them from Williams Sonoma.  They were tan and white checked – nothing fancy, but they looked nice and hey, they were just for drying dishes right?  

Right. Just for drying dishes.

They were used for that purpose for a few months . . . until my husband started working as a line cook in a restaurant.

Then they were stained instantly and went in the trash.  Goodbye cute dish towels from Williams Sonoma.

You see, at home, if you spill something on the counter, you take a sponge, dish cloth or paper towel and wipe it up.  At least that’s what we had always done at home.  Maybe my family is different than everyone else, but I don’t think so.

In a restaurant kitchen, you take the towel and wipe it up. . . NO MATTER WHAT IT IS. . . tomato sauce, wine, grease, etc.

You’re starting to see the problem here, right?

You wipe the edge of a plate if you happen to spill on it while plating food.

You grab the handle of a sauté pan with it as you flip something.

You use it for everything.

They go through a TON every night. (I’m glad I don’t have to wash them all!)

The problem is that this dish towel use is now a habit and just happens naturally.  So when your chef/husband comes home, he naturally takes the dish towel and does all the same things with it as he would at work.

Goodbye cute dish towels.

(Maybe if I had known about the Netepur Bar 19 years ago, I would have kept trying to have cute towels.  Live and learn!)

I finally gave up!  We use white flour sack dish towels which are cheap, can be bleached easily and then can be tossed when I can’t handle the stains anymore.  It’s not very exciting, but honestly after 19 years, I now use them for everything as well!  Why not join in the fun?

The other unfortunate thing about this habit with dish towels happens when you go to cook at someone else’s house.  We now run the risk of ruining someone else’s cute kitchen towels!  (We should probably apologize to my mother-in-law and friend Christina for the many kitchen towels we’ve stained over the years at their homes.)  It’s a habit.  Sorry!  After this many years, we just don’t think about it.

Well, I needed a good laugh tonight!  Who still has cute dish towels out there?  I want to know!!  Comment below and tell me your secret!