You would think that the kitchen towels and tea towels are not so dirty. After all, you can dry your clean hands or clean dishes with it. Well so!
You don’t just wipe off water, but also soap residue. And with tea towels also leftovers. The associated bacteria can settle in the fibers of the cloth. The cloths are wet after use and bacteria thrive in that.
How often to wash towels?
It is clear that you have to wash kitchen towels and tea towels regularly. But how often exactly? A search on the internet yields little: one website says that you should ideally washes after each usewhile another writes that once a week is fine.
Advice
We therefore asked food safety expert Wieke van der Vossen of the Nutrition Center. “Washing the tea towel or towel actually depends on how it is used. If you use this daily and the tea towel also gets very wet every day, it is best to replace it daily,” says Van der Vossen. “But if you use the tea towel or towel less frequently, then it is less necessary to replace it. Bacterial growth will mainly take place in a fairly wet tea towel that slowly dries again.”
Hmm, now that you use the cloths frequently, it is best to put them in the laundry basket every day.
at 60 degrees
If you then put the cloth in the wash, you should wash it at 60 degrees, advises Van der Vossen. “That way the bacteria die.”