White for dishes...

My favorite towel for drying dishes is a good quality flour sack tea towel. As a kid, I learned to embroider on those towels. My mom never had plain white, boring flour sack towels. Hers were (and still are) always beautifully embroidered and edged with bias tape.

some actual towels from her kitchen. aren't they beautiful?

When I got married, I followed suit. And then we had kids...

• they came in to wash up for lunch and dried their "clean" hands on those beautiful towels.
• they ate warm-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies and wiped their hands and faces on those beautiful towels.
•  they spilled some milk, and what did they grab to clean it up? Those beautiful towels.

So we made a new rule: white are for dishes and colored are for hands (and everything else). My kids knew the rule, my nephews knew the rule, I think every kid who entered our home knew the rule.

I no longer take the time to embroider my white towels, but I do embellish with some ribbon or rickrack or a ruffle, and still like to keep them white as long as possible. To this day, nephew Tim (now a doctor) comes to visit and says, "white for dishes and colored for hands," as he reaches for a towel from the towel bar.

Thanks, Tim, for following the rule! (Love ya!)



...and a couple of my embellished towels.