Put Your Towel in the Dishwasher
The dishwasher is a game changer, even if it’s a tiny dishwasher that cuts both labor and water consumption. Aside from the air conditioner, the dishwasher is my favorite single invention of all time, with the exception of major inventions like electricity and indoor plumbing (both of which necessarily preceded the dishwasher). Most dishwashers clean dishes very well, but they don’t dry them as well.
Enter this hack from Babs, the TikTok grandmother everyone loves. I usually really like Babs – although she had her ups and downs – but this dish-drying maneuver is a real time-saving hack. In his video last year (which has since resurfaced and gone viral for the second time), Babs pops a terry-cloth tea towel into his dishwasher as soon as the dishes are “done” (that is, after the wash and dry cycle is complete). She leaves it for five minutes and then opens the washing machine to see the really dry dishes.
I hate touching wet dishes (it’s annoying) and I hate drying dishes (it’s boring), so I tried this. It works well, though not as efficient as the video suggests. I washed the dishes, put on some drapery and waited, then opened the dishwasher and found mostly dry dishes. My plates were completely dry, as were most of my other plates, but there was still some water left on a few plates and coffee cups.
Why does it work? The towel absorbs the steam that floats in the washing machine after the wash and auto-dry is completed and prevents it from condensing on your dishes. Of course, a kitchen towel, no matter how absorbent it is, is simply not capable of soaking up accumulated water from a few inches away, so this hack means much less drying out, which isn’t a no-drying promise, but still a lot better. than to dry each dish.