When it comes to kitchen hygiene, we tend to focus on worktops, sinks, and dishcloths – it’s easy to forget that the seemingly harmless things like tea towels need to be properly used and cared for too.
Although you might not give your tea towel much thought, recent studies have suggested that as many as 90% of household tea towels could harbour bacteria – including MRSA and E. coli. It’s a worrying thought but there’s no need to throw away your tea towels just yet. By following some basic rules you can ensure your tea towel is clean and hygienic.
Change your tea towel daily
Use a fresh tea towel each day to minimise the risk of bacteria multiplying. You could keep a small basket in your kitchen to pop used tea towels into at the end of each day. Then every few days you can simply put all of the tea towels into the wash together.
Hang to dry after us
Bacteria thrives in damp conditions and if you leave your tea towel crumpled up on a kitchen work top it’s unlikely to dry properly. So always hang your tea towel up to dry in between jobs, remembering to keep it well away from naked flames.
Wash at high temperatures
While we’re often told to wash our clothes at lower temperatures to help save energy, this doesn’t apply when it comes to tea towels. You need to wash at a high temperature to ensure that the bugs are killed. Experts recommend washing tea towels at 60 degrees to zap the germs. It’s also best to wash tea towels on their own rather than mixing them in with a clothes or bedding wash, to avoid cross-contamination of germs.
Only use for one task
When we’re busy in the kitchen, it’s easy to fall into the habit of using tea towels for several jobs. Perhaps you dry the dishes and then use the same tea towel to wipe down your counter top before using the tea towel again to dry your hands. This is a bad practice as it’s easy to spread germs throughout your whole kitchen and across your hands this way. Instead, only use tea towels for drying dishes. Have a separate cloth specifically for wiping down counter tops and another for drying your hands. You could use colour-coded towels for different jobs to make it easy to grab the right one when you are in a hurry.
Beware of meat juices
If you prepare raw meat in your kitchen it is especially important to follow good hygiene and ensure that the meat juices don’t find their way onto your tea towel. In particular, don’t use a tea towel to wipe your hands after handling raw meat as you can quickly spread harmful bacteria across your entire kitchen.
The NHS website has lots of good advice on home hygiene. Find out more here: www.nhs.uk/Livewell/homehygiene/Pages/Homehygienehub.aspx
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