Are you short on space for your kitchen linens?: 3 quick tips
At my house we have exactly five pull out kitchen drawers.
I use…
- one for silverware
- one for long utensils and the rolling pin
- one for most of the cloth napkins
- one for extra fish stuff (my son has two pet fish)
That leaves one semi-shallow drawer, which I need for kitchen linens like dishtowels, clean up towels, and the napkins that didn’t fit in the actual napkin drawer.
The issue is that all of these pull out drawers are shallow. Only one is big, and it practically sits right on the floor. I keep the fish stuff in that one because I don’t want to have to lean way over just for napkins. Another problem is that we don’t use any paper towels at my house, just cloths, so I have a lot, and they all need to fit.
Solutions:
- Roll your linens instead of fold. For some reason I can fit more cloth rolls in a drawer than flat folded cloths.
- Keep some in your normal linen closet. I switch out cloth napkins. We have about 25 and on laundry day, I grab one rolled stack from the bathroom linen closet, and once the dirty ones are washed I leave them in the bathroom.
- Only have what you need. We only have three dishtowels. If (when) they get old, we’ll get new ones. In a family of two, that’s all we use, actually more than we use in a week, but one extra can’t hurt.
Do you have any problems with kitchen linen storage?
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Tags: cloth napkins, dishtowels, drawers, fold laundry, kitchen towels, roll laundryRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Kitchen & Pantry
8 opinions for Are you short on space for your kitchen linens?: 3 quick tips
Marilyn
Jun 3, 2008 at 10:29 am
Your idea to roll linens to save space works well when packing a suitcase also. You can get more in the suitcase if you roll your clothes before puting them in a plastic zip lock bag.
Jennifer
Jun 3, 2008 at 10:33 am
I know, I figured that was another post though, because it doesn’t relate to kitchen linens at all.
I roll suitcase items, but plastic bags are horrid for the environment, so I don’t use them.
Lisa K
Jun 3, 2008 at 11:22 am
I have a nice deep drawer for my kitchen towels it’s the bath towels I have to roll. I wish I could only have 3 kitchen towels, I think I use 3 a day!
Thanks for sharing the great tip!
Jakesmom
Jun 3, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I love your blog. I have 1 drawer in my kitchen, yes 1. I leave my kitchen linens in my kitchen cart (houses pans and extra food) drawer which is actually in my dining room. I have 5 people in my household full time so we use a lot of kitchen towels and rags. It’s not very convenient so any assitance you can provide would be much appreciated. I’ve found a convenient place for my pot holders, I bought 3M hooks and put them on the wall next to my stove, but since I have 4 of them that’s all the wall space I have. I like your idea of rolling them, I might try it but have to have the rest of my household comply.
allison carter
Jun 3, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Since I don’t have any available drawers in the kitchen I keep a pretty basket on top of the fridge for dish towels. This works well mostly because I’m on the tall side and can reach up there as needed.
Gosh how great it would be to have drawers.
Lee
Jun 4, 2008 at 10:50 am
I love to buy linens - pretty vintage linen towels at estate sales and birghtly colors patterned towels anywhere I find them. Most of mine are in a deep basket on top of a short Ikea bookcase that we use for small appliances that we use but haven’t earned a permanent place on the counter top and for sliver flatware chests. I also buy large kitchen towels and fold them in half to use as placemats and napkins. Those go folded in half in the buffet. As they wear down, I put them into use as kitchen towels. I’m anxious to try rolling them.
Seeing your stack of colored towels made me think that it might be fun to have 2 or 3 in each color - one color per day. Another thought was to have several in the same color for the same use - like blue for hands, so we’d know which towel to grab for which use. I learned a long time ago to not towel dry my dishes because the towels are actually a source of germs that can be spread and most glassware and dishes will dry with very little waterspotting if rinse in hot water.
Jennifer
Jun 4, 2008 at 6:33 pm
@Lisa K - well, I mean basic hand towels - we only use a couple a week. However, because we don’t use paper towels we use loads of cleaning kitchen towels. If that makes sense. We only use the hand towels for drying hands or say, fruit.
@Jakesmom thanks! I love 3m hooks but right now I’m in this house with silly cabinets that go around the length of the kitchen and on the side wall is an almost full wall window - barely any wall space for hooks :( I like using them when I have space. Actually, one thing I could do is hang a towel rack, well, maybe… towels always seem to fall off non-hook racks.
I think if you just say to your family, now we roll, that they hopefully will. My son likes rolling towels better than folding because it’s quicker. Maybe you could do what Allison below does and put some towels on a basket on top of the fridge?
Jennifer
Jun 4, 2008 at 6:40 pm
@Allison - I like your fridge idea. I keep my cutting boards up there! Luckily I have a pretty short fridge. Some are so darn tall. Maybe I should just keep towels in the fridge, we don’t fill it, being that there’s only two of us :)
@Lee - it sounds like one, you like towels and two, have a pretty decent system going on right now. I like those old vintage towels you see around estate sales and thrift stores too. I don’t agree with the germ theory though. More so because germs don’t bug me that much. The germs on a towel are not too bad if you don’t use the same towel all the time, and all over - like on counters, food, and dishes.
I went to college for nursing, but before that got a degree in science, and frankly you can’t beat the germs anyhow. Unless you scrub everything for five minutes plus and can somehow use scalding water temperatures to do so (which you can’t) the germs are there. Believe me. I saw germ tests done on nurses hands (after good long scrubbings) and you don’t want to know what you’ll still see. I clean sure, but not with any real intent of killing germs.
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