Day 8: White Kitchen Towels

**Correction: For those of you who read this post earlier, I mistakenly said that the towels had come from Enoch's maternal grandmother, Great Grandma Chace, (who has often sent us homemade gifts through the years). Thanks to a head's up from Mom Stevenson, I learned that they actually came from Enoch's paternal grandmother, Great Grandma Stevenson. Keeping in mind that Great Grandma is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease, it somehow makes me appreciate these towels just a little bit more.

When Enoch and I were first married, his paternal grandmother gave us a set of white flour sack towels; each one was hand-embellished with the days of the week, and a motif of a kitten doing the daily chores. I kept them tucked away for many years, supposing I would never use white kitchen towels, and thinking they were too special to actually use.

But when we moved into our new home, I discovered them in storage, and noticed they had begun to look a little yellowish. I decided I might as well use them and enjoy them, since they didn't look like they would improve with age. And now they are my favorite towels! Not only that, but I added to my collection of white kitchen towels: I now have white bar towels for countertops, white and blue striped dish towels for dish washing, white hand towels stacked by the microwave to replace paper towels. I even bought more flour sack towels from Target, but they aren't nearly as good in quality as the ones from Great Grandma Stevenson.

What I love about those towels is that they're large enough to wear as an apron, simply by folding them in half diagonally and tying around my waist. But I usually wear a full-covering apron, and hang one of those towels on my side for drying my hands or wiping out a mixing bowl, or drying off clean dishes. They are thin enough that during my down times throughout the day, I can hang them up to dry and they dry easily to be re-used. They are also great for spreading on a counter-top and using as a place to set clean dishes to air-dry.

I will confess, on occasion, they have been used for more messy clean-up jobs. Once my husband used one to clean up purple grape juice, and I was sad in my heart because I thought that the Wednesday towel would forever look different from all the others. How wrong I was! These towels are no longer yellow; they always come out looking white and beautiful, even if they have had food stains on them a couple of days.

I now prefer white kitchen towels, and any time Enoch needs a rag for a messy clean-up job, I hand him the few remaining colorful ones I have left in my drawer, knowing that someday I'll probably replace them with more white ones.

Wednesday still looks white as ever!

And, yes, (in case you're wondering) when I wash and fold them, they do get stacked in the correct daily order. It's always a delight to pull out the day's towel and hang it on my apron as I begin my day's work.