Mouldy

[igenlode]

I was annoyed (and discommoded) to discover that my entire stack of spare teatowels turned out to have what I assume to be mould stains on them where they had been stacked against the external wall. I put them through a two-hour boil wash with a scoop of expensive stain remover (the former quite possibly negating the latter, on second thoughts), on the grounds that they would at least end up sterilised even if still stained, and it does seem to have more or less shifted the marks on almost all of them. I suppose I shall have to find somewhere else to keep the clean but unused ones, now that I no longer have a suitable drawer for storage :-(

I'm rather assuming that the remaining tea-towels, which have been sitting in the ironing pile against an internal wall for about six months, are not similarly afflicted... at any rate I seriously need to do some ironing for further sterilisation purposes. (I have already descended to simply using the crumpled but clean handkerchiefs straight out of the edges of the pile, having run out of ironed ones despite the dozens in my possession.)

Comments

[watervole]

You iron tea towels?

Is the damp from:

Lack of damp course/lack of cavity wall/dripping gutter/heavy rain and strong winds?

[igenlode]

I iron tea-towels, like handkerchiefs, in order to sterilise them -- and because, being made of linen, they tend to come out of the wash in an extremely crumpled state. Although to be honest if you leave them months before ironing any sterilisation effect is probably pretty nominal...

I assume any damp is simply condensation on the tiles due to the temperature difference between inside and outside, and/or steam from boiling things; I think the real problem is that I wasn't rotating my pile of tea-towels fast enough, and the bottom layer had been there literally for years untouched.

(I did check the ones in the ironing pile -- which I still haven't done -- and they're fine. But that's an interior wall in a room where the window is almost constantly open all year round, plus that pile only goes back about six months!)

[watervole]

Sterilisation makes sense.

I must admit that I generally leave dishes to dry in the drainer, so only ever have one tea towel on the go, and that is only used when I need something quickly.

After 40years, we still haven't worn out all the tea towels we were given when we got married!

[igenlode]

Well, drying on the draining-board is why I haven't been rotating through the tea-towels all that quickly...

My mother did wear out tea-towels, but that was with a family of six, where you had to dry up the plates for the first course before you had room to stack the pudding bowls. They eventually end up as jelly-bags once they're thin enough and the picture is indistinguishable.

Mine are all inherited, and since people used to buy her tea-towels as souvenirs (she would display them on the kitchen walls in lieu of pictures for six months or so before they went into general circulation) that means I have a dozen or so, which is about eight more than I need in practice.

[watervole]

I remember souvenir tea towels. I think there's a couple of those in our stash too.

[igenlode]

The advantage of tea-towels and mugs as souvenirs is that they actually get used on a daily basis (and gradually bite the dust).
As opposed to the kind that accumulate perpetually on the mantelpiece and never get looked at.