The Towel

Photo courtesy Flickr

A couple of weeks ago, I started using inexpensive linen dinner napkins as kitchen wipers. Linen dries fast, and the napkins are half the size of the cotton towels I had been using.

Combined with a 75 watt heated towel rack in the room, changing to linen has cut my kitchen laundry by close to ninety percent.

Linen is nearly a bomb-proof fiber. It’s durable, likes hot water, can easily be bleached, and is very absorbent. Over decades, linen will crack along a fold, especially one that is ironed, but that isn’t going to be a problem for napkins in hard daily use. Linen is such a noble fiber I do not hesitate to compost it when it reaches the end of its useful life.