Is this all men, or just mine?

[DawnM]

My husband cannot tell the difference between a kitchen towel and a hand towel.

 

I appreciate him trying to help, I really do, but I often find dish towels or other kitchen towels on the rack in the guest bathroom.

 

I have shown him the differences, like, um, for one thing, the hand towels match our bath towels!!!!  But they are also thicker, like bath towels, solid colors, don't have holes, etc.....

 

Nope, he can't get it.

 

And if he can't find a small towel?  Well, no problem, he shoves a bath towel in there, scrunched together and shoved in.

 

Sigh.

 

Really, this is a SMALL, SMALL problem.....I know it is!,

 

Dawn

[marbel]

I have experienced that. It's just not something that is important to him.   He sees a need for something to dry hands on.  Oh, here's a towel; it'll do.  That's it.

 

My daughter and I are working on our son in this regard. He's the same way.

 

On the plus side, my husband is equally unfussy about my lack of skill as a housekeeper.  He is never going to be one of those guys who takes his wife to task for a few dust bunnies, or dishes in the sink.  So, I have to change out the towel when company's coming.  A decent trade-off.  :-)

[The Girls' Mom]

IF mine helped with laundry, we'd have the same problem.  He will also grab a kitchen towel to use as a wash cloth.  Nothing like finding a big ol, sopping wet kitchen towel in the bottom of the sink.  Or stained with grape juice he decided to mop up.  Etc.  At least I got him to quit using them to wipe garage grease/dirt off his hands.

[SparklyUnicorn]

I was my husband who introduced me to the concept of dish towels.  Might sound weird, but my mother never bought them. 

 

Nobody here has trouble with that. 

[SemiSweet]

Ours are color-coded, but that's more for the kids than for dh. Cream and gray for the kitchen, various blues for bathrooms, and white with blue stripe for half bath. All cleaning rags/clothes are plain white. Minus a couple strays it works pretty well, I started over when we moved in December because it was bothering me so much.

[teachermom2834]

My husband doesn't struggle with this but teen boys think I am insane when I try to explain that there is a difference. They look at me like I have lost my mind trying to distinguish between kitchen towels and bathroom hand towels. They think this is just my thing.

[trulycrabby]

No, but all the boys in the house look at me like I am insane when I explain the concept of not dribbling pee on the bathroom floor.

[Heatherwith4]

Mine is a better housekeeper than I am, so no he does not struggle with that. :)

[Carrie12345]

I've never experienced the chance to find out. :-p

 

In my house, I struggle to get ANYONE to recognize the concept of "dirty". I fail to understand how people can take some spray, a rag, and swipe a surface, then walk away from the remaining crumbs and stubborn spots.

[SamanthaCarter]

Yep, mine does that too. Sigh.

[SparklyUnicorn]

I've never experienced the chance to find out. :-p

 

In my house, I struggle to get ANYONE to recognize the concept of "dirty". I fail to understand how people can take some spray, a rag, and swipe a surface, then walk away from the remaining crumbs and stubborn spots.

 

This and my family has difficulty understanding the concept of empty food containers.  Empty waffle boxes, empty beverage containers....they get left where they were.  Not so much DH...but the kids.  It's really weird.  They can't manage it for some reason.  LOL

[kewb]

This is a not imp[ortant to him but important to you problem.  My dh absolutely has his problem.  If I am going to be fair there are things he has asked me to do or not do a gazillion times and I am unable to comply because it is not important to me and I forget.

[hornblower]

I can't link (because on iPad and tapatalk and it's too much a pita) but Google "company's coming" comedy on YouTube.

 

Paraphrasing one of the hostess panics

 

"This is a dish towel! We need a hand towel! Are we barbarians?!"

[SproutMamaK]

My DH doesn't have this problem, but my children sure do, no matter how much I explain it to them.

[ktgrok]

Not only that, but he puts washcloths in with the dish cloths. And  I think the same y chromosome makes him incapable of putting silverware and dishes in the right place. I have small spoons and forks for the little kids, and regular sized ones. OBVIOUSLY different sizes, like the small ones are half the size of the big ones. But he mixes them all up. I also have two different sized small plates. Some are slightly bigger, with scalloped edges. The others are totally flat and smaller. They have two different stacks in the cabinet. He mixes them all up. I mean, when you stack two different sized plates, can't you SEE they aren't the same size?? Aside from one being scalloped and one not? 

 

And I've never found my pizza cutter again after he unloaded that load of dishes. That was a year ago. No clue. 

[prairiewindmomma]

Yes.  In fact, I may have lost my mind over this last week. Also, in recent weeks we have reviewed that we do, in fact, own a stack of rags to use for cleaning up messy things and for general plumbing/greasy work.  Somehow the $15 guest hand towels are always used instead.  I am willing to replace my couch pillows every year because they are used for sleeping rather than decor, but I am not giving up the war on being able to have nice hand towels.

[marbel]

I can't link (because on iPad and tapatalk and it's too much a pita) but Google "company's coming" comedy on YouTube.

 

Paraphrasing one of the hostess panics

 

"This is a dish towel! We need a hand towel! Are we barbarians?!"

 

ETA #2:  Deleted the embedded video for fear of copyright troubles.  But as Hornblower said, if you google  "youtube company's coming" and it should be the first result.

 

It is a scream.    Handtowel comment is about a minute in, but just watch the whole 2 1/2 minutes. 

 

ETA: I didn't mean to embed the video.  I just thought the link would show.  Is this OK?

Edited July 21, 2016 by marbel

[marbel]

BTW I keep the guest hand towels in a separate dresser drawer, so they are unavailable for anyone to grab.  There is no point in having the nicest towels in daily use anyway.  I don't expect people when cleaning the bathroom to focus on whether or not we need the guest towels.  On a day we're having guests, the nice towels are the last thing we put out before arrival, during the last bathroom check.  (We don't have a dedicated guest bathroom; the hall bath is the one the kids use.)  My life is easier when I take care of the things I really care about, and let others take care of the less important (to me) things. When my kids have places of their own, they'll figure out what's important. 

 

If we had drop-in company ever I'd rethink that, but it's always planned.

Edited July 21, 2016 by marbel

[Julie Smith]

my boys do the laundry. They use to have trouble sorting out the difference between my underwear and my husbands. I am a 130 pound woman with bikini briefs. He is a 260 pound man. Slight difference. I also once found a pair of my husband's boxer briefs hanging on a hanger in my closet. Supposedly it is my t-shirt. 

[Katy]

LOL.  Mine can't tell the difference either.  Even though the bath hand towels are a different color.  And thickness.  And design.

[Arcadia]

My MIL is particular about towels so hubby knows. However we don't buy hand towels, kids just dry their hands on their bath towels. If there is a spill, they use kitchen rags. If it is a small mess, they use paper kitchen towels. Our guests are relatives and they don't mind the absence of hand towels.

[Suzanne in ABQ]

 

 

It is a scream.    Handtowel comment is about a minute in, but just watch the whole 2 1/2 minutes. 

 

ETA: I didn't mean to embed the video.  I just thought the link would show.  Is this OK?

 

 

Actually, I'm glad you posted it.  I needed a laugh.

 

But, it's actually NOT okay.  It could be copyrighted, and we're not allowed to post other people's stuff on this website.  See if you can delete it.

Edited July 21, 2016 by Suzanne in ABQ

[ktgrok]

Actually, I'm glad you posted it.  I needed a laugh.

 

But, it's actually NOT okay.  It could be copyrighted, and we're not allowed to post other people's stuff on this website.  See if you can delete it.

Because it is a link and you can go to it if you click it, it should be okay. The problem before was cutting and pasting, with no link, so no attribution of where it came from. 

[marbel]

I went ahead and deleted it.  But it's easy to find with the search criteria Hornblower gave.

 

My family has watched this with me a few times. They agree I'm not as bad as the "mom" in the video, but... sometimes come close.  :-)

[Jean in Newcastle]

Because it is a link and you can go to it if you click it, it should be okay. The problem before was cutting and pasting, with no link, so no attribution of where it came from. 

 

SWB has specifically said in the past that YouTube videos are ok.  I couldn't give you a link to where she said that though.  It was when the subject first came up. 

[Jean in Newcastle]

And I've never found my pizza cutter again after he unloaded that load of dishes. That was a year ago. No clue. 

 

A standard joke in this house is "Where is the ________?" 

 

"Dad put it away." 

 

"Oh.  Well, hopefully we'll find it in a month." 

 

Only it's not really a joke. 

[J-rap]

My dh is a far better housekeeper than I am, so no, that doesn't happen here!

[hornblower]

SWB has specifically said in the past that YouTube videos are ok.  I couldn't give you a link to where she said that though.  It was when the subject first came up. 

 

Yes, she said we're allowed to link to or embed youtube. 

[PinkyandtheBrains.]

 

 

Happens here, often.

 

 

That and grabbing giant bath towels for moderate kitchen spills.

[SparklyUnicorn]

Happens here, often.

 

 

That and grabbing giant bath towels for moderate kitchen spills.

 

Although what kills me is when there is a big spill and they grab the paper towels. I'm like...just use a big bath towel (for something like water, diet soda...etc).  Not if it would stain.  It seems wasteful to me to use a whole roll of paper towels for that!

 

 

Then again I have 100,000 bath towels.  People keep buying us towels and now I'm set for my next three lives. 

[heartlikealion]

Mine knows the difference, but if I have two towels in the kitchen and one is intended for drying hands and one is intended for drying dishes, he doesn't ask and they get mixed up immediately (if both kinds of towels are clean it's pretty obvious which is which. Like one is thick and one is a tea towel) or one gets dropped on the floor. I think I'm just going to buy the kind that can button closed around the oven door handle so at least I can address the falling down issue lol.

 

Last time someone went to replace the hand towel in the bathroom they put a wash cloth there. We had clean hand towels but they were not put away in the right place (let's just say the person that replaced the hand towel is probably the one that put them away in the wrong place and therefore should have known we had clean hand towels lol).

 

The biggest offense to me with towels has not happened in a long time. That's when someone gets something like chocolate on their hands and instead of rinsing their fingers, just wipes them on a towel. Come on.

[FaithManor]

All. At least at my house. The faulty chromosome has been handed down from dh to all three sons.

[Noreen Claire]

We have this issue, only much worse because we have:

 

hand towels,

cloth napkins,

kitchen towels (for drying hands & dishes) 

kitchen cleaning towels,

'shop' towels (grease, garage stuff, painting clean-up, etc),

AND

cloth diaper wipes.

 

I am constantly having to move towels around to their proper destinations after someone else puts them away. I might be a little....obsessive.  :willy_nilly:

[Guest]

My husband is okay with this but he rarely touches laundry. My kids get confused about which towels and washcloths go where, though :)

[8circles]

Yes, we have this problem.  But DS13 still is not clear on what denim is so maybe my kids are worse than average.

 

I usually let it go except when old cloth diapers (which we now use as cleaning rags) get hung in the bathroom as hand towels.

[kbutton]

A standard joke in this house is "Where is the ________?" 

 

"Dad put it away." 

 

"Oh.  Well, hopefully we'll find it in a month." 

 

Only it's not really a joke. 

 

For real. Here too.

 

If he complains it's too complicated, I remind him that the kids have no trouble with it, and he doesn't have trouble with details when he's at work. :-)

 

I often think this is really a work vs. home issue. I didn't notice as many male/female specific complaints in the work world. I think sometimes men come home and turn off the brain after work, and women do not. And for those of us that don't work outside the home, home is work.

[Liz CA]

Yes. He wants to help...or he wants to avoid being red tagged by the health department. I have had no time doing dishes so he does them. He also swiffers the living room hardwood floor because pet hair is sticking to use like glue. However, he parks the swiffer in a corner of the living room because it's too much work to shake the pad out and return it to the laundry room where the swiffer normally lives.

 

Men don't care about the finer things in life or the details that accompany those things.

There is a spill, there is some fabric-like substance within grasp. No worries.

[hornblower]

Going to hug my dh tonight. He cooks, he cleans, he launders, washes dishes, repairs stuff, polished, organizes, irons... He has various rag collections for different jobs. I'm the sloppy lazy one.

 

Only think I do is vacuum and clean floors (pretty much constantly) because the dogs are my hobby and they make 90% of the mess. But I also frequently leave the swiffer mop propped in the corner and the vacuum standing in the hall because I lose interest in finishing the job... :D

[Guest]

Well, to be fair, I use kitchen towels and bath hand towels interchangeably. I grant you, it is unlikely that I will put the towel with pictures of apples and their culinary names on the bathroom ring, but when they are solid colors or holiday themes, I'm equally likely to use them in either place.

 

But I also don't especially like those tea towels that are very thin, like a linen fabric? No, I want terry for any location.

[Guest]

Going to hug my dh tonight. He cooks, he cleans, he launders, washes dishes, repairs stuff, polished, organizes, irons... He has various rag collections for different jobs. I'm the sloppy lazy one.

 

Only think I do is vacuum and clean floors (pretty much constantly) because the dogs are my hobby and they make 90% of the mess. But I also frequently leave the swiffer mop propped in the corner and the vacuum standing in the hall because I lose interest in finishing the job... :D

I think I overlooked the possibility that a candidate could have these qualities when I picked DH. But I don't think a do-over is appropriate. ;)

[Guest]

Well, now this is fascinating. I just read all the replies in this thread and I am amazed to learn that there is a difference in so many people's minds about what towel is to be used for what. I'm flabbergasted, actually! I kind of have a rep for being the overly detail-oriented one around here, but I make no distinction between the various towels of approximately similar size and construction and what they must be used for.

 

The powder room hand towel is frequently a towel that may very well be hanging on the dishwasher handle in the kitchen. I keep all of them in a kitchen drawer and, as the powder room is nearby, the hand towel in there is often a towel from the kitchen drawer.

[Liz CA]

Oh, I am not even talking about towel differences...but when men throw a t-shirt on a puddle of lemonade because it was handy and it absorbs liquid...well then...

[ktgrok]

Well, now this is fascinating. I just read all the replies in this thread and I am amazed to learn that there is a difference in so many people's minds about what towel is to be used for what. I'm flabbergasted, actually! I kind of have a rep for being the overly detail-oriented one around here, but I make no distinction between the various towels of approximately similar size and construction and what they must be used for.

 

The powder room hand towel is frequently a towel that may very well be hanging on the dishwasher handle in the kitchen. I keep all of them in a kitchen drawer and, as the powder room is nearby, the hand towel in there is often a towel from the kitchen drawer.

 

Huh. The towels I buy for the bathroom come from that section of the store, with the bath towels, and are thicker and larger than the kitchen towels, which come from another area. They don't look anything alike, other than both being cotton terry. But VERY different terry. The bathroom hand towels are just small bath towels. The kitchen ones are terry, but half the thickness, and a different texture completely. And a lot of them are actually not terry at all, but flour sack cloth type stuff. 

Edited July 21, 2016 by ktgrok

[Carra]

You are not alone in this. And our mothers and grandmothers had the same problem from what I have heard.

Edited July 22, 2016 by Carra

[Guest]

Huh. The towels I buy for the bathroom come from that section of the store, with the bath towels, and are thicker and larger than the kitchen towels, which come from another area. They don't look anything alike, other than both being cotton terry. But VERY different terry. The bathroom hand towels are just small bath towels. The kitchen ones are terry, but half the thickness, and a different texture completely. And a lot of them are actually not terry at all, but flour sack cloth type stuff.

Fascinating. To me they are virtually interchangeable. I actually prefer the lighter weight terry for all kinds of towels. I like lighter weight bath towels and also beach towels. Thick beach towels take forever to dry.

 

But I don't like those flour sack type dish towels at all. They don't seem absorbant and they don't feel nice in my hand.

[FaithManor]

My problem is that these males think nothing of taking the newest, nicest hand or kitchen towel out of the cupboard to clean up things like SPILLED SUPER JET GLUE!!!!

 

You do not want to know what happens to your brand spanking new purple bath towels of luxurious softness when your dh spills muratic acid while building a hydrogen fuel cell in the family room. Oh and the hardwood floors. You do not want to ask about that. All of his chemicals have been permanently banished to the basement. Forever. No reprieve. Period. The end.

 

:D

 

Man do I love this guy, but he is the original mad scientist comparable to a role acted by Fred MacMurray and reprised by Robin Williams. Were it not for me, he'd have burned himself to the ground by now!

[DawnM]

Huh. Y'all must have a different type of kitchen cloth than we do over here. We have tea towels, and they are completely different to hand towels, and it would be impossible for even a 4 year old to get them mixed up.

 

One would think that, wouldn't one?

 

:glare:

[DawnM]

Going to hug my dh tonight. He cooks, he cleans, he launders, washes dishes, repairs stuff, polished, organizes, irons... He has various rag collections for different jobs. I'm the sloppy lazy one.

 

Only think I do is vacuum and clean floors (pretty much constantly) because the dogs are my hobby and they make 90% of the mess. But I also frequently leave the swiffer mop propped in the corner and the vacuum standing in the hall because I lose interest in finishing the job... :D

 

Oh my husband does all kinds of thing I don't do, I never said he was worthless or lazy.  He is neither of those things.  

 

My husband is currently building me a deck outside, by hand.  And last week he changed the oil in all 3 cars.  The week before that he finished laying tile in the upstairs bathroom and painted.

 

As I said in my original post, this is a very small thing.

[Ravin]

I think we maybe own 2 bathroom style hand towels. We do not distinguish between dishrags, hand towels, and dish towels in the kitchen. (These are the categories my mother always enforced; I always though they were kind of ridiculous). Mostly we use a combination of bar mop style small towels and microfiber rags for every random thing, with a stash of old prefold diapers for hankies and cleaning the bathroom.

 

All towels regardless of use get washed on hot, with oxyclean, with the exception of DH's bath towels (which are all black and thus easy to identify) because the oxyclean bothers his skin.

 

In short: It's not just your DH.

[maize]

I'm like your husband. Purely practical--any towel will do the job, big-little-fluffy-flat--just isn't important inside my head.