If one is not on the counter, it'll probably be drying on one of the dishwashers that flank the sink. I have paneled DWs with appliance pulls, makes handy towel rods.

I would be afraid to have damp towels touching wood cabinets. Currently, old cabinets have water damage from wet hands. I only hang decorative towels on stove handle, as they touch the floor when open. Need a solution for new kitchen.

my towels always hang over a door or appliance handle. I agree that a pull out doesn't make a lot of sense if my hands are dripping wet or full of something icky that I'm going to get on the cabinet as I get the towel out.

My kitchen is not going to be in a magazine nor am I going to have a parade of strangers walking through my kitchen. I don't care if I have a mismatching set of towels hanging out or a dishcloth hanging over my faucet. I'm more worried about getting grimy meatloaf mixture or sauce of some sort off my fingers.

I think some people are super organized. They take out a towel for drying things and put it away when done. That would work with a hidden towel bar. Wouldn't work for the hand towel, though. And if I'm having a hand towel out, I'm certainly not going through the extra effort to put a dish towel away. My towels need to be out. If they aren't out, then wet hands sprinkle water all over trying to get out a new towel.

My oven, though, has water spots. :)

(And of course there is the idea in the back of my head that under the sink is NOT clean. It's got chemicals and depending on age, much worse. Not a place for linens I'm going to use again!)

Fori's right. And some people just hate looking at towels. I had a roommate once who had bathroom towels perfectly folded and arranged in a pretty display on the towel bar, which were never to be used. She folded her "real" towel and hung it on a wire hanger on the hook on the back of the door. It all seemed odd to me. Perfectly normal to her.

There's no reason why you can't hang your towels in whatever way looks good to you and is easy to get to.

Debrak's warning is a good one, however. If the towels are actually wet through, it's probably time to put them in the laundry (but hang in the laundry room to dry so they won't sour (i.e., get moldy).

The one problem some people find with putting towels on dishwasher handles is that they can drag on the floor when the dishwasher is opened. I don't want damp towels on my appliance pulls just because they're plated and I want them to stay plated for at least a quarter of a century. :)

If I had room for a towel rack that disappeared behind closed doors I would have one. But that's space luxury that no kitchen I've had in the past has had. My new kitchen doesn't have that space luxury either.

I have a towel on the counter to put pots and the misc stuff on for drying. When there is nothing on it...which is pretty infrequently, it just sits folded up. That would be a good candidate for a towel pullout.

My hand drying towel is currently hanging on the handle for my large spice pullout next to the range. I don't want it to touch the cabinets when wet, so I will put it on the range handle to dry out. As soon as its dry, back on the cabinet handle it goes. I started off with it on the range handle, but don't want it to hit the ground when the range is open.

Best of all worlds would be to have a hidden pullout where I could rotate towels that are wet, not dirty. For dirty I use paper towels.

I always wonder how damp towels can dry properly in a small space behind a closed door, especially if there are several of them close to each other on a multi-tiered pull out rack. People who have these: do they really dry without having a bit of a musty smell?

I've just resigned myself to the fact that I'm going use a lot of dishcloths and towels because I am one who doesn't want them hanging around in the kitchen (for my own sense of beauty and order) and I always want to use a nice fresh towel. It's a good idea for someone like me to have a lot of small cloths.

I like putting mine on handles...and I plan to have painted cabinets, so I probably will still hang my dish towel on handles, in the new kitchen :)

I think some of it depends on one's climate. I can wad up a towel and it will usually be dry next time I pick it up. If one's kitchen is more humid, that towel might never dry. Same with the hide away ones. It's probably dryer in the kitchens where people have them

Interesting points! Thanks ...

I'm with ya Aliris. I never could figure out the posts were people ask where to put the kitchen towel pullout. I use the towel multiple, multiple times during a meal prep. (I have issus with even slightly dirty hands--must wash or at least rinse often.) It HAS to be handy. It worked great in my old kitchen on the old top-freezer fridge handle. It doesn't work on a french door fridge very well I'm finding out in our temporary house. I will make sure there's a good spot in new kitchen.

"First, what's wrong with hanging towels over cabinet handles?"

A wet towel can easily damage wooden cabinets.

I keep dish towels hanging on the oven door handles mostly for convenience. I keep pretty towels, so it doesn't bother me.

But I don't like to have my washcloth out. I prefer to keep my sink clean and clear of clutter.

In the planning stage, I looked at open niches for pull-out towel racks in lower cabs in other kitchens and decided there wouldn't be enough air circulation in them for the wet stuff I generate. I knew that our kitchen lacked towel bar space when we designed it and my assumption has proved true. I kicked that can down the road, as the politicians say.

As I think about rags and towels in the kitchen, I see the collision of utility and aesthetics. I think one issue is simply how much of an active cook and bottle washer the user is. I also think that we're forgetting one other aspect, the use of throwaways. I don't use throwaways and I live in a humid summer climate. Drying towels and washrags and scrubbers and aprons and sometimes hot pads is essential to my daily life in the room and has to supercede aesthetics. Or does it? I like having attractive towels and have collected ones that gladden my soul, esp since there was a thread about using tea towels instead of dishracks for drying dishes on the GW. Some days they're everywhere in the kitchen, hanging off the edge of the countertop to air after working over some produce or cleaning up after a big meal. But the rags, oh, those sorry things. I still haven't found the solution...sigh.

I bought one of those magnetic rods to attach to side of refrigerator. It works, but easily gets knocked apart if I'm not careful. I don't like drying towels on appliance handles--as noted they go to the floor--but I have to. We purchased a 14inch towel bar [really short!] that will be mounted in the only available permanent spot on the day when DH mounts the cab handles too.

Once my utility closet is finished, my in-use aprons will go there as well as my washbucket and brushes and floor rags. That's where my mother kept hers also. Maybe we can mount a couple towel rods too? We hope to find a suitable louvered door so the space breathes.

We keep a stack of towels in a basket on the counter. When I'm doing 'serious cooking', I throw one over my shoulder, and there it stays until it is either too wet or too dirty, then it goes in the laundry, and I grab another one. If lightly used, we either hang them on the oven handle, or open a drawer and tuck it in. We had one of those under the sink racks, but never used it.

I mounted a towel bar on the end of my small temporary island. The final one will have a towel bar just like it. Though it will also serve as the handle for the pull out trash that is behind it. My husband likes to hang towels on the oven handles. That drove me nuts when we had a range, but now that I have a cooktop, I don't mind. I hated having that towel right were I was cooking.

This is a picture from over a year ago - but it shows how the towel bar works. Notice how the towel isn't actually touching the cabinet. I bought a wooden one for a bathroom, and cut the bar so it would fit.

When the island is in it's proper place, this is within easy reach from both the sink and cooktop.