The Best Thing I've Given My Kitchen

Leave it to the girl who writes about loving white walls to have a proclivity for plain-Jane kitchen linens. Would it help if I told you that a dear friend once brought a cake to my dinner party, wrapped in this very linen, but tie-dyed pink? I might hang the white one on my stove with greater regularity, but hey. Baby steps.

We should ask of our kitchen linens what we ask of our aprons. That is: First they are a tool—they help us stay clean, and so they must absorb, and move with us, and work as fast as we do in the kitchen. An errant frill might slow us down, a paisley might distract us from our pie crust. Or maybe I’m just no fun.

I’ve been praising these flour sack tea towels, which are made from 100% cotton by Studiopatró in San Francisco, since we launched our Shop almost three years ago. I promise you it’s not because I haven’t found a product as boring or budget-friendly—it’s actually because they’ve improved the way my kitchen works exponentially.

They play cleaner, apron, oven mitt, and trivet—and they're massive, so they work just as well for all of these things as they do for laying out on your counter as an impromptu dish rack.

And when they’re shiny new, they also play gift quite well. If it makes you feel dour presenting your host with a folded piece of white cotton, just let her try it—you’ll hear from her in a week or so.