Why You Should Stick a Towel in Your Dishwasher

This dish-drying maneuver is an actual, real-life timesaver.

Having a dishwasher is a game changer, even if it’s a tiny one—it cuts down on both labor and water use. Like air conditioning, the dishwasher an all-time great that tops the list of modern inventions, excluding big ones like electricity and indoor plumbing (both of which necessarily predated the creation of the dishwasher). Still, there's one drawback: Most dishwashers are very good at washing dishes, but they aren’t so great at drying dishes.

The viral TikTok dish-drying hack

Enter this hack from Babs, the TikTok grandma everyone loves. Though she’s had her hits and her misses, Babs is generally reliable, but this dish-drying maneuver is a true timesaving hack. In this old video (which has since resurfaced and gone viral a second time), Babs drapes a terrycloth dishtowel inside her dishwasher once the dishes are “done” (that is, after the washing and drying cycle is complete). She lets it hang out for five minutes, then opens the washer to reveal truly dry dishes.

Why the hack works for drying dishes

Touching wet dishes feels gross and drying dishes is boring, so this hack is a winner just because it precludes those two actions. After a quick test, it's confirmed: This works well, though it’s not quite as effective as the video implies. I washed my dishes, I draped and waited, and then opened my dishwasher to reveal ... mostly dry dishes. My plates were completely dry, as were most of my other dishes, but there was still some water pooled on top of a few bowls and coffee cups.

Why does this work? The towel absorbs the steam that’s wafting around in the washer after the washing and automatic drying is all done, and keeps it from condensing on your dishes. Of course, a dish towel, no matter how absorbent, is simply not capable of soaking up pooled water from several inches away, so this hack means far less drying, which is not the “no drying” Babs promises, but is still much better than drying every single dish.

After this post was originally published, however, a few of you commented that opening the dishwasher to put the towel in there might actually be a key component of what makes this work. Opening the door and allowing air to flow in for a while is actually a no-brainer, old-fashioned method that is almost too obvious—which might be why we don't think to do it (and is also why some newer models open up automatically when a rinse is over). Consider just popping open the door after a load finishes, but not unloading right away. You can do this after sticking the towel in there if you want, too, for a double whammy.