The One Little Kitchen Upgrade You Should Make Right Now, According to a Food Editor

“New year, new you” is a tired concept. Just typing those words makes me tired. The whole idea is why New Year’s resolutions fail: we’re all pretty much the same people we were at the end of last year. Big changes usually don’t stick, and trying to make them stick is both frustrating and demoralizing.

That’s why I pick a few small changes to focus on at the start of each year. I go for things that have a high reward-to-effort ratio, and because both my career and interests center around food and cooking, my kitchen is where a lot of these little tweaks take place. 

The Little Upgrade You’ll Enjoy All Year Long

The main little upgrade I tackle first thing in January is buying a new set of kitchen towels. By the end of the year, my towels are heavily stained and starting to get raggedy around the edges, and pulling clean, yet dirty-looking, towels out of the drawer quickly gets disheartening.

My preferred towels are the Utopia classic kitchen towels, available on Amazon for a mere $1.42 apiece. They come in a pack of 12, and while you may not think you need 12 kitchen towels, reader, you do. These towels have nearly 21,000 reviews and a four-and-a-half star rating, so it’s clear that I’m not the only person who adores them.

What I Love About These Towels

Beyond their unbeatable price point, these towels are workhorses. They’re not glamorous, but a simple blue stripe down the middle gives them a handsome, professional look that fits into any kitchen. They’re very absorbent and super durable, and since they’re so affordable, I don’t mind using them to clean up even the messiest spills.

Washing the towels is also a remarkably unfussy experience. You’ll want to wash these separate from your other laundry. Use bleach (it somehow doesn’t affect the blue stripe) and hot water, and dry them hot. Don’t even think about using fabric softener or a dryer sheet—both can inhibit the towels’ absorptive qualities, and you don’t want perfumes around your food anyway.

Washing the towels is also a remarkably unfussy experience. You’ll want to wash these separate from your other laundry. Use bleach (it somehow doesn’t affect the blue stripe) and hot water, and dry them hot. Don’t even think about using fabric softener or a dryer sheet—both can inhibit the towels’ absorptive qualities, and you don’t want perfumes around your food anyway.

Don’t Toss the Old Ones!

Rather than tossing last year’s towels, I retire my stained, well-used ones to cleaning duty, where they’ll tackle the gnarliest messes around the house or clean up larger spills when I don’t want to stain my new kitchen towels. These are the most durable towels I’ve ever used, so they last at least a couple of years, even with heavy use on the dirtiest jobs.

While I could go on listing the qualities and specs of these kitchen towels, perhaps my favorite thing about them isn’t physical but psychological. The feeling of pulling a fresh, clean towel out of the drawer before I start cooking dinner or testing a recipe is a little like putting on a clean pair of socks or slipping into a bed made with just-washed sheets: a tiny dose of order in a chaotic world.