Why holiday hand towels get used for a week and what to do

A seasonal towel is easy to give and easy to ignore. Here is how to pick one that is still hanging by the sink when February comes.

What usually goes wrong

A holiday hand towel is usually bought as decoration. It gets folded over a rail on the first of December, admired, and left alone, because nobody wants to dry wet hands on something that looks like a display. By New Year’s it is in a drawer, and the next November it comes out looking much as it did. That is a gift that was charming and never used.

The second problem is the room. Towels often end up in the guest bathroom, where the only visitors are a few relatives and the household’s own hands go elsewhere. The third is that a single towel has no backup. When it goes in the wash, the peg is empty, and an empty peg tends to stay that way until the season is over.

What to do instead

Give the towel to the sink with the most traffic. That is usually the kitchen or the laundry room, where hands are washed many times a day and a towel is dry for about an hour. A towel there earns its place by Wednesday.

Choose a pair, not one. One hangs while the other is in the wash, so nobody has to choose between clean hands and a festive room. A set of two with a winter scene printed or woven in handles that quietly.

Check the cloth before the pattern. Cotton absorbs, while polyester mostly pushes water around. A hand towel should feel a little heavy for its size, and it should have a loop sewn in so it stays on a hook instead of sliding to the floor. Printed designs deserve a first wash on their own, in cool water, because deep blues can run onto whites.

How to tell it worked

Judge the gift in February. If the towels are in the laundry basket then, with the corners starting to soften and fray, they were a good choice. If they are still folded in the linen closet, they were only pretty. Snowmen and winter friends make fine company at a sink, as long as the cloth underneath them can do its job.

The small habit that helps most is simple. Hang them on the first of December, and keep hanging them after the holiday has passed. A towel with a seasonal picture is still a towel, and a towel that gets used is the whole point.