The Dishwasher Towel Hack You Need For Faster Dried Dishes

After-dinner cleanup should be simple. You pop the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, run a cycle, and wake up the next day with freshly cleaned dishes ready to make their way back to your cabinets. But there's a reason the appliance is called a dishwasher, not a dish dryer. Too often, the dishwasher completes a cycle only to leave your dishes with a damp film, sometimes even with water droplets remaining. 

Although a heat-drying process is included in most standard dishwasher cycles, the combination of heat and wet dishes often leads to more of a sauna-like atmosphere, leaving your dishes clean, but still a little damp. Luckily, there's an easy new hack making the rounds on social media that'll take care of that dampness for you. 

Instead of using the dish towel to hand dry each dish after it comes out of the dishwasher, place that towel halfway inside the dishwasher itself once the wash cycle is complete, letting the other half hang out. The towel will absorb most of the remaining steam, hopefully leaving your dishes dryer than they've ever been before. Not every viral TikTok dishwasher hack is worth trying at home, but this one could help solve your damp dishes dilemma.

TikTok and Instagram Reels creator Barbara Costello (aka @brunchwithbabs) shared the trick in one of her fun viral videos, demonstrating how she places the towel in the dishwasher at the end of a cycle. 

@brunchwithbabs

Life Changing Dishwasher Hack #tutorials #kitchenhacks #parentsoftiktok #dishwasherhack

♬ original sound – Babs

Costello specifically uses a terry cloth dish towel, and you'd be wise to do the same. Terry cloth is known for being a super absorbent fabric that dries quickly, which is why it's used in bath and beach towels. A small terry cloth hand towel should do the trick nicely. According to Costello's TikTok, the towel only needs about five minutes hanging half-in and half-out of the dishwasher to absorb the extra steam, but you may find that the towel should stay a bit longer to completely dry the dishes. 

Just make sure to close the dishwasher again with the towel half inside so it can get to work absorbing most of the steam. If you try this hack and still find your dishes to be a bit damp, you may have to turn to a few other simple tricks to remedy the issue. Keeping the dishwasher door slightly ajar after the cycle completes can also help release some of the extra steam.

The key to effective dishwasher use is utilizing the plastic spacers correctly so there's enough room for water to hit the dishes and run off on all sides. If you crowd dishes on top of each other, water and soap won't get to those hard-to-reach places, and you could end up with puddles of water collecting inside bowls or plastic containers. And you don't want to prevent your dishes from getting clean by overcrowding the dishwasher in the first place. In that case, you'd have a bigger problem on your hands than slightly wet dishes. 

Besides overcrowding, placing the correct kitchenware at the bottom of your dishwasher is another important element of using the appliance properly. Big items such as large dinner plates should live on the bottom, while delicate, smaller items like cups and mugs should stay on the top rack. Furthermore, don't waste time or water pre-rinsing your dishes. Not only are you leaving more water for the dishwasher to dry up later, but you could inhibit your dishwasher from working properly, throwing off the sensors that help determine how effective of a cleaning cycle to run. As long as you practice proper dishwasher use and care, you can try out this towel hack for pristine, dry dishes every time.