What's the purpose of decorative towels besides decoration?

It’s like putting a piece of carpet on a toilet seat, give your head a wobble
This idiotic trend should be known as the “Trump hair” phenomenon

I asked a similar question when someone who was cooking in my kitchen used the decorative towel I had hanging on the stove handle. Most of the answers said towels are to be used. If it was to be looked at, it should be in a picture frame on the wall.

It’s for the guests! How many times do I have to tell you! said my mom, over and over.

Plastic wrapping furniture makes no sense at all to me.

I buy white towels for guests so when they wipe their mouth after brushing their teeth with peroxide toothpaste they don’t discolor or stain the towels. Plus, I can bleach them and they don’t fade.

My sister has the white bath towels embroidered saying “guest”. It’s very pretty actually.

My MIL has taken to the very nice disposable paper towels for the guest half bath. I really like that idea. People who stay overnight rarely use that bathroom, it’s just for someone visiting during the day time.

@YARNLADY I didn’t know there were towels for show in kitchens. I have some very pretty kitchen towels that I pull out when people visit, but I never thought about them not being used. I need to remember that when I visit people. I need to ask before I grab a kitchen towel.

I love those towels. People seem to buy them to go with their decorating schemes so they seem to show up at yard sales/thrift shops frequently. Sometimes still packaged together with others in their colour scheme. I have a large selection of Christmas hand towels that go in my pool bag – one for my hair, a couple for my feet, one to wrap my suit in on the trip home.

Thank goodness for those colour scheme lovers (freaks). :)

My parents bought a house in Elk Grove when I was around 7. There were two feet wide strips of plastic over the carpet in places that would be heavily trafficked. This wasn’t some temporary thing. The people before us most likely had plastic on their couches.

I remember ripping it up with my dad when we tiled the kitchen floor and the carpet under the the plastic paths was pristine and the rest had aged a bit and it looked horrible in comparison. I now know how to lay new carpet.

It’s just an excuse to exhibit. It’s like hopping in the Ferrari for that trip to the Safeway.

Have you seen decorative paper towels? I saw rolls with fish related pictures and names on them: marlin, dory, swim, nemo, etc. What is that for?!?!

By the way, my Mom and Dad put plastic runners over the carpet in our living room. I’m guessing they were there for the first 10 years we lived in that house. We took our shoes off in the house and the runners were very slippery when wearing socks.

My mom used to have wall to wall carpeting in her living room and there was the plastic runner on it. It had what was called a “cow trail” and so the runner kept the “trail” from looking extra worn out. Wall to wall carpeting is no longer trendy and now all wood floors with an area rug is much easier to maintain and switch out when it gets shabby looking.

Decorative towels are pretty and if there are no other towels in someone’s house, I’ll use them. I know some people use “guest towels” which are like fancy paper napkins (folded a bit differently), beautiful, expensive to save the “decorative towels.”

My dad’s wife has bought one or two new towels for us every time she visits. Our towels are pathetic! I try to tell Rick not to use them and quit washing them just because you need a filler in the washer. I want to save them for guests.

Even as a kid it always puzzled me that people would actually spend money on things designed to enhance their comfort, then take the considerable trouble of covering them in plastic, thereby not only eliminating the comfort factor supposedly implicit in the purpose of the thing, but actually rendering it a monument to tacky and ugly tastelessness on prominent exhibit for all to see.

My dad had the back seats of his Buick covered in plastic. It made the bottom of my legs all wet and sweaty, and I remember that sucky feeling when ever I got out of the car.

Haha, oh man, I loathe this sort of thing. I remember as a kid in the 60’s people with plastic covered sofas and lampshades and all that jazz. The “formal” living rooms that were never used. What a waste of space.
Nope, I love to decorate, have great taste, a very aesthetic eye but, everything I have ever had, no matter how nice has been used for my comfort.

The only time I ever covered anything was a black, velvety corduroy loveseat that my cream colored Siamese kitty covered in her white bunny fur.
I found a cool tapestry type throw to lay across it for her majesties comfort and to avoid having to use a lint roller on my loveseat every day.

My towel looks a lot like this one

I don’t know about couches and lampshades and rugs, but I wrap my phone in plastic! I’ve got this clear, semi-hard form that fits to the backside and edges of the phone, and then I’ve got this thin adhesive sheet that sticks on the front…. Almost the entire phone is encased! I foraged for both in the cyber jungle that is Amazon.

(So okay, my phone case isn’t crinkly and I’m not sitting on or walking across my phone… Just had it out on my desk while I was reading this and thought the comparison was amusing….)

I got souvenir dish towels at a theme park. Had them out in my apartment for common use, and my roommates kept wiping food-laden hands on them like they were napkins. After a couple of intensive spot-treatment sessions I hid all of those towels and bought cheapo ones to share. I did the same thing with the pretty potholders I had purchased. I’m always happy to have other people use my things, but I’ve learned that unless I know the person well, I should assume the things I’m leaving out will come back stained.

When I was little, I had some Italian friends. Their parents had a second kitchen, what I’d call a “show kitchen” which was an entire kitchen that they never used, except maybe to store milk in the refrigerator. The “every day” kitchen was in the basement. When I talk to Italian friends about it, they all seem to be familiar with what I’m talking about. The parents’ couch and living room furniture also was covered in plastic. It seems to be a 1960’s and 1970’s thing among certain groups.

@Soubresaut Of course it makes sense to protect anything that’s going to take the physical beating required of the average phone.

Nice towel @YARNLADY.

@Dutchess_III Can you see why I was surprised someone would use it to wipe the spaghetti sauce off his hands?

@LuckyGuy I will pay a premium for a Bounty paper towel pattern. Lol. I’ve met women in the aisles who feel the same. For the life of me, I don’t understand why they have much better patterns than other paper towels. How hard is it to hire a graphic artist who can design a nice print?

Meanwhile, I don’t buy them that often anymore, because I prefer the towels perforated for the half size sheet. If they made those with pretty patterns I’d be all over it.

One negative is the color bleeds, so you have to be careful to only use white paper towels when trying to clean fabric or carpet.

@YARNLADY I wouldn’t wipe spaghetti off my hand with a $3 five year old kitchen towel.

I don’t have decorative towels in my bathroom. I have, as @zenvelo points out, guest towels.
Unfortunately, I have had guests say, “Oh, those towels are too nice to use! I grabbed one out of the closet.”

People have fancy towels for guests because we want them to feel like Trumps when they visit. Every-day means factory new and no repercussions about leaving orange stains all over the soft goods.

It’s not been that long ago that almost all people had rooms in their house that they didn’t use. Parlor transformed into formal living room. We ate in the kitchen, dined in the dining room when I was a kid.

Okay, I’ve gone on long enough that I’m modifying my answer.
”Decorative” towels are a throw-back to a nostalgic, genteel age (yeah, it was largely fueled by slavery and robber-barrons in America, but we digress) when guests were treated to the best we could afford to exhibit.

Then there’s the narcissistic “I like Ike” generation who’s baby-blue-and-pink poodle motifs spawned. Me.

Yes, absolutely @YARNLADY. I would not have done that.

My Dad’s wife, when my Dad was still alive, used to take the little soaps and shampoos and stuff from the hotel rooms, and take them home. I remember one of the few times I visited she showed me the bathroom drawer with those little soaps and stuff. She said, “Isn’t that a great idea?”
I said, “Oh, yes!” but what I was really thinking was, “No better way to bring it home that you are a guest in the house, and you will be gone soon.”

I agree…who the hell wipes spaghetti sauce on any kind of towel. That’s what paper towels or napkins are for, or, helloooo…just wash your hands.

I would not wipe my dirty hands with any kind of nice kitchen towel. I’d wash my hands with soap and water and then dry them with the paper towel. Wiping the saucy hands with a towel just leaves oil and smell on the skin. Gross.

I’m with @jca.I would use a paper towel to wipe off spaghetti sauce.
@JLeslie The towels paper are printed with 4 colors! It seems like such a waste to me. What is wrong with simple white? It seems so clean.

Why would you not rinse spaghetti sauce off of your hands with water, and then dry them?

@LuckyGuy White paper towels are bleached with chemicals that pollute the environment. The best environmentally safe paper towels are brown. They are made from tree pulp, which starts out brown.

It is a toss up as to whether cloth, washable towels are better, due to concerns over detergent and drought.

Well, you wash a towel along with a bunch of other stuff. Small dish towels don’t make any difference.

At one time I couldn’t afford paper towels.

It’s National Thrift Shop Day here tomorrow. I’ll be hunting down some nice decorative towels and hand towels to add to my collection. I’ll also see if I can find more political tea towels. I find them particularly amusing. I like wiping my hands on politicians’ faces.

@LuckyGuy I most often use plain white. To answer why I buy the the towels with prints when I do buy them—some are so cute.