Yeah, but AT-ers are exactly the crowd that will laud the moral purity of a damp, mildewed dish towel over a rack that lets air circulate. Don't even get them started on why dishwashers are morally impure (except for the ultra-high-end drawer ones, which they love).

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This seems like a non issue. The towel method simply doesn't do a good job of drying dishes. Also, dish racks allow you to make better use of limited space. For that reason alone, I'll use one. I'm not anti towel or anything. I also have a dish towel that I use for some utensils and smaller items that tend to get lost in the dish rack. My prediction is that those rack haters will quickly see the error of their ways once they get one.

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If I do the dishes, they dry on a dishrack.

If my boyfriend does them, they dry on a towel spread over a table.

Either way, the dishes get done. But they dry a whole lot faster and take up less space my way :)

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Amusing, Hilary has been quoted saying that she would not be caught dead cooking a chocolate chip cookie. Washing dishes would definitely be a real change of pace for Hilary.

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We use a plastic dish rack with a solid bottom that drains into the sink. For overflow we use a *GASP* paper towel on the other countertop! We like kitchen gadgets too, but they are all practical and inexpensive. AT seems a bit foolish and spendthriftish to me.

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In my country a dish rack is always integrated to the cupboards above the kitchen sink. You just put your wet dishes there and the water drips into the sink. No need for a towel or a separate dish rack which takes table space.

I took a picture of mine so you'll get an idea:

http://img221.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cupboard2ci7.jpg

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I really like that built in dish rack! It's a thing of beauty. I have a terribly small kitchen with very little counter space, so I use a "metal wire that hangs in the sink" type of dish rack. I LOVE it. My friend is trying convince me to switch to the towel method and I just don't have counter space to waste.

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my only comment is that a dishwasher is the best $300 you could ever spend, and it quashes this debate. the things you have to wash manually can be immediately dried and your counter space is saved~!

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We use the towel. It always seemed to me that unless you were just doing plates and cups and silverware, there just was never enough room on a dishrack. We have a dishwasher, but it's old and doesn't get things clean. I'm a towel user.

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I use my dishwasher as the world's most expensive dish rack.

I live alone; so by the time the dishwasher would be full enough to make it worth running, I've long since run out of clean dishes. The dishes get to dry out of sight, *and* they're not taking up any valuable sink or counter space. (My tiny kitchen is crammed to the gills already.)

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