Toby's Beans Coffee Flour Sack Tea Towel

It is natural your cotton flour sack towels will experience some shrinkage and wear over time — it’s just the nature of cotton. But with proper care, you can minimize shrinkage and damage to your towels and keep them looking fresh for many years.

Follow these tips to keep towels strong:

• Choose a delicate cycle setting
• Use cold water only
• Consider hand washing your towels
• Wash with a gentle detergent or baking soda-vinegar mix
• Air dry towels rather than putting them in the dryer
• Do not dry clean and do not iron the image

Heat is more likely to cause wear and tear on the fabric, and can also wear on the printed image. The lightweight cotton material dries quickly, so in general it's better to wash in cold water and then air dry.

While not required for cleaning, you can use baking soda and vinegar as an alternative to detergents to keep your towels working like magic and their absorbency at a max.

Baking soda and vinegar make a powerful team in removing chemicals, dirt and any unwanted residue from towel fibers. Here’s how you can use this simple chemical-free method to clean your flour sack towels:

• Start by putting the towels in and filling your washing machine with water.
• Once your machine is full of water, add a cup of white vinegar and run the rinse cycle.
• After the rinse cycle, drain the water, keeping the towels in the washer, and add a half cup of baking soda.
• Fill the washer with water again and rerun the rinse cycle.
• After the final rinse cycle finishes, dry the towels completely.
• Your towels will now be softer, fresher and more absorbent — ready to tackle any household task.

For stubborn stains, baking soda alone can be your best friend. You can make a baking soda paste for a harmless stain-remover with these instructions.

Many commercial fabric whiteners are made with chlorine bleach, which damages the natural fibers of flour sack towels over time. Even diluted chlorine solutions can weaken cotton fibers and eventually cause holes and tears.

Also avoid fabric softener and dryer sheets because they can wreak havoc on the quality and effectiveness of flour sack towels. Fabric softener and dryer sheets leave a wax-like residue on the towel that builds up over time and creates a thick coating, preventing the towel from absorbing liquid as it should. The coating also can trap moisture inside the towel, keeping it from drying properly and trapping mildew and other odors.

If you want soft, nice-on-the-skin flour sack towels, try using this natural homemade fabric softener instead:

• Combine two cups of white vinegar with two cups of water and one-eighth a cup of vegetable glycerin in a glass jar or jug.
• Stir or shake to combine.
• Add half a cup of the homemade fabric softener to the final rinse cycle.
• Or, even easier, simply add a capful of white vinegar to the rinse cycle for soft, fluffy towels.