Why My Grandmother Boiled Her Dish Rags (And Why I Still Do)

Every Saturday morning, before anything else, my grandmother set her old wash boiler on the stove, shaved in a curl of yellow soap, and dropped in every dish rag in the house. I was ten and thought she'd lost her mind. Those rags looked clean. She knew something I didn't, and it took me years to understand it. I'll show you her method the way I still do it: a plain pot, a little dish soap, fifteen minutes, and the part she never skipped, which was pinning every rag out spread open to dry. Did anybody in your family have a cleaning habit you thought was silly until you understood it? June