There eventually comes a time in life when the little things start to matter more to you. You want high levels of quality, you want good value for your time and you want to enjoy the things you buy. This is exactly what I want to share with you today, about my own experience with antibacterial kitchen towels from Nawrap.
When I asked the founder of Nawrap just how long the binchotan towels would last, he advised they would last approximately one year. I remember thinking that itself was rather impressive, but three years later, I find myself still using the same one.
This is the Nawrap kitchen towel, which I have used since 2018.
The Solution: Antibacterial Kitchen Towels from Japan
Nawrap first came to my attention in 2016, about five years after first moving to Switzerland. Over the years, I noticed that the majority of Swiss households grabbed a polyester kitchen towel to wipe up quick spills on their counters and tables. These cloths usually ended up smelling pretty foul after a few hours and if the owner forgot to clean them, everything the towel then touched would also start to smell; a lesson I had to learn the hard way when I accidentally made my kitchen surfaces smell like rotten food.
I knew I had to find an alternative, so I began my search for something that didn’t carry such offensive odours. It was then I came across Nawrap kitchen towels. Equipped with their very own odour eliminating technology, these binchotan infused, antibacterial kitchen towels were exactly what I was looking for.
Featuring a traditional weaving technique seldom seen outside of Japan, I started to use my towels immediately, as soon as they arrived. Thanks to binchotan (activated charcoal) infused rayon, bacteria is not able to grow very quickly, so in my five years of using the towels I have never had a repeat of my odour attack moment from five years ago.
Struggling with Aesthetics
So it might sound like I should have been completely satisfied with my new discovery, but this was not quite true. Soon after washing the towel for the first time it became apparent that the towel had actually shrunken by about 10% in the wash. After a few more washes, the towel had shrunken by a further 10% and it is now around half of its original size. This shrinking issue really annoyed me, so I wrote to the manufacturer to ask why this was.
The manufacturer very kindly responded to my concerns. They told me that it was all within the nature of rayon and since binchotan is inside them, the issue can’t really be helped. If you are not familiar with rayon, it is a compostable material regenerated from cellulose tree fibre prone to shrinkage and breaking after prolonged usage. The active charcoal is infused inside the rayon, meaning that the more there is, the better the antibacterial function is. The fact that my cloth had reduced in size was actually a good indicator of sufficient antibacterial agents in the towels, helping them to not smell foul after several days of use.
Of course, I wanted to know if the shrinking shape impacted the functionality of the product, after all it would be so perfect if they didn’t get smaller. When I put this to the manufacturer they raised a valid point which got me thinking. I realized that nothing is perfect and it made me wonder why an aesthetic change should be of any importance if I am actually happy with the product and it fulfils its purpose.
Life has handed me something I once wished for; an odour free, antibacterial towel that does not spread germs and awful smells around my kitchen. I had not been appreciating it, instead being too focused on perfection and wanting it to be the perfect shape.
Discovering the beauty in imperfection
After all the years I have used Nawrap, shrinkage no longer matters to me. I genuinely love Nawrap towels and if I am unable to buy them I stop working in my kitchen until I have them in my home again. Continuously chasing perfection became like a never ending cycle where my mind would always leap forward to the next day or the next problem and never truly appreciate the current moment, in the here and now.
Built on Japanese philosophy to appreciate the imperfections in life, Nawrap is a product that carries true wabi sabi spirit within each one of its fibres. In life, we must all look after one another and cherish the good feelings and moments, because they are what matter the most. They are what life is all about; beauty in the imperfect.
