It's often necessary to clean something with a bit of water. If you use a towel, do not get the towel wet in order to accomplish this. Get the surface wet instead, then use the towel to mop it up.
A towel (or other cleaning rag) is made to absorb water. It will absorb far more water than you need. In the best case some excess water drips on the surface, in the average case this makes your towel take longer to dry so it becomes crusty and stinky.
As a bonus, if you kept the towel dry you should have plenty of clean and dry area to dry the now clean but damp surface. This eliminates the need for a second towel in most cases.
There are cases where this is impractical. If it's difficult to wet the surface, wet only a tiny corner and fold it into itself to distribute the water, or pat water onto the towel with your hand. If you really need all the water a towel can hold to do cleaning, you need a bigger towel, or possibly a mop.
In the case of handwashing dishes, don't put the towel directly under running water or into a pool of water. Lift the dish out, tilt off any large pools of water, then wipe with the towel. The towel will get sufficiently damp to effectively clean after the first pass, but still be only half as wet as if it was directly submerged when you're done.
If food is so stuck you need the power of running water while scrubbing with a towel to clean it off, you need something stronger than a towel. Your dishrags will last an order of magnitude longer if they aren't constantly soaking wet.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
I would be more of a fan of spray bottles for this if they weren't so bulky. They work great for solving this problem, it's just overkill.
- Rew