Kitchen Food Safety

The dishcloth has me worried right now. Looking for more information about "dishcloth safety," I ran across this list of no-no's for kitchen food safety from the University of Nebraska.

I pretty sure that I'm okay on most of this, but I'm still thinking about some of the others. F'rinstance:

• I don't use brown paper bags or garbage cans for cooking, although I have used a paper bag to coat fish with cornmeal. I think we tend to think of our own kitchens as clean places, but maybe saving that Sonic bag to use for coating some fish is not the best approach to food safety. Still, I hate to think that I would have to use a fresh ziplock bag to do the coating right when I'm trying to figure out how to recycle the ones that I am using already. On the good side, I haven't used film canisters or plastic garbage sacks for food storage. The latter, however, are great for storing Christmas pillows and some of my winter sweat suits. I'm just saying.
  
• I am so-so on re-using the one-time use items. I re-use the plastic utensils to serve cat food (and thereby avoid using people utensils for the cat food). I have also re-used drinking water bottles for water and tea mixes. I now wonder about washing and re-using chopsticks. I know that bamboo is a renewable resource, but some of my chopsticks are pretty (like the ones BKC gave me for my birthday). I want to keep them around AND use them for a long time. There are some issues with disposable food service items that need to be balanced with food safety, but it does involve risk. Risk for oneself is, to be sure, different from risk for others, so re-use should, at the very least, be limited to personal use and not presented to others.
• OK, I'm good on materials in the microwave and getting rid of old mercury thermometers. It only takes one or two microwave fires to learn those lessons, and My Prince is our family hazmat expert. He disposes of old batteries and other dangerous things in the appropriate manner. *proud look*
• "Mis-using hard to clean items" has some pitfalls. I rarely use a whisk, so I will have to go have a look at what is on hand and how it works for cleaning. The basting brush, however, has long been a challenge. I have never liked them. They just look like the perfect place to grow crud. For years, I just used a spoon to dip and spread, instead of basting. Then I found some silicone basters that look like one of those squiggly ball things that kids play with. I got a bunch at the dollar store, toss them in the dishwasher after using, and no longer worry about the crud. Vegetable brushes go in the dishwasher also. I avoid sponges like the plague they surely carry. The dishcloth, however, remains a worry.
• "Re-using items that should be laundered" might have addressed that dishcloth worry, but it doesn't really. I use a dishcloth and dishtowel several times before tossing it to the laundry. Yes, I do dry them out before hand. I even dry them between uses. My Prince has lately installed one of those old timey racks that my great grandmother had over her sink; it has three arms that swing back out of the way and allow you to hang three cloths for drying. Instead of spreading the dishcloth out over the sink divider to dry between uses, it now hangs there. This allows it to really dry out and inhibits the growth of mildew (when I use soap to give it a quick wash and then rinse before hanging). I'm not entirely sure that this is entirely safe, but it is safer than the way I had been handling the matter.
• Cutting boards, we've discussed. It all goes in the dishwasher.

What I'm wondering is, how dangerous am I in the kitchen when I reuse the dishcloth or the dishtowel? Do you change them out after one use or one meal or one day? I have a cousin who managed to get loose in my kitchen a couple of times. She used up every single dishtowel that I owned--in one meal prep. Those were the days when I used terry cloth towels, so there were fewer in the drawer than now, but still I was amazed at her ability to use them up so quickly. The same thing happened with all of my hand towels in the bathroom. There might have been a little OCD involved--or there could be something that I am missing. I'm still wondering.

I should point out that one reason I wonder is that the recent energy crisis is not really going away. We have to think about how much paper we are willing to use to dry our hands or wipe up spills and such and then toss away. How do we balance the need to conserve against the need to protect ourselves from the risk of disease?