Potholders are one of those kitchen basics that end up doing a little bit of everything. Reach for one when you need to handle a hot pan, move a baking dish, grab a warm lid, or give hot cookware somewhere safer to land on the counter or table. They’re useful through cooking, baking, serving, and cleanup, making them an easy kitchen essential to keep close whenever the stove or oven is involved.

Unlike an oven mitt, a potholder doesn’t have to spend its whole life waiting for something to come out of the oven. It can help protect countertops and tables from hot cookware, sit beneath serving dishes during a meal, or simply be there when a pan handle turns out to be considerably hotter than you remembered. Keeping a few potholders around the kitchen means there’s usually one within reach when you need it, whether dinner is a whole production or you’re reheating something and calling it cooking.

It also doesn’t hurt to have more than one potholder within reach. Larger or heavier dishes may call for both hands, dinner can put several hot pans into circulation at once, and the one you need has an impressive ability to be somewhere else at exactly the wrong moment. Keep them near the stove, oven, or wherever hot cookware usually lands so they’re ready for everyday meals, weekend baking, holiday cooking, and all the other times the kitchen gets a little busier than usual.