Comments on: Thoughts on Abandoning the Paper Towel

By: Bargain Babe

Bargain Babe — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:38:24 +0000

Welcome to the ranks of the paperless! I gave up sponges along with paper towels years ago when I started using Trader Joe’s quick drying re-usable cloths. I bought two for $4 and they work great as a sponge or mess-picker-upper. They don’t stink like sponges do, I can wash them whenever I want with laundry, they are cheaper than paper, and definitely more green! Plus, they dry out quickly. Check ‘em out!

By: Donna Watkins

Donna Watkins — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:53:17 +0000

I love that you’re writing on this topic. It’s one of my pet peeves since I’m a treehugger and also have a great concern about all the landfill stuff for our future generations.

Although there’s only two of us (hubby and me) right now, we still have not run out of rags that we get from cutting up old clothes. Socks are one of my favorite since it’s easy to use them with hand inside. Great for cleaning sinks.

It’s incredible to think of how many hundreds of dollars we’ve saved over the years by using rags. We don’t bother to fold them or make them especially fancy when we cut them up. It’s a rag .. doesn’t matter to me .. it will just get shoved in the rag drawer.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 02:13:38 +0000

Trent-
I grew-up not knowing what a paper-towel was until I was about eight- or nine-years old. My Mother used cotton diapers on me and all of my siblings until my little brother b.1974.
One suggestion about where to keep your “rags” is to use a large paper/plastic shopping bag w/ wire or string handles and hang it just inside of your stairway to the basement. That way whenever the need arises a person can just open the door and reach and grab however many rags are needed.
check it out
later,
Daniel

By: KimC

KimC — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:15:47 +0000

We made the switch from paper towels to cloth rags recently too – I’m guessing we save even more than you since we have 9 children!
I love the old t-shirt idea. A lot of our rags are made of this. T-shirt material doesn’t unravel so the edges don’t have to be sewn and it doesn’t leave lint all over the rest of the laundry.

By: We do it too!

We do it too! — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:26:39 +0000

So we do this as well. We just use theold terry cloth bibs my daughter has outgrown. They are quite soft too, which my daughter appreciates. Nothing to buy to get us started. And we use at least one at every meal. This has been very effective for us.

We do still use paper towels for bacon grease and blotting bacon after cooking. That’s about it, though!

By: Rosa

Rosa — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:02:28 +0000

Kevin – you’re forgetting a few benefits of cloth with little kids.

One is we can let our toddler have free access to the cloth towels, so he cleans up a lot of his own messes. If we did that with paper towels we’d run out of them *all the time* – if he puts unused rags in the laundry, i can pull them out or launder them, whatever.

The other is that paper is *rough* and paper napkins are flimsy. I wouldn’t want my face wiped with a paper towel five times a day, and if you have (for example) chicken grease or caramel on your fingers, paper napkins just stuck to them instead of making your hands clean.

I do about one extra load of laundry every other week for all our cloth napkins, tablecloths, cleaning rags, and swiffer rags.

By: Georgia

Georgia — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:41:14 +0000

I, too, am trying to go paper towel less. So far, it is going well. And since no cost rags are so prevalent, I just pitch them a lot of the time. The towels I cut up to wash dishes will be used over and over. Great article Trent.

By: Kevin@OutOfYourRut

Kevin@OutOfYourRut — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:38:36 +0000

My parents and grandparents used mostly cloth towels. We tend to use both now. When the kids were little though, paper towels were indispensible!

Kids can make enormous messes, and make them frequently, so I don’t know if we could have had enough cloths handy if we went that route. Also, some messes are too messy to justify washing the towels, and you might be tempted to throw them out anyway. Paper towels were just too convenient, even if they did cost a bit more.

The other thing that may be more important–with small kids, you have plenty of laundry. Going with cloth towels will only add to the pile. There’s enough to do without adding to the pile!

This is one of those areas where a suggestion is outside my comfort zone!!!

By: Jessica

Jessica — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:15:48 +0000

wow, where are you finding flannel for only $1 per yard? here in Ohio it is $5.99 regular price and 2.99 on sale!

By: Diana

Diana — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:32:42 +0000

I have lots and lots of old washcloths and hair salon towels that I use for almost everything…including yucky stuff. My daughter periodically has to replace the towels in her beauty shop when they get stained from all the hair coloring, so I have a ready supply. They’re the perfect size for larger cleanups and for drying off the cleaned area afterwards. For the smaller jobs, I just use old washcloths. Both the towels and washcloths are always white so they can be bleached. I buy them in bulk and use them for removing my makeup. No reason I can think of to buy any kind of cleaning cloths in my house. I need a lot of rags because in addition to the usual cleanups, I also have a steamer that I use all the time, and the rags need to be changed often. I keep the clean “washcloth” rags in one grocery bag; the “towel” rags in another, hanging from hooks in my laundry room. I toss all the wet rags in a small plastic basket on top of my washer and just add them to the white loads when I’m using bleach. Yucky isn’t any more yucky in my book if you use a cloth rag instead of a paper towel. You can put a lot more muscle behind a rag than a paper towel when the situation calls for it, too. I just throw on a pair of surgical gloves for those and it doesn’t bother me to deal with the mess. I can rewash and dry the gloves many times before they fall apart. Since my steamer came with a floor attachment, I also use the towel size rags for that instead of buying premade covers. Works just as well. My pets are dried off with old bath towels that have seen better days, and I use the washcloth rags for face and ear cleaning. The truth is, I never felt that any convenience of using paper towels could be justified by the price of them. It’s not a tough transition at all; just a different way of thinking. Oh yes…must mention that I stopped using fabric softener of loads of laundry containing the rags. With the steamer, especially, it causes streaking. Trent’s vinegar alternative for fabric softener sounds like a better option in that case.

By: Claudia

Claudia — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:27:05 +0000

My sister’s MIL uses her old undies for dish cloths–even washed in hot water and bleach, that is just gross!

By: cv

cv — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:12:05 +0000

Oh, and to the person who pointed out that paper towels are biodegradable, that’s certainly true, but garbage in landfills doesn’t really decompose. It doesn’t get the oxygen it needs to break down, so researchers regularly uncover things like whole heads of lettuce that are 20 years old.

If you’ve got a compost bin, though, the biodegradability is a plus.

By: cv

cv — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:07:28 +0000

I noticed the other day that we’ve been working on the same 12-roll-pack of paper towels for months now and still have over half of it left. We use them when we go camping, for wiping up gross messes, etc., but it’s at a slow enough rate that I don’t worry too much about it.

My real paper towel problem is at work. Several of us bring our lunches and we often provide food at breakfast or lunch meetings, so the kitchen gets a fair amount of use. I feel bad about drying my hands on paper towels every time I wash a plate and fork, but I can’t see cloth towels working without a lot of hassle about who would take them home to wash them and how often.

I also wish there were a better solution to paper towels in the bathroom at work. I use air dryers when they’re available, but we don’t have one here.

By: Michele

Michele — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:19:30 +0000

We gave up on paper towels years ago. I use kitchen towels for everything and when they aren’t pretty enough to hang up in the kitchen anymore, they get marked with a permenant marker with a big X and they turn into cleaning rags. Same with holey tube socks, heel-less winter socks, or t-shirts that are beyond wearing. I keep them in a pretty basket on the kitchen counter.
We also use cloth napkins for all meals and we no longer use paper napkins at all. They are always in the ‘free’ box at garage sales along with old towels, so I’ve never had to buy any. I have a really nice collection of matched sets that I use even when company comes! I can seat 12 people for Thanksgiving and still have cloth matching napkins for everyone. I just toss them in the right color laundry. Never had a problem with grease and I do use kitchen towels or cloth napkins for blotting and wiping my cast iron pots and pans. Now dog barf or runny poo does go directly in the garbage. Glad I have a lot of old towels socks or t shirts:)

By: Treva

Treva — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:16:42 +0000

We keep paper towels for cat messes mostly and use cloth as much as possible. For $5 you can buy a hefty stack of washcloths and those work great as everyday napkins for use at the dining room table. If you get darker colored ones minor stains won’t show so you can still use them for guests with casual get-togethers.

By: Michael Harr @ TodayForward

Michael Harr @ TodayForward — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:15:43 +0000

We have been a virtually all cloth family for years because it’s much easier to use hand towels than paper towels. We live in a small space and started using the hand towels when the kids were young. One day we stopped buying paper towels and haven’t missed them since. Cloth towels are more absorbant, take up less space, and obviously provide a little ‘green’ to boot.

By: Todd

Todd — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:13:41 +0000

This reminded me of my grandma. Wherever she went, she carried a slightly damp washcloth in a ziploc bag in her purse (BTW she always washed and reused ziploc bags) and you wouldn’t believe how many situations arose–especially with little grandkids around–when she pulled out that damp washcloth.

My mother OTOH always bought those little Wet Ones towlette packs at the checkout counter for a dollar a piece. She probably spent hundreds of dollars (at least) over the course of our childhoods, and we always hated the alcohol smell of those things, whereas we loved Grandma’s washcloths.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:03:27 +0000

You should dry your car with a microfiber towel

By: Arthi

Arthi — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:01:16 +0000

In place of paper towels:

Newspaper works well for cleaning windows, and for draining oil or fat from food. You just need to layer a few newspapers and put a single paper towel on top for draining fat.

By: partgypsy

partgypsy — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:41:14 +0000

Yay good for you! Maybe a couple years ago? we switched to cloth napkins, and around the same time stopped buying paper towels as well. Again except for a few circumstances it’s been a remarkably smooth ride. The majority of what we use are old towels cut into tea towel size, and cloth napkins and face clothes that have stains on them. Save the real nasty rags for the “bad spills”. I use tp or swiped paper napkins from takeout for blotting bacon, and microfiber clothes for mirrors/windows.
Tip for pretty but cheap cloth napkins:bandanas.