Replacing Paper Towels

With nearly zero effort, you can phase paper towels out of your home almost entirely.

At our home, we use rags and cloths for most of our daily needs. I had an old shirt with stains on it that I cut into eight good-sized squares (or rectangles or maybe "blobs" is a better way to put my cutting skills). We use these rags to wipe up spills, clean mirrors and windows (which actually leaves your mirrors and windows much less streaky than paper towels), dust (when the rags are slightly moistened), clean our counters and glass-topped stove, etc.

We got 12 natural linen napkins for our wedding and use them a lot in our daily lives. Of course, we use them with meals. Most of the time, our napkin will last each of us for the better part of a week. If you have children, you may need to change the meal napkins more often. We also use our cloth napkins to wipe up glass condensation or water spills around the sink. They are also perfect for covering dishes in the microwave. When we bring our lunches to work, we bring a napkin with us, which is also a useful way to keep your silverware together in your lunch bag.

We still occasionally use paper towels for the really gross stuff like cleaning our pet mouse's cage. But even with this type of use, we only use 1.5 or 2 rolls of paper towels a year.

When we've gotten all the cleaning we can out of our rags or napkins respectively, we just throw them in the wash. They hardly make a dent in the load, effectively nullifying their on-going water or carbon footprints.

So go ahead, chop up that holey, stained shirt at the bottom of your drawer and put it to use as rags. Treat yourself to some strong cloth napkins. Get them at a thrift store for an extra boost of reuse credit and divert them from a landfill.