I try to be a good inhabitant of our planet, as much as a human can be. But I’m not great, and there is a LOT of room for improvement. I have become hyperaware of how much trash we produce, for instance, and we are just a little family of three. But with room for improvement comes opportunity, so I have been keeping my eyes out for ways to reduce our environmental impact.
Two areas of greatest waste in my household are paper towels and plastic bags. I have become an expert at bringing reusable shopping bags to the grocery store, and I am really working on bringing my reusable produce bags, too. (I really need to buy more of them, because I inevitably end up using plastic bags anyway and then feeling annoyed at myself. Baby steps.) I have effectively retrained my brain to use reusable containers instead of Ziploc bags for things like snacks and leftovers. I can still improve in that arena, too: I use a lot of Ziploc bags to marinate and freeze meat (although I am getting better about marinating things in glass dishes instead), and I am in the early stages of researching and thinking about buying reusable silicone zipper bags to use as a replacement. But I’m not there yet.
It takes me a while to change. And I think at this stage of life, I still want things to be fairly convenient. Listen, I know that this is not a good argument against doing something that is better for the environment. But I think we all do what we can, and even a little step in the right direction is still a step in the right direction. Probably I should be composting and bicycling Carla to school each day and avoiding plastic at all costs but I am making changes, and that has to be worth something. Ugh. I am sure Swistle has written about this before… Yes, yes she has: “Environmentalism, Swistle Style” and you should go read that and we can all feel better about our own willingness/ability to change. I’ll wait.
See? Doesn’t that feel better? I guess it boils down to: I can do better, of course I can, we all can. But I am doing SOMETHING and that is NOT NOTHING.
This is all to say that I have been thinking about reusuable paper towels for a long time. First, I discovered that they existed. This was A Revelation to me; I had no idea! Then I started reading about them. Then I thought seriously about buying some. Then I did a test run of No Paper Towels (using washcloths instead) to see if I could justify trying them out. Then I went through a long period of using paper towels as per usual. And then I mentioned the reusable paper towels to my husband, and he got on board, and I bought a package.
These are the reusable paper towels I bought:
photo from amazon.com
My main concerns were fourfold:
- Would they be an adequate replacement? I wanted to be sure that the reusable paper towels acted as much like a replacement for paper towels as possible. In my trial period, I’d been using microfiber washcloths, and that was fine… but it wasn’t like paper towels. They were the wrong size. They felt wrong. I had to stow them in a plastic bag in the laundry room until I had enough to wash them. What I wanted was… paper towels. Just… reusuable ones. I was able to determine through research that this was impossible. Sure, the resuable paper towels I got LOOK like a roll of paper towels. But once you use them, you can’t put them back on the roll. So you have to find a way to store them after that first use. Hence…
- How and where were we going to store them? We got a new piece of furniture for the hallway between the pantry and the laundry room, so I kind of figured I would put them in one of the drawers. I could lay them all out flat and store them there, and hopefully it would be easily accessible enough to still be convenient to use. I also planned to employ the old bag-hanging-in-the-laundry-room trick to keep the soiled cloths between washings. Instead of a Target bag, I would use one of my reusable veggie bags because it is breathable. And then once we had a whole bagful of soiled cloths, I could wash them.
- What was I going to do about really germy messes? Wiping down the counter after Carla eats dinner is one thing. But what about using a reusable paper towel on spilled chicken juice? Even if I give it a thorough rinse afterward, I don’t know if I want that hanging around in my veggie bag until I have enough towels to justify a load of laundry.
The last concern is the least concerning:
- Were we going to accidentally throw them in the trash, wasting money and nullifying any environmental benefit?
So there you go. I bought the towels. Now, we have to USE them. Next time, I will tell you what I think.
Totally with you on this. We were using way too many paper towels, it was a hard habit to break. We had our first kid in nov 2017 and were gifted a bunch of cloth diaper inserts (basically paper towel sized sheets of thick, tough cotton) to use as burp cloths. She was never big on spitting up, so the cloth diaper fabric got used for more general clean ups and now I can’t imagine my kitchen without them. They are soft, but have a texture that allows a good scrub if needed, they are SO absorbent, mostly lint free, and wash really well over and over. We’re vegetarian, so never have to deal with chicken juice but we’ve thrown some pretty tough messes at them and they come out of the wash great every time. We’ve only lost 1 (it ripped and got demoted to rag) in the past year and a half.
I also adopted my SILs method of washing laundry- no sorting, all the laundry from that day gets washed in the same load (with the sole exception of my husband’s dress clothes). Wonder of wonders, we haven’t had a single thing come out ruined or gross yet. So, I wash the cloths every day along with whatever kid clothes, towels, etc. we used that day.
Oh, and we hid the paper towels on ourselves. We have a pull out cabinet under the sink and we mounted the paper towel holder to the inside door of the cabinet. They are still close by if you REALLY need them, but out of sight and out of mind. We mostly use the diaper cloths and they are great.
Interested to hear how the reusable paper towels work out- I had never heard of them before!
I am so intrigued by this experiment!!
And that was fun to see that old post again. I still have those orange napkins, and also the yellow ones, and the yellow ones are indeed stained. (The green shiny ones were terrible, if I remember correctly, and I got rid of them.)
This is really interesting, I had no idea there was such a thing! How long do they last, I wonder? I’m interested to hear your response. We don’t use a whole lot of paper towels in our house, and when we do, we are able to put them in the compost. (we have city-wide compost for stuff like that). I really endorse the idea that we all take small steps and small steps add up.
If any of you ever saw the amount of paper towels my husband uses; I would be ostracized from the blogging community, as I am his enabler (I keep buying them). I do have dish cloths I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to get him to use instead. I also use reusable, cloth bags for the majority of my shopping – I figure this might kinda counteract the husband’s refusal to do so. Occasionally, he will feel guilty enough to have them bag the groceries in paper; but not often because he feels like it is “extra” work for the cashier. *insert eye roll here*
By no means am I the recycle queen, but next to him? I can’t tell you how many times I go to throw something away only to find something perfectly recyclable in the trash. It makes me crazy. He’s an old dog so teaching him to change his ways is difficult. I can’t wait to hear what you think of these towels; if it works out for you maybe I’ll try them with him.
Thanks for sharing that Swistle link – that must have been before I discovered here as I don’t remember seeing it. Funny that she mentioned worrying about wrinkly napkins as that has always been my concern. I DO like my white napkins (used for holidays, etc.) to be ironed and crisp but, I might not mind if “every day” napkins weren’t ironed….hmmm, maybe I’ll go look at cloth napkins tomorrow.
Ooh, I just made the switch from using paper towels myself! I’m using these reusable wipes for now (https://www.target.com/p/scotch-brite-reusable-wipes-5ct/-/A-13163411). I was never a huge user of paper towels but it feels good to try to help out the environment in whatever little ways I can!
I saw this on Instagram the other day and it helped me feel better about my contributions in this area. Perhaps it will help you feel better too. https://www.instagram.com/p/BxPhoSkHbgP/
Our city has a great curbside recycling program as well as curbside compost pickup, and we have a home composter, so we only throw out about one plastic grocery bag-sized bag of garbage per week. We don’t use a lot of paper towel and what we do use, we compost, so I’m not terribly worried about my household’s paper towel consumption, but here is what I need to do. I need to switch to using reusable pantiliners. I have many of the same concerns: storage while waiting for laundry, etc. and it has just left me paralyzed. I shall head to Etsy to buy some today! You’ve energized me!
I did this a few years ago too; I felt we were using way too many paper towels and it was an easy thing to switch over. (I inevitably leave my reusable grocery bags in the car, every single time, even when we lived in CA where you have to pay extra to get a plastic grocery bag). We are a family of five and we were going through at least a roll of paper towels a day. I bought two packs of car washing towels (not the microfiber towels, but more like very large rough washcloths) at Costco for about $20 a pack (about 20 washcloths per pack), and I bought about $30 worth of $1 cloth napkins on clearance at Pier One. It has actually worked swimmingly–all the towels are in a basket behind the faucet of the kitchen sink, so even guests know to use a towel, and there is a second basket on the counter to hold dirty towels. I wash them pretty much every night (I can see the mountain of used napkins and cloths out of the corner of my eye, waiting to be washed, as I sit here reading the internets.)
We have a cleaning service and we have to supply the cleaning supplies, and they insist on paper towels, so we do always have a pack (or five) of paper towels on hand in the garage for any truly gross or horrendous spill that needs to be mopped up. But my family has been retrained into using the washcloths. I see you said they felt “wrong”….maybe a bigger, non-microfiber option? We have some white washcloths that occasionally get mixed up into the dishrags and we are always like “gah, this is not the right kind of cloth” when it does.
Ooh! I have stuff to say about reusable paper towels!
I just went back in my Etsy history to find the name of the shop where I had purchased my own reusable paper towels and realized I made my purchase on 1/13/14!! We are still using the same 3 dozen paper towels 5 years later. Whoa. I think it’s time I replace them. Lol.
That was certainly not my intention when we first bought them – I thought these would replace our paper towel usage for just drying hands and such. But before we knew it, 5 years went by and we’ve completely converted. Like someone else said above, we still keep a roll of paper towels but also make them hard to get to so they are never the first thing you grab when in need.
Our storage method is to fold them into fourths and place them in a container by the sink. After using we throw them into the laundry sink in the laundry room. I’ve intended to buy a separate container for them for quite some time, but just hasn’t happened. We end up washing them with our towels and one wash per week has served our family of 4 fine.
Anyway, here’s the shop I purchased from – from the sound of the shop name she may have other Earthy items for sale too! https://www.etsy.com/shop/LoveForEarth
They are perfect – thin enough, not linty, hold up really, really well. They can get stained, but Clorox.