About 6 months ago I began weaning our family off of paper towels. My problem was thus:
- Paper towels are easy - I needed something easy
- Paper towels don't get gross over time, because you throw them away immediately - I needed something I could cycle through quickly
- Paper towels are not hard to acquire - I needed something easy to acquire
Soooooooo... instead of going the "normal" washcloth route, I instead chose to go with something that was free, easily available, in which I had no feeling of investment, and was small. I chose ... [insert drum roll here]... old t-shirts. Oh, wait, I said small, didn't I. Well, here's what I did. I took said old t-shirts and cut them up into 6 inch squares (give or take). I then stuck them in a basket on my counter where they'd be easily accessible and obvious. I use them as I would use paper towels - generally one or two wipes and then into the basket. The difference is that the basket that these go into is a laundry basket instead of a garbage. Then when I run out (or get close) I run the wash. No biggie since we've switched to cloth napkins and were frequently washing bibs and washcloths from the kids and dish towels anyway. There you have it. My perfect solution to the gross washcloth *ahem* paper towel problem.
3 comments:
That's a great idea. We hardly ever use paper towels (it takes us about 6 months to go through one of the Seventh Gen recycled rolls), but the most frequent use is for when we need to wash and pat dry uncooked meat, or need to drain something oily/greasy in a way that wicks the grease away (ie bacon, hashed browns, latkes if I ever got around to making any).
Do you think the old shirts would work for that? Because I've got a giant bag of old clothes I can't bear to throw out...
Yep, I think they'd work perfectly for that. You might wanna wash them in some dish detergent instead of regular clothes detergent (or soak them that way) if you plan to re-use them, though.
I also use t-shirts for rags. I also use old raggedy washclothes. my husband uses old brown grocery bags to catch grease from cooked food. Perhaps we can try the wash clothes for it.
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