Use Cloth Instead: throwing in the towels…

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Hola!

How is everyone?!

Hope you enjoyed the Meatless Monday post.

If you haven’t shared your veggie recipe yet; don’t fret because there’s always next Monday!

Recently, I wrote about becoming the  “the bag-less lady” and so far everything is going well…

With all this discussion about giving up plastic and doing  “one less thing“  a post on giving up the infamous Bounty rolls is LONG overdue! Yes, folks… we kicked the paper towel habit to the curb, a little over a year ago. We’d made an attempt in early 2008 but it didn’t stick until late last Spring. Maybe, it’s the Spring cleaning mood prompting the ditching efforts. Whatever it is…  it’s all trail by fire!

Throwing OUT  the PAPER Towels and tossing IN the CLOTH!

In the beginning, it pretty much feels bare without paper towels and as though life cannot go on without them. It is much more threatening than giving up garbage bags, in my opinion. Looking back and realizing how often we’d reach for a paper towels; using cloth certainly proves, paper towels are a huge waste of  natural resources.

Simple spills would get wiped up with multiple paper towels and get thrown away and were used too often  for drying hands off with. Which was a huge pet peeve in of mine. Now, we just grab a towel and usually one kitchen towel will clean up the mess. When the spills get bigger and yuckier, the kitchen towels are spared and old white t-shirts or newspaper take their place.

The feeling of being wasteful has slowly started turned into positive creativity which leads eventually leads to more baby steps in the eco direction. Since it seemed like such a  barrier between cloth and paper… as if cloth could not replace the “quicker picker upper” the realization of having to wipe up spills and other ooey gooey’s not capable of being tossed away, was hard to get over initially, but once you’re over the hump it’s becomes routine.

Getting over the hamper

After figuring out just how easy it is to get a system started it doesn’t take long to start reaching for cloth instead of paper towels. Lucky, for us, we happened to unconsciously build a kitchen towel stash and had oodles of them to go around for our new journey. I think maybe, a few trips to Costco pre-kids allowed this to happen. *wink, wink* In any case, don’t go off buying a whole bunch of brand new kitchen towels just for the cause.

TIPS & TRICKS

* Start by using old white t-shirts and the kitchen towels already on hand and begin building  a so called “stash”.  Having plenty around makes it easy to keep a continuous supply even when others are soiled or happen to be in the wash.

* Have newspaper or junk mail ads handy to pick up any icky spills you may not want to wash out. This will happen a lot in the beginning as you gage your ICK factor. LOL!

* Invest in Skoy clothes or other reusable sponges.

* It helps to have a spot to dry your rags or place them after use.  For example, using a drying rack helps keep them organized. (still trying to get the hubby to install a wire string over our sink to hang wet rags and soiled towel… but no such luck… yet!).

* Cut white t-shirts into cloth wipe size for quick spills and wipes. If you have a baby wipe container reuse it for cloth wipe storage. We do this with old white tees since they’re thin and light.

* If possible designate a drawer in the kitchen to keep your cloth towels and sponges handy. 

*  Kill two birds with one stone- add towel laundry in with your cloth bag laundry to make a large load if you run out of towels (something I’ve done numerous times).

* Hang dry towels whenever possible to kill icky bacterias with a good soak in the sun!

* Try to keep the washer clear for times when you have to pick up a spill and need to toss the rags or towels right in.

*Designate a hamper for cloth towels, just in case, you they’re soiled with gunk and you don’t want them touching clean laundry.

TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS

We still own the paper towel holder, it’s resting in peace underneath the sink. Taking steps to further our sustainable journey is easier said than done.

Most of the time, it’s not hard for me, personally, to look back once a green switch has been made. My husband on the other hand does not have such a hardcore mentality. Therefore, at the start of our journey,our kitchen saw a few more paper towel rolls even after we signed ourselves up for the paperless option at every company selling “absorbent paper”.  Now, it’s not even an issue.

We also went through the phase of only purchasing recycled paper towels just before going cold towel-ky! (pun intended)

Paper napkins were never part of our grocery list since we always used the paper towels by folding them in half in ripping them apart.We use a kitchen towels in replace of napkins to date since we don’t own any purty cloth napkins. I’m hoping to sew up a batch in the near future or get some used at a thrift shop.

Paper towels might be convenient at times but overall they’re a huge WASTE. Unfortunately, paper towels are packaged in plastic, costly, and fill trash cans with paper debris, not to mention, the plastic packaging contributes to the litter in our landfills and oceans.

My advice;  try to go paperless in the  kitchen for a week, maybe even a month and see how it works. Baby steps, then bigger steps …then who knows …maybe you’ll be paper towel less for GOOD. In the long run, it saves time and money + good for the environment. When Tristan was born, learning to deal with cloth diaper and cloth wipe laundry was just the same so taking this step seemed natural and fitting.  It may seem like a struggle to get over a first but they are plenty of reasons why you may want to reconsider your paper towel habit.

Reusable Relief to the Rescue

Two words. People Towels. What are PeopleTowels?

100% organic cotton, reusable personal hand towels that make living a sustainable lifestyle as easy as drying your hands.

Switch from paper towels to PeopleTowels to dry your hands in public facilities to saves trees and reduce waste.

That’s right ladies & gents a portable way to clean your hands on the go!

The use of disposable paper towels is having a devastating impact on the environment.

Facts about paper towel consumption and its impact are:

To make one ton of paper towels, 17 trees and 20,000 gallons of water are polluted.

Every day, over 3,000 tons of paper towel waste is produced in the US alone.

Decomposing paper towels produce methane gas, a leading cause of global warming.

The average person uses 2,400 – 3,000 paper towels at work, in a given year.

The facts are discouraging but taking action can create a HUGE impact.

Would you be willing to give up the paper towels???

The next step on this paperless path is giving up TP!!

Which means you’ll have to stick around for more paperless to zero waste adventures .

Oh! and before I forget, for a head start on giving up paper towels and or napkins enter to win these... I did!

Have you recently had thoughts about making the switch or using a recycled brand?