This month I decided to tackle one of the hardest items on my life list: have a paperless kitchen. The idea seems more impossible now than it did two years ago. Not going to lie, I love paper towels. Really, really love them hard. But this month, with me cooking so much, I’m washing my hands like a surgeon on call during a full moon. I wash my hands before I start cooking, I wash my hands if I touch raw meat or handle eggs, I wash my hands after cutting something starchy or making something sticky like pizza dough or pumpkin bread. I wash my hands constantly and I use paper towels both to dry my hands and clean up messes on counters and stove tops.
I give guerrilla environmentalists two more weeks before they crash through my door, cuff me with hemp rope, and parade me through town with a green Tencel P sewn onto the front of my Old Navy t-shirt.
My research over the years on how a paperless kitchen should run gave me some ideas going into this month. I would need to greatly increase my supply of towels. I would need a basket to hold the towels. Some people have suggested a basket for dirty towels as well, but my laundry room is close enough that I can avoid the additional clutter. The voters are split down the middle on the issue of bleaching towels.
But in the end, I couldn’t pull the trigger without getting some advice first. I don’t want to create a system that won’t work. You all seem to know your way around buttermilk, so this should be no different!
- How many towels do I buy or make?
- Bleach or no bleach?
- Are the towels single use like regular paper towels? It seems like reusing the towel would just spread germs around.
- How do you store your towels? I have a small drawer to the right of my sink, but I don’t know how much it can hold.
- Do you ever use paper towels again, maybe for certain jobs?
- Any other tips or advice? Favorite vendors or products?
Finally, have you seen these un-paper towels? Probably, if you already run a paperless kitchen. How clever to add snaps to the towels so you can dispense them from a paper towel holder! This addresses my concern that a basket would take up space. I don’t like a cluttered counter despite the many, many, many posts in my William Morris Project that would suggest the exact opposite. Hah!
The above picture of un-paper towels is from the etsy shop Two Chicks and a Fish.
I have a paperless kitchen, so here’s how I do it.
FYI I cook every day and do laundry once a week.
I have a dishcloth used for washing dishes and wiping benches . I rinse it out after every use and change it when it gets yucky (sometimes every day, sometimes more than once a day , sometimes longer). I actually only have three but that’s a temporary problem and I would recommend 7-10. They need to be sturdy so they can cycle constantly through the washing machine. Enjo is great but expensive. The dishcloth hangs either over the faucet or on a hook above the sink so that it airs and is constantly available.
I have about fifteen tea towels that I reserve mostly for drying dishes and change at least once a day.
I have seven hand towels used for drying hands. I wash my hands before I dry them and am not concerned about cross contamination. I change them every day or less frequently.
I have rags nearby that I grab when I need to clean the floor.
I wash everything on a normal cycle, no bleach, no ironing, just make sure to hang them straight – oh yeah, I air dry them, mostly because I don’t like crinkles and I don’t like ironing.
It’s easy for me as I grew up with this system. I’ve never used paper towel except for when housemates bought it in the past.
Hope that helps! I’m sure you can do it. It’s a worthy effort and will be so easy once it becomes second nature.
This is exactly how I do it, too. Works very well. It’s simply a matter of thinking about what towel to grab to do what job…. if in doubt, I toss the towel into the wash basket and grab a new one. I do still keep paper towels around but only go through about 1 roll a month.
Thought it was worth adding that my tea towel/drying towel and my hand towel hang over the rail handle of my wall oven. It’s very important to have them instantly accessible or you won’t use them. You could install hooks if your oven isn’t as conveniently located as mine. Also the spares of my towels are folded in baskets under the sink so that replacements are also easy to grab.
This is pretty much what I do. I change everything about once per day, and I just throw them into the washing machine with whatever else is the next load (unless that load is diapers). I don’t use bleach or harsh chemicals in the kitchen, so I’m not really concerned with getting other washing “contaminated.”
I still have paper towels in the kitchen, but only for stuff like draining bacon. I bought a three pack five years ago and still have one roll.
We also use cloth napkins, and (the horror!) I don’t wash those after every use, either. If I have soup or a sandwich or something non-messy, I just hang the napkin over my chair where it sits until the next meal. Of course, if it is dirty it gets washed. We’ve been doing this for years and no one is less healthy because of it.
When I first read this, I thought you were going paperless in the way of getting rid of cookbooks and recipe cards and putting it all on computer, and boyohboy was I impressed. And jealous.
Forgot to say, if your worried about stains then I recommend buying patterned cloths where it’s hard to notice stains.
I am nearly to a paperless kitchen and it has taken some time to adjust my routines. I started out with 5 dish towels that we only used for drying hands and seldom changed out. Now I have around 30 and change out to a new one each day- more if I am cooking lots. I wash a load once a week and always hang the dirty ones to dry before they go into the separate laundry bin I have ( it is pretty small since they are only dish towels ). It also took me time to discover which type of towels I like for each task and now I keep a variety. My favorite towel is waffle towel from Kohls… Food network I think.
I have a large bottom kitchen drawer for my towels and an extra bin in laudry room of extra old hand towels and microfiber cloths. Until I made space for them it was a hassle to get the rest of the house to use them. I also have a small bin of rags I made from cut up old clothes ruined from painting. For truly gross things, I get a rag and then toss it.
I like to think we don’t get sick as often since I began to aggressively change out towels for fresh ones- especially the bathroom hand towels after we have guests over. I look forward to learning how others handle their paperless kitchens for inspiration.
Good Luck!
I don’t have a paperless kitchen (yet) but I don’t use a lot of paper towels, either. I have two sponges at the sink: one for the dishes (no dishwasher in the former Eastern Block ;-)) and one for the counters, table, occasionally sink (though most of the time I use a sponge cloth for wiping down whatever doesn’t need scrubbing). I dry my hands with a tea towel, and let my dishes dry on the dish rack. There isn’t much for what I use a paper towel: spills on the floor, and maybe an egg dropped–that seems too much for a sponge cloth.
Years ago I came across the Skoy cloth (http://skoycloth.com/) but they didn’t ship to Hungary so I never got round to try it. However I’ve adopted their idea of downgrading so when I consider my dishwashing sponge too dirty, I put it in place of the other sponge, and grab a new one for the dishes. (The system is kept on track with colour-coding that I write above the sink with a dry-wipeable marker.)
I have a very similar arrangement to Louise.
I also cook daily (it sometimes feels like all day) but I launder more often- 5- 500 times a week…
There is a drawer of tea towels used almost exclusively for drying dishes. These get changed every couple of days or so, depending on how much they’ve been used. The dishes are clean before they’re dried and I hang the towels up to dry, which goes a long way to stop bacterial growth, so I’m happy with that.
I have about 4 hand (terry towelling) towels, used just for drying hands and I agree with Louise.
Dishcloths (mostly knitted cotton- I love knitting and they’re a great portable way to experiment with stitches without pressure of getting them perfect, and they use up ends of yarn) are kept in a basket under the sink. I have lots- see comment re:knitting. They get changed daily or more often. I vaguely try to clean up ‘clean’ things first and then put them straight in the wash after cleaning up raw meat, for instance. Otherwise, I use them for surface wiping and dishes.
We have floor cloths which can’t be mixed up with anything else. Old dishcloths or long-retired terry square nappies mostly. Also kept under the sink.
Everything gets put in with whatever wash is next on, so 40-60 C with soapnuts and no bleach or fabric conditioner, and air dried (I don’t own a tumble drier). If anything is especially disgusting and I don’t want to even try to wash it, I use a tatty floor cloth that I can bin.
I don’t fry much food, so using a towel to absorb fat isn’t an issue. I generally just drain things well before putting on a plate and then transferring to the dinner plate or I use brown paper bags from buying vegetables (I also use them to line my compost tub) if something is very greasy.
Good luck!
Oh yeah, forgot about the ‘absorbing’ tasks – I just use a tea towel for things like drying off lettuce leaves or absorbing oil. I have a few dark purple tea towels that I use if I’m doing something like oil that is nearly guaranteed to stain.
I have similar systems of towels as other commenters. The only addition I have is that I do keep a counter top paper towel holder with a roll as for some reason people freak out if I have a party or family over. Everyone looks for the paper towels so instead of having to explain to everyone, I have found this easier.
Go for it!
My mom has run a virtually paperless kitchen for 20 years and cooks daily. Here’s what she does: she has a kitchen towel hanging on the oven door that is only used for drying hands, clean tables & clean counters. She’ll occasionally use it to dry dishes, too, but she uses her dish drainer for most of that. Between uses, the towel will dry because it is hanging on the oven door, not a hook.
For wet/germy messes, she uses a hot soapy kitchen dish rag. If she uses a rag to wipe up something on the floor, that one goes into the laundry and she gets a new one. She hangs the dish rag over the faucet or lays it across the divider in her double sink when not in use. (Cuts down on moisture, which cuts down on bacteria.) I rarely saw her bleach towels. Usually she’d wash hot / dry hot. She didn’t do this next step when I was living at home, but now she also keeps a spray bottle of diluted bleach or full-strength vinegar under her cabinet to spray down sinks and counters to disinfect. She probably replaces her dishrags and towels every 2-3 days on average. We were rarely sick, so I don’t think its a particularly unhygienic arrangement.
Also, we didn’t get napkins at meals unless it was a particularly messy meal (like fried chicken) or we had company. We were a family of 5, and those napkins would have added up quickly. We had an eat-in kitchen so if one of us dribbled ketchup onto the table, she’s just wipe it up with the dish rag.
She does keep a roll of paper towels hidden away in a cabinet, but a roll will usually last her 6 months to a year. She uses them primarily for draining the fat from bacon. I never thought a thing about how she ran her kitchen until I was older. I use far more paper towels than she does, but still mainly use kitchen dish rags and towels.
We’re nearly paperless in our kitchen. I mentioned “nearly” as I have a roll of paper towels in the kitchen for guests and such. To be honest, I don’t put much thought into it. I have a sponge at the sink. A tea towel hanging for drying hands (stored in a drawer). And some microfiber rags for misc. cleanups (stored under the sink). I toss them in the laundry as I see fit…no particular schedule or after any certain event. It’s all very stress-free. I forgot to mention that I bought a pack of dishcloths that my sons use in their lunchbox. I find they’re more absorbent than traditional cloth napkins and work well.
I run a mostly paperless kitchen as well. I have five kinds of cloth.
1) Terry hand towels for hands. Unused towels are kept in the linen closet. In use towels are kept on the oven door. I share these with the downstairs bath so I likely have 10 – 15.
2) Tea towels. I air dry my dishes–mostly. Once in a while I need to use the tea towel to dry a dish (especially if I need it right away.) In use towels are also kept on the oven door. Clean ones share drawer space in the kitchen. Right now I have quite a few –10-15 maybe?
3) Microfibre cloths. Some of these are kept in the kitchen drawer with the tea towels. I use these for washing down all surfaces–like the bathroom. Windows and mirrors. Dusting. I have lots of these (about 25). (I keep some in the bathroom and some in the upstairs linen closet). I consider these to be one use only.
4) Dishcloths. I use these for cleaning up anything wet in the kitchen. Clean cloths live in the drawer. In-use lives folded over the faucet. I change these as I see fit. I have about 10?
5) Last, I have small terry towels for the floors and dog pee. My husband bought these in the car cleaning aisle. I like to have about 10 on hand. Single use. I will bleach these (and my dish cloths)–I use a dishpan in the laundry room to corral them. I try to do laundry daily, but only one load a day–so anything wet gets hung to dry so it won’t fester before I can wash it.
One more thing: I keep a box of latex gloves in my kitchen as well and I use them any time I am handling raw meat for any period of time. It’s more because I hate the feel of raw meat than hygiene, but it may help with all that hand washing. Good luck figuring it out!
We have a paperless kitchen and no dishwasher, so I am well-versed in the art of washing dish towels. I have a sponge that I use to do dishes and wipe down the counters, and every single time I use it, afterward it goes in the microwave on high for 2 minutes and 10 seconds to zap any germs that might be lingering. I also have about 10 kitchen washcloths that are cotton with a mesh weave on one side for scrubbing. I have about 10 kitchen towels that we use for drying hands, drying dishes, etc. and I use about one a day. I buy them whenever they’re on sale, and as long as they’re cotton or microfiber they work really well. Not that you asked, but I also have microfiber dish clothes that I use with my swiffer to mop the floors. I sweep, then put a cloth on the swiffer, spray down the floor, and get to mopping. The whole thing takes about 10 minutes, and then I just throw it in the washer. We have a few paper napkins and stuff lying around from takeout, etc. but for the most part they sit in the pantry, unused. We have cloth napkins for both everyday use and for nicer dinner parties.
Hi !
I never comment, but have read for years & love your blog!
This is also on my life list, but because when my mother-in-law lived with us, I noticed how many paper towels this woman used & it made me just nutty. She’d put one down on a clean counter, put a cereal bowl on it, pour cereal & milk, then pick up the bowl, take it to the table & eat. The counter was often filled with four or five perfectly clean paper towels she’d use like this, a new one EACH TIME, for every cup of tea, and then not throw away.
So since then, I’ve randomly bought hand / kitchen towels while on sale (IKEA has good ones – they’re thin but substantial), and those I use exclusively for cleaning the counters, cleaning up any juices from raw meat, or drying off raw chicken. I need a basket for them, but my laundry room is close by & so I just put them on a side of the counter until I can run them all to that space.
I didn’t realize this until reading the other comments, but I also have a separate stack of dishtowels that are just for drying hands or other clean jobs – those hang on the bar on the dishwasher or the stove, if I have two going. Sometimes I have two because I’ll also use them underneath drying dishes if there are too many to fit in the dish rack. These are more substantial, cotton hand towels, that I might feel weird cleaning with, since they are thick, but sometimes in a pinch I do use them to wipe up spills, then just throw in the laundry.
Also on my life list is to make a t-shirt quilt, and this is the key to finalizing my paperless kitchen – I plan to use all the t-shirt scraps to round out my supply, and create a few that are “fancy” to use as napkins during the week. I still may not be able to go totally paperless due to guests (see the mother-in-law story above) & my husband likes to wrap a paper towel around the sandwich he takes to work every day.
I also plan to have a basket under the sink for the dirty ones, and will need to work out some sort of system for storing the clean ones in the kitchen, once I have all the ones I anticipate. Now they’re just all in a drawer & I pull the type of towel I need, which is fine, but I don’t love it as a system.
I have a paperless house (with a roll for bacon fat sorts of things, lasts me a while). I don’t, however, have any sort of system. There’s no way the rest of my house would keep up with it and I don’t like to set up systems that only I keep up with. Just makes me frustrated and I don’t need to create that for myself. I microwave and change out the sponge regularly, wash towels when they need it and have separate microfiber for cleaning floors, etc. Wash everything on hot as needed, no bleach. My husband never hangs up the towels, so if he’s been cooking a lot I toss them in the laundry them more frequently. We use cloth napkins at meals, but those get washed only when it’s been a messy meal or if I see a kid use one as a kleenex :)
I’m relieved to learn there are others like me who spend a lot of time thinking and fine-tuning their kitchen “towel” strategies. Over the past year I’ve gone 100% cloth, then got weak and paper crept back in, and now I’d say we’re 80% paper / 20% cloth. I also cook daily, both b’fast and dinner, and lunch is brown-bagged. There’s a lot of clean up from all that as y’all know and I started wondering about the increased wash loads as a result of using cloth. After some research I gave up trying to make the best environmental choice cause either way (cloth or paper) you clean up the kitchen mess, its gonna use resources (trees for paper, clean water for laundry + my time doing the wash, and yes, I’m a resource that needs conserving too). So we try to be sensible with the paper use and use a single cloth for all my hand wiping while cooking that meal, then into the laundry basket it goes. Any hand washed pots /pans etc are air-dryed and all our dishes wash via dishwasher, which I’m told uses way less water than filling a sink and washing by hand {guess that could depend on the age of the dishwasher, the newer ones for the most part adhere to “green standards”}. We actually do put the used paper towels that aren’t heavy with food that will spoil or attract bugs into the recycle bin along with all the other paper items, newsprint, mags, etc. And that’s how it works here until the next time I change things up.
We have both still. I don’t use paper towels very often, but there are some jobs that require them in my opinion. (Cats who throw up fur balls and other nastiness at the top of that list.) Otherwise, I just use regular old dish towels – we have one hanging on the stove and one by the sink. I don’t bleach them – I don’t even do laundry in hot water. As far as I know we have not gotten food poisoning in all the years I’ve been doing that.
If all I do with the towel is wipe my hands after washing them, then I figure they’re pretty clean since presumably my hands at that point were just wet but not dirty. After a day or an hour (depending on the cooking level) I use them to wipe up the counters or floor or whatever and toss them in the laundry. Maybe I don’t use them enough? I have about a dozen, which is low for me. Not because one needs more than that, but because I like cute dish towels and buy too many of them. :) It honestly never occurred to me to have a basket for dirty ones – again, we’re pretty healthy so it seems to be OK. I do have TONS of cloth napkins because I toss those in the laundry after every meal.
I do like those etsy towels – I think I have had them favorited for a while.
Oh – and after reading Ellen’s comment I realize we do keep cloth rags under the sink for spills, etc. In our house that’s where old dish towels retire.
I was kind of worried about going without paper towels, but then you just make the switch, and it very quickly becomes second nature. I use t-shirt rags and Ikea dishtowels (I think I have maybe 16-20?). I rotate through the dishtowels about twice a month (I’m just cooking for me, but I also use them as napkins).
If I’m cooking a big, messy meal, I do find it helpful to have a desginated container (a la Rachel Ray’s garbage bowl) to toss in towels or rags I want to launder. Otherwise, I just hang towels to dry on the stove, and rags are rinsed and hung to dry in the sink. I try not to keep any wet rags in the container (I’ll hang them over the edges to dry), and then I just throw the whole container of towels and rags into the wash when the container gets full or I’ve cleaned something I don’t want hanging around.
My non-system is a lot like Kathryn’s. We have a deep drawer full of tea towels (30-40), and we probably go through 2-3 a day. If I use it to wipe up something icky, I toss it immediately into the laundry chute. If it’s wet, we hang it over the chute and don’t drop it in until it’s dry. We also use a variety of cloth and knitted dish rags. Our stash of cleaning rags for other areas (floors/bathrooms/dusting) is enormous, consisting of worn and stained washcloths, cloth diapers, and ripped up t-shirts. We also exclusively use cloth napkins. I generally wash all kitchen linens and cleaning rags on hot–with tablecloths, I regularly have enough for a full load. Sometimes the dish rags get musty, so I bleach them. Bath and bed linens are a separate load. I do like paper towels for draining fried foods, but I only buy one roll at a time, so if we’ve run out, I just drain on a wire rack set over a baking sheet.
We always have a hand towel hanging near the sink to dry hands after washing. I keep reserves in a kitchen drawer and switch them out every day or two. I do not switch hand towels out after each use, as I am only using them to dry my clean hands. I also have kitchen washcloths for washing dishes, wiping up spills, cleaning counters and tables. I switch these out depending on use. I tend to put dishes in the drying rack to dry, but when I do dry dishes by hand, I get a fresh towel hand towel. Once or twice a week all the towels and washcloths get thrown in the wash. I don’t use bleach.
Hi!
I have a virtually paperless kitchen as well. My decision to go paperless was rooted in frugality (why am I buying something just to throw it out?) and supported by environmental concerns.
I have a collection of dish/tea towels that are kept in constant rotation. I store them in a basket on top of my fridge (it’s an apartment-size fridge so I can easily reach the top). I hang the towel in use on the fridge door handle or the oven handle so that it can dry out and so it’s easy to find when I’m standing there with drippy hands! I prefer pretty, sturdy cotton towels which can be found in lots of different shops and stores.
I use dishcloths for washing dishes, wiping down counters and the odd spill. I’m a knitter, so new dishcloths are constantly introduced into my collection. I store them in the cabinet over the sink so I can grab a new one quickly and easily. If you know any knitters, tell them you’re in the market for dishcloths and I promise you – you will have an unending supply! As someone mentioned above, dishcloths are a quick and easy project – I love having recipients for my projects. Send me your address, I’ll send a couple to you and you can try them out – no worries, no expenses!
I also use cloth napkins. I started out with a handful of pretty cotton napkins that were reserved for ‘special occasions’ …then I realized I don’t do ‘special occasions’. The napkins were either going to be used or sent out of the house. I decided that I would go ahead and use them. I noticed some of the other commenters were worried about using a new napkin at each meal and the laundry getting out of control. Those of you who are squeamish or hyper-aware of germs may want to skip the next sentence…I use the same napkin for several days unless I’m eating something truly messy…at which point it gets tossed in the laundry room. I don’t have kids, but if I did, I would assign each kid a certain color napkin and that would be ‘your’ napkin until it was time to change them out. (messy meal, etc). This tactic may not be for everyone, but I do have a friend who uses it quite easily.
Once a cloth item has reached the end of it’s ‘presentable’ days it gets downgraded to a cleaning rag or it might be cut up and used as a splash guard in the microwave (instead of covering the bowl with a paper towel, cover with a piece of old, clean tea towel). Once used, it gets tossed in the laundry room.
Washing: I tend to wash the active kitchen towels and napkins in hot water, tumble dry with a non-chlorine bleach. The rags get washed separately.
Under the heading of ‘paperless’, but not ‘kitchen’, I also use handkerchiefs. I have dreadful allergies and was spending a lot of money on paper tissues which were actually making the allergies worse. (Why would you put scents and lotions in paper tissues when these exacerbate allergies!!!) I now have a wide ranging collection of handkerchiefs – everything from old bandannas to dainty lady handkerchiefs from the 50s. I use them and throw them in the laundry – it doesn’t really add to my laundry toils. I’ve found that my nose is much happier with cotton than whatever chemicals, fibers, lotions, etc are in the man made tissues. (For those of you having heart palpitations at the idea of germ contamination, please see caviots below for dealing with actual sickness vs. allergies.)
Caviots: (1) if anyone is sick they get moved to paper products to avoid contamination. (2) I do have a stash of paper napkins to clean up really messy messes and pick up dead bugs. These napkins usually come with take-out food. When I get the food home, I use a real napkin and set the paper napkins aside for later use. (3) I don’t keep any paper towels in the house for guests. I guess I’ll never win the entertaining hostess of the year award, but I decided long ago that it’s my house and my budget and I get to make the rules. :-)
Sorry for the long post, but this is a subject near and dear to my heart!
I have managed to switch to cloth napkins. I try not to use paper plates (but I have them on hand). I will not give up my paper towels. They are just too convenient. I have a terrycloth towel on the stove handle for drying my hands while cooking that gets changed out often, and designated “dish towels” for drying dishes and nothing else (kept in the kitchen drawer.) When I wash my hands at the sink, I want a clean paper towel to dry them, or what’s the use? I could just wipe my hands on my pants! I picture a kitchen full of baskets of clean towels for dishes, a basket for clean towels for hands, a basket of clean towels for wiping up spills, and a basket for dirty towels, and, Heaven forbid, a family just grabbing towels willy-nilly using them for whatever! lol I saw someone once scrub a lemon before cutting it open, but drying it with a well used multi-use kitchen towel, and thought, “why bother?” My advice: all things in moderation; proceed with caution.
I avoided buying paper towels for over five years, until last month when my children and grandchildren were here for a week. It’s to be expected that grandchildren make messes or get messy. Since they left, the paper towels are stored in the laundry room for future visits.
However, it’s a good idea to have a roll of paper towels around for health emergencies: one of the paramedics who came when my husband had a SEVERE allergy attack asked me for a paper towel and was frustrated when I said I didn’t have any. I realized that human contamination is a problem that is solved most easily with disposable products.
There are two baskets in my Kosher kitchen – for meat dishtowels (they’re red) and for milk dishtowels (blue). They are mostly used for drying dishes and afterwards, the counters and stovetops. We cook all our meals. Some days we go through one or two towels of each type, some days many more. For hand drying I have high quality white washcloths – the type that are folded and hemmed on all four sides – in a ceramic bowl. The rag basket in the laundry room holds old towels, some microfiber cloths and torn up shirts for floors, windows, etc. Everything gets washed with detergent in hot water and dried on high (otherwise the towels don’t dry well).
I totally get this, but it’s weird to me that a paramedic wouldn’t be fully equipped. Right? “What?! Paper towels? You’re the professional here!”
I use many cloth towels in the kitchen – made from old sheets, t-shirts, or even dish towels that have lots of stains. I don’t have them in a basket or anything – I just have a pile under the kitchen sink and a stack in the pantry. I simply use and throw down stairs to our laundry room. I don’t bleach them (I use bleach sparingly). Love this – buy about 2 rolls of paper towels a year. Also highly recommend cloth napkins – I have these in a drawer in the kitchen and find sets that are so inexpensive at tag sales and flea markets.
I run a ‘virtually paperless’ kitchen, as well. We do keep one roll of paper towels, but it’s for specific uses & one roll lasts us a long time. Like many others, who have posted more fully here, I keep a large amount of varying towels on hand that are designated for certain tasks in the kitchen. I’m pretty crazy about washing (with bleach. sorry, I AM a bleach person for towels/linens) regularly. Towels don’t stay in use more than one day and sometimes only through one cooking session depending on what was being cooked. * I’m obsessive about the couple of sponges, too. They get zapped and/or put in dishwasher.
It might seem daunting right now, but going paperless is actually a convenience in many ways in the long run. Cost savings are an obvious bonus, but that is how my family of 6 (4 boys, husband, and me) first made the transition. Nearly 7 years ago, we went through a financial course at our church that encouraged thinking outside of the box on how to save money every day, week, and month. My husband had a near clinical obsession with paper towels and Clorox wipes. Both were a line item I was willing to cut on our grocery bill. I don’t think I could have convinced him to give them up without the cost savings!
What started out as a money saving item has actually “greened” up our entire home. I use one product line to clean our home…Shaklee. Their Basic H is all that you would need to clean your entire home, it’s eco friendly, one bottle of concentrate will last me 6 months (and yes, I clean often), and it does not damage surfaces or cleaning towels. You asked about bleach/no bleach, with Basic H, you will not have to worry quite as much about stained towels or disinfecting.
As for organization, I have two small baskets under my kitchen sink, one for cleaning towels, one for kitchen/hand towels and dish cloths. I have 6-8 kitchen towels, my favorites are the inexpensive blue and white ones from Ikea. They are a good weight, nice size, and have a handy little hanging tab on them that I use to hang them on the knob of a lower cabinet to dry. I also have 3 slightly larger, thicker kitchen towels. I use these to dry dishes, line my counter when mixing/cooking something messy, for major spills, etc, basically for bigger jobs. I have 8 dish cloths that I use for everything from washing dishes to cleaning the counter tops (another benefit of using food grade cleaners is that I don’t have to worry about contamination). I purchase a 10 pack of these inexpensive ($2-$3) cloths from Meijer every year or so. If we have a really messy, gross, nasty (you get the idea) mess, then I just use one to clean it up and pitch the cloth afterwards, hence why I have 8 and not 10.
As for cleaning towels, I have a three pack from Ikea that includes a cloth for cleaning glass, dusting, and scrubbing. They are super inexpensive, hold up well, and do their jobs well. I recommend having towels for these specific jobs, it is very helpful. I “hand down” the kitchen towels to cleaning towels about every other year as well. So when one of my boys or my hubby comes in with mud on their shoes, or junk on their hands, or goodness, it could really be anything(!), I just grab one of these towels for them and don’t worry any further. If it’s paint or motor oil, the towel gets pitched, if it’s mud or something that will wash, then it gets washed.
I would say my total investment since going paperless 7 years ago has been less than $30. Wow, that seems crazy, but it’s true! Being paperless works for our family and our home, hope it works for yours as well!
Don’t think I can add much to this, but here goes. We have a drawer in the kitchen that houses our aprons, a stack of linen towels for dish drying/ counter wiping and a stack of terry towels for drying hands. We change these towels as needed, generally about 3 times a week unless something really messy happens. They get washed on the lowest setting my washer has, 40, but we iron our linen towels (even the stained ones) for our own satisfaction, but I suppose also to kill germs. I have a housekeeping textbook (good to know the theory, anyhow) that says change the ‘kitchen cleaning textiles’ daily (but she doesn’t insist that tea towels are ironed…). I have yet to make the move to dishcloths, though I am a knitter. Haven’t convince my husband that they work better, but I guess the only thing to do is knit a few and try it. I feel the cheapo sponges we use wear out far too quickly and they are just one more thing to put in the trash. We do have some paper towels on a dispenser, ‘just in case’; we use about two rolls a year. Good luck with your new system! Are you likely to take up using handkerchiefs instead of paper as well?
About twice a year I buy a big stack of “bar towels” which are white and about 1.5 square feet in size. I use these for dusting, cleaning my bathroom, drying dishes, wiping up messes, cleaning windows, etc. I do bleach them becasue I use them for germy jobs.
As far as hand drying in the kitchen, I keep a hand towel on my fridge handle and dry my hands on it multiple times a day. I usually try to change it out daily and I don’t like to share it. If someone else dries their hands on it I toss it in the hamper.
I keep all of my kitchen towels and wash cloths on a wire shelf under my sink.
I do keep the “select-a-size” paper towels around for napkins and cleaning mirrors; I’ve tried everything for mirrors (newspaper, microfiber) but only paper towels keep them streak and lint free.
This is exactly how my mom ran her kitchen towel situation and it has worked well for me also.
Try coffee filters. They work great on glass/mirrors.
I’ve just recently started trying to cut down on paper towels as well. I’m not ready to quit cold turkey yet, so one mind trick I’m using is that I have moved the roll of paper towels across my kitchen away from the sink. It’s amazing how I’m less inclined to use the paper towels if they aren’t sitting right there.
Jules,
I have not done this yet. I have read a little in the past two years. You might want to use oxygen bleach powder. Whole Foods has one in their 365 brand and I like the one from Biokleen as well. They are both chlorine free. You might also want to check out Norwex. Their antibacterial cloths can be used many, many times with out washing as long as they dry in between. I have one for the kitchen and one for each bathroom. I also love their dusting mits and mop heads. I don’t sell this stuff! Just thought I would mention it since the latter part of my comment was starting to sound like a commercial. :)
Good luck!
We are an almost “paperless” kitchen. Like some of the other commenters, we keep paper towels around because there are some jobs (like wiping out my cast iron skillet for instance!) that feel too dirty for real towels. I haven’t done much research on the transition but here’s what works for me. Honestly, it’s WAY easier than I thought it would be.
I went to IKEA and bought a ton of kitchen towels. They sell some around 75 cents/piece and some slightly nicer ones that are closer to a $1. I bought about 20 and also use old dish towels that I already owned, old burp clothes that were still lying around (they’re actually the best – nice and thick!) and some old kids wash clothes that we never really used much for bath time. We use the wash clothes for napkins for the kids (my kids are little and don’t find this weird – since yours are a bit older, they might have reservations about this?!?).
I found it WAY too daunting to be picky about the towels that are used for which job (my husband was constantly grabbing the “wrong towels” :) ) so it’s just a free for all. I have a small drawer in my kitchen that I shove all the towels in. My laundry room is in my garage outside my kitchen and when they’re dirty, I immediately just toss them in a basket right outside the door. I wash them whenever I see fit – they don’t add much time/stress to my life because they’re so easy to fold and shove right back in the drawer.
I do keep a separate drawer in a little cabinet between our dining room and family room of the particularly stained towels. I use these for every day cleaning of the rest of the house and sometimes for the kitchen if we’re short in the other drawer. They’re all clean – just not very pretty.
I know I read once on Simple Mom (I think) that they don’t keep ANY paper towels around because when they do, they’re tempted to use them. And admittedly, we do reach for paper towels more than I’d like. I use 1-2 a day probably. But I was going through a roll a week before and so I consider it a HUGE step in the right direction. I also love that my little girls will go straight for the towel drawer and clean up their mess (they couldn’t reach our paper towels) if they spill some milk or food or something. They also know to throw them in the basket in the garage so I always feel like it’s a win encouraging them to help out and also to be fairly independent in cleaning up messes. I try to talk with them about the benefits to the planet but they’re still pretty young to catch on.
Good luck lady!
I run an almost entirely paperless kitchen, using a paper towel only when re-seasoning my cast iron frying pan. Like others, I use knit dishcloths for wiping counters (I wash dishes with an IKEA dish brush), a terry-type towel for drying hands, and a tea towel for drying dishes. I change them out as needed – so for example, if I’ve cooked with chicken or meat, I’ll wipe the counter with hot, soapy water and then that cloth goes to the laundry room right away. (As an aside, and I apologize for what’s probably going to come off as a pretty shameless plug: we’re semi- (close to fully-) vegetarian – it’s good for your health, good for the planet, and as an added bonus, it certainly makes kitchen clean-up less worrisome when you’re not having to wipe up raw chicken ;)). Anyway, back to the topic at hand: extra linens are stored in a drawer in the kitchen; anything wet or dirty is hung in the laundry room to dry so it doesn’t molder before laundry day. I don’t use bleach at all, but my washer does have a sanitize cycle which I use for kitchen and cleaning cloths (but before getting this machine, I just washed on hot). We also use cloth napkins – I have a large stack of them and they get changed out when needed. It really isn’t difficult – you don’t need baskets for every type of cloth and towel, and no offense intended, but…to anyone who absolutely “needs” to have a clean paper towel to dry their freshly washed hands, I would just like to point out that our world is filled with bacteria and the next thing that’s touched, be it a table, a chair, the phone, a book, is pretty much going to negate that germ-free paper towel.
I am also semi-vegetarian (because for some reason I just find it easier to cook meatless meals and am always turned off by the price per kilo of meat so I buy less) and it does mean I use fewer dishcloths since I’m not wiping up meat very often. Side-benefit!
I grew up in a paper towel-less household, so I guess for me, using paper towels is weird. I use the same system my mother did–1-2 knitted cloths for wiping the counter, etc., rinsed in hot, soapy water. If 1 gets grungy or is used on the floor or something like raw meat spill, it gets rinsed in separate water and immediately put in the wash (hung over the laundry basket to dry so that the rest of the laundry doesn’t get stinky. I have about 10-15 of those cloths, and can go through several a day. At the end of the day, I usually get out a clean cloth or two for the next day.
I have 1-2 towels for drying hands and dishes. I’m not too worried about mixing their uses, as hands are clean before they’re dried, and the same hands handle, well, everything, in the kitchen. And they’re never used for anything dirty. Also, we put everything possible (including pots and pans) in the dishwasher (oh, how I love the dishwasher–we’ve only had one for 2 years), so we don’t dry many dishes. Dish cloths are also washed often.
As for laundry, I wash whenever there’s a full load–about once a day, or more. I don’t separate much, as I’ve found with a front loader that it’s not necessary, especially with non-precious clothing (kids, non-work clothes, etc). Everything goes in together–tea towels, rags, bathroom towels, clothes, etc., other than more delicate clothing. I wash on warm, usually on a long cycle with an extra rinse and vinegar in the rinse water. I’ve never had any issues with smell.
And, like a previous commenter mentioned, we’re a generally healthy family, so I don’t think that there are any hygiene issues with our system.
Good luck–but remember, this type of system is the norm in many countries, so don’t over-think it :). Once you get used to cloth, you’ll be shocked at the idea of using paper towels for everything. And you’re children will think that using cloth is normal, too!
I actually stopped buying paper towels about a year ago, maybe a bit less, but it began by me just putting off buying them (wanted to stop but wasn’t sure I could, so just thought I’d delay buying them). Things seemed to keep functioning well, so no more paper towels. I had 8-10 washcloths I had gotten when our son was a baby, their only job to wash his face after meals. Well, he doesn’t need them anymore, and now they are my “paper towels”. Like you, I worry about meat juices, and often use paper napkins to wipe up those spills (haven’t quite cut them out yet, but they’re the next target). But now I’ve just kept a roll of Clorox wipes handy for germ-y spills, one is enough, and I rarely use them, so they last a long time. I cut meat on a dedicated cutting board, which goes straight to the sink. So not a lot of counter spills. We’ve always dried our hands on hand towels (I have 8-10 of those too). Seems to work well for us. I’m not good at washing them every week like I should, they pile up, that’s why I have so many (8-10 seems like a lot to me, but I just can go longer between washing them). But I wash my towels as their own load, no bleach. I just use cheap, cheap, cheap cotton washcloths from WMart, and I like getting colored ones for different functions. I don’t buy antibacterial soap, (yeah, I’m on that train) so Clorox wipes are my only exception to soap and water. Last answer. I’m lucky enough to have plenty of deep drawer space, so I just keep my hand towels and washcloths folded in one drawer. Lest you think I have a huge kitchen, I do not. It’s only 8 ft wide, it just happens to have 8 drawers, so I’m spoiled. I don’t think I’d like keeping towels on the counter, because they’d have to be so perfectly folded. Oh, and washcloths are single use, but hand towels for drying are obviously not. I’d like to get more washcloths, I think 20 would be great. Didn’t read all the other comments yet; hope I covered everything!
I don’t have much else to add to what was said. I have a pretty paperless kitchen, I never really thought about it though. I just do what all my family has always done. I have towels for drying hands and dishes, dish cloths for dishes and counter wiping, and cloths for the floors and bathrooms (they never get used on the counters). I approach it like all other house work I do – Lazily. I don’t freak out about germs and I clean it when it look like it needs it. I rarely fry anything but when I do and need to soak up grease I use coffee filters. They do the trick and they are cheap. I also use them to spot clean mirrors and glass as they don’t leave lint, for bigger glass cleaning I use newspaper.
The only addition that I can add to all of these helpful comments is the reminder to not over-complicate things. :) You can start slowly (perhaps with drying your hands on a towel instead of using paper) and expand from there. Starting slowly gives everyone a chance to adapt and time for you to develop a system that works for you. We always reuse towels (hanging to dry between uses) until they are actually dirty or it’s wash day.
This post has given the kick that I needed to finish our conversion to a paperless kitchen. We don’t use very many paper towels, but we only have two cloth napkins. They either keep getting lost/buried with the towels, or are dirty and waiting until the next wash day, even though we reuse them until they are too dirty to use. We always use a washcloth to wipe up the toddler after eating, though, so that’s a point in our favor. Mostly we only use paper towels when we clean up a cat mess, the cloth napkins are dirty, or for greasy food. I have a lot of cotton fabric on hand, so I need to make more napkins!
I found the biggest help was to have several (I have 4) cotton/cloth (not plastic) tote bags for dirty towels/rags/dishcloths. I have them hung up on a hook. When one or two get full, I take them to the laundry, and dump them out into the washing machine, then turn the bag inside out and wash the bag with the towels and rags. That way I don’t have to run them to the laundry as often, and I don’t need to touch them again with my hands after they’ve gone in the bag, and the bag itself is clean. I usually wash them on their own (not with our clothes) on hot.
I have a bunch of hand towels and washcloths in a designated drawer. They’re white which distinguishes them from other face washcloths, which are of various colors. I bleach them if necessary, but I don’t always. Keeping them all white makes it easier to wash them all at once and for bleaching purposes. They’re far from pristine looking, but oh well. I have my towels to dry my hands by the sink, and those get washed weekly. I still have a roll of paper towels. but it takes a long time to get through one roll. I buy the ones that are half-sheets, so I tend to waste less.
This is all very interesting! I am not sure I could go completely paperless. I hate cloth napkins. I guess I am a messy eater! I also don’t have my own washing machine, so I don’t really want to add to my laundry.
Also, I often feel caught between not being wasteful, being hygienic and simplifying. I am trying to reduce my possessions–buying more towels sounds insane to me, but I really don’t use that many paper towels in the kitchen. It was never intentional though–we both grew up having paper towels but just using 1 sponge & 1 towel for cleaning drying and expended on that slightly. I didn’t realize people used paper towels just to dry their hands outside of public restrooms office kitchens.)
We have a sponge & a terry cloth towel for counters and hands and a scrubby sponge and a white sack cloth for dishes. My husband feels it is cleaner this way& the dish towels aren’t as linty as the hand towels. We keep the hand/counter towel all week until laundry day &then put out the other one. For the dish towels, we keep two out because we dry a lot of dishes & they need to dry out. We use the same tow for a week and then launder. We don’t air dry our dishes b/c we have very limited space, ad what we wash by hand are big things like cutting boards & pots. We have a rag & microfiber sponge under the sink for the floors & hardcore cleaning. I do use paper towels for cleaning raw eggs of the counter & squishing bugs.
What I really can’t live without paper towels for though, is cleaning the toilets! A brush doesn’t get under the rim well enough for me, so I clean the seat & under the rim with one & then throw it out. I don’t want to keep a toilety sponge around & and don’t have the option to pop it immediately in
the washing machine.
I feel guilty after reading this post and the subsequent comments. I tried paperless but with 4 littles, I just couldn’t give up my beloved Bounty paper towel. Maybe I tried for too much all at once. You’ve all convinced me I need to try again, even something on a small scale.
Ellen, it’s totally doable with kids. I have 7 and we’re probably 70% paperless. As a previous commenter mentioned, mom is a resource to conserve too! We have a basket of rags under the kitchen sink that we use for cleaning, spills etc. we use a towel for drying hands and a dishcloth for dishes. The kids know the difference and we change them at least daily or when they get icky. We sometimes use paper plates for dinner and we always have a roll of paper towels-but probably only use 3 or so sheets a day, for a truly icky mess. The kids don’t think anything of all this because that’s just how we do it at our house.
I use wash cloths/rags for wiping counters and cleaning up spills. Depending on the job (crumbs versus big, germy spills) I either rinse and reuse (storing over our faucet) or drop them in the laundry basket. If I have a big enough load of towels and rags I will wash them all together on hot (no bleach for me), or I will just throw them in with another load. I always have a hand towel out in its place for hand drying, and a rag ready to use. I store clean ones under our sink and just grab as needed!
I am currently using paper towels as we are housebreaking a puppy. It’s very double sided of me because I am all for cloth diapering and using rags for cleaning up human messes, but I guess this is just my weakness. I don’t want dog pee and poop on my rags. If I really put my mind to it I could come up with a system, but hopefully we are almost done and I don’t have to deal with it and paper towels anymore!
I have nothing new to add to this conversation except- wow- people really know how to organize and utilize a paperless kitchen. The interwebs really holds all the answers… :)
If I still had a vegan kitchen (as I did before man and children) then SURE! but do you see that junk that leaks out of the chicken package? Or the goo that drips off an uncooked egg? How about the gunky brown stuff that accumulates under the sink rim.. and let’s not even talk about the bathroom.
I totally applaud you for your efforts. They are noble and kind. I will go paperless nearly anywhere else save the kitchen and bathroom. I’ll never touch a magazine again before I give up my wipes.
I am 100% magazine-free and it’s excellent for my mental health, body image, and general self-compassion!
I absolutely agree!!!!!
I know it all seems very gunky and germy, but remember that paper towels are a relatively recent invention–so cloth was used for a long time before! And no one in my family (we all don’t use paper towels, I guess because of how we grew up) have ever had food poisoning/samonella, etc. You just have to be reasonable about it–rinse the rag after using it for something like chicken, etc., and then wash it–don’t use it for anything else until clean again. Don’t use a gunky bathroom rag anywhere else. Clean the least germy parts of the bathroom first. Use multiple rags. Wash often. However, if it’s really not your thing, hey, don’t go there. We all have to be comfortable in our cleaning/house management practices!
I went paperless last spring, and I’ll never go back. From the comments, I can see that there are lots of ways to go about it. Start simple and figure out what you need and feel comfortable with.
I have a sponge and a dishcloth in the sink. We bought a few packs of microfiber towels that we use for cleaning in all rooms. I have kitchen towels for hand-drying. Cloth napkins. The key for me is to have lots of each thing, so I’m not worried about running out. Wash as often as feels right to you. I only miss paper when I make bacon or a dog pukes. That’s it.
None of this is rocket science, you know? :-)
I use a kitchen towel for drying my hands and I recently purchased a Norwex towel for wiping up spills and cleaning the counters. I’m hoping to move in a minimal paper towel direction. My best friend swears by Love For Earth, especially the napkins and reusable bags. https://www.etsy.com/shop/LoveForEarth
I keep looking at those unpaper towels on Etsy. Will be anxious for an update on how you like the paperless kitchen. I haven’t quite gotten there yet.
We’re probably 75% paperless right now. I keep paper towels around for pet messes and suspect that if they weren’t readily available on the counter, we’d use far less. As far as towels being single use… this post actually blew my mind a little because I thought, “wait a second, do people use paper towels to clean up messes?!” It’s only just now occurring to me that I NEVER use paper towels to clean up spills like you see on commercials. I only use them for drying my hands, something that could easily be done with a towel. I’m going to remove the paper towels from my counter tonight and suspect that I won’t miss them a bit.
I keep two sponges on the sink, one for dishes, one for wiping down the counter. Whether the mess is crumbs, cooking splashes, or meat juice, I spray the counter with Clorox Green Works, scrub with sponge, rinse sponge, wipe up any remaining suds. If I need to use the space immediately, I’ll dry the counter with a towel, otherwise I just let it air dry. I wash the towels weekly, never with bleach, but they’re not visibly dirty because they really only come in contact with water. Sponges go in the wash as well. This is part of my cycle, actually — I use two sided sponges and the scrubby side loses gusto after a wash, so it trickles down to counter duty. Dishes dry in the dish washer or air dry on the drying rack. It’s rare (never) that I need to dry a dish with a towel.
I saw some mentions of IKEA dishtowels above. The TEKLA towel (cream w/ red stripe) is something like $0.75 and fantastic. They’re actually sort of terrible at first, but definitely improve with each wash. I have ~5 and would prefer 10-15. They take up very little space and live in a drawer with my pot holders.
OK, I’ve transitioned over to mostly paperless — which is to say: about one roll of paper towels every 4 – 6 weeks. Paper towels are for drying my hands after I’ve washed them when preparing raw meat; wiping down the counter covered in bleach spray after preparing raw meat; cleaning up raw eggs [noticing a theme?]; de-greasing bacon. For other general clean-ups, I keep a stack of knit dishcloths handy, and another stack of kitchen towels for drying of hands and dishes. I figure if my hands have just been washed, they’re clean enough to share a towel with a freshly washed dish. Even my germaphobe tendencies have limits. We have one of those pull-out baskets in the cupboard, and it holds about a dozen of each. Dishcloths go in the laundry after one day, and towels usually last about two. And no on the bleaching, mostly because I didn’t really think about it all that much; yes to a hot water wash cycle, because it makes me feel like it’s getting cleaner.
Good luck, Jules! I love not having to buy and/or store rolls and rolls of paper towels. Every little step helps, right?
I highly recommend this blog post: http://www.imperfecthomemaking.com/2013/06/how-to-give-up-paper-towels-forever.html
She tells you her logical routine of towels, and she doesn’t use any fancy or expensive alternatives.
We are almost paperless. I rarely use paper towels. My husband uses them for cleaning up spills he considers particularly germy (like random drips from raw chicken). Whenever we travel, I buy tea towels and I am very good at re-allocating them as rags when they start to look ragged or stained.
Please, please, please don’t use bleach. It is bad for the environment, especially the water supply. It is worse for your son who has a reactive airway disorder (asthma). You should never use bleach in your home. If you have something to disinfect, do it locally with a lysol wipe or a more environmentally-friendly squirt of cleaner (Target carries some great ones).
The only thing we use paper towels for at our house is to put bacon on after cooking. I buy a two-roll pack of the cheap generic kind every six months or so.
What I use instead: bar mop towels. White, cheap, thick bar mop towels from wherever I find them on sale. We have, like, 30 of them. After working in restaurants through college, I learned their value as pot holders, spill-wipers, bowl-stabilizers, etc. I do, however, break the “one bar mop towel per shift” rule that I learned in commercial kitchens. I just use as many as I need, toss them in a basket as they become funky, and wash them all at once with a hefty slop of vinegar instead of bleach.
YES! LOVE bar mop towels (I learned about them in my early work days, too). Never feel bad when they wear out.
I have a paper and plastic free home and this is what I would say to your questions.
1.How many towels do I buy or make?
I have about 15 kitchen towels. Most of them were gifts so I don’t know how many I might have needed, but I’d start with at least 3-4 with a full set of 3-4 of back up that can be used while the others are in the wash.
2.Bleach or no bleach?
Please God, no. Others have explained why so I won’t repeat it other than to say, it’s the worst possible thing ever. I have one towel set aside specifically for disinfecting my counters and I use one of two homemade solutions with it after wiping up the mess with a mess exclusive towel. 50-50 vinegar and water and/or 8 drops lemon juice, 8 drops eucalyptus oil to 2c of water. Spray the counter down and wipe.
3. Are the towels single use like regular paper towels? It seems like reusing the towel would just spread germs around.
No. I use a single towel for about a week depending on how much I cook and if it’s a big mess I’ll switch out right away. Contrary to what commercials for Lysol would have you believe, if there isn’t any food particles on a nonporous surface, germs just can’t live and there are many surfaces that are naturally disinfecting (natural wood, cork, ect.), so most counters are germ free once wiped down. I disinfect if I’ve had uncooked meat out, but nothing else. I eat/drink raw milk from a local farm and eggs from my mom’s chickens, so I don’t worry about the germs that would come from an egg or milk that was in a germ infested nightmare like you’d get at the grocery store. IF you’re worried about a certain food, a good wipe down is never out of place.
4. How do you store your towels? I have a small drawer to the right of my sink, but I don�t know how much it can hold.
I personally keep out the towels I’m using on a little rack I got from Ikea that’s hanging on the door of my cabinet, but my mom stores them on the oven handle at her house. There isn’t a big enough gap on my oven or I’d do that. Everything else is in my linen closet.
5. Do you ever use paper towels again, maybe for certain jobs?
Nope. Don’t even buy them.
6. Any other tips or advice? Favorite vendors or products?
Look into making your own cleaners. It’s a lot easier than it sounds and overall much cheaper. Also Microfiber towels and washcloths are awesome and work really well on wiping down shiny surfaces. For small jobs I use a washcloth a lot of times to preserve my towels.
You can’t see me, but I’m vigorously applauding this comment.
Here’s some insight on how NOT to do it. Do not go out in a flurry of inspiration and buy a boo-koo of fire-engine-red dishclothes and towels, thinking, “Oh, these will be such a cute pop of color in my soon-to-be paperless white kitchen!!” Because here’s what happens: the damn things are too color-saturated to wash with ANYTHING else in the house without some dye-transfer, even after a zillion washes, and they are too small to ever really constitute an entire load by themselves. Furthermore, you can’t combine them with your white table napkins, which would have been totally convenient because they’re similarly food-grody and come from the same room.
Choose your colors wisely…that’s the lesson of my failed attempt at going paperless…I’m working on getting my strength up for round two.
So, I’m not completely paperless, and use paper towels for all things ‘messy’; raw meat, nasty counters (after long baking haul), etc. I also like to use cloth napkins, but for those who feel the laundry is excessive, I may use one napkin for two meals (unless super messy), but after that the napkin gets used for superficial duty. This would be the ‘relatively clean counter, but just needs to wipe up crumbs’, or the ‘I need to wipe down the mason jars on the cabinet’, etc. It works. I cannot use anything but disposable for bathroom duty- I’m not that cool.
I wish I could lessen the amount of paper products, but I am pretty ‘nasty-a-phobe’ and I just cannot imagine wiping down a counter with egg on it and putting it in the hamper, even if it is a separate hamper. Thus, my paper towel addiction…..
Love the un-paper towels….I will be making these!!!
Crazy lady :) Don’t be so germphobic. Everyone I’ve ever known (living in South Africa, UK and New Zealand) just has one or two tea towels (little hand cloths). For the “higher maintenance” households you have 2 – one for hands and one for drying dishes, the rest of us only have space for one to hang in front of the oven so we use one for both. All good.
Change daily – ish. Depending how vigilant you are about these things. And we cook at home and hand wash dishes at least once a day and more on weekends.
Paper towels are only used for cleaning really icky stuff off the floor, and wiping the bin clean.
And yes we wash our hands every 5 minutes especially with a filth making 14 month old.
So I had no idea what a paperless kitchen was until I read your blog and realized- hahaha- I have a paperless kitchen, I just never called it that. I have rags and dishtowels that I use to different purposes. Dishtowels are for hands, dishes, and easy germ free messes. Rags are for germy messes, harsh chemicals, and floors. I keep them in the same drawer when they are clean, and in separate bins under the sink when they are dirty. I usually don’t bleach my dish towels but do sometimes bleach the rags. If I use the rags for something particularly disgusting or if they start to get really nasty, I throw them away. Old dishtowels and dishcloths become rags. That’s the whole system and it works really well for me!
We are paperless! I just refused to keep buying paper towels and napkins. I don’t even use cloth napkins! Honestly, I think you just become neater, and then everyone just washes hands after eating. I do keep a secret stash for spills like my son wetting his pants/high chair at the table. Otherwise, I use hand towels and have about 8-10 in a drawer, and I do laundry only once a week and I do wash about as much as you. I do not wipe off a dirty (aka raw chicken/foody stuff) counter with actual towels, but wipe it down with my sponge from the sink. If I really need to clean it, I use my Norwex envirocloth. It kills bacteria like ecoli and salmonella because of the microfiber being made with silver which suffocates the bacteria. Google their demo video and you’ll be in love. i know someone local who sells it and is hosting a party soon if you’re interested!
I have a mostly paper-free kitchen. I think it’s key to have a space to hang wet towels so you don’t get a stinky mildewy laundry hamper. At my old house I had 6 or 8 little hooks mounted under a countertop that had a big overhang. At another house I hooked up a little multi hook contraption onto the radiator – I think it was supposed to hang over the edge of a cabinet door. Now I have several hooks in a shallow cupboard and I leave the cupboard open if there are lots of wet towels. 3M hooks are good and easy – just find a convenient spot.
Especially when my kids were really little and I was always wiping faces I had a bin full of light weight baby washcloths – just cheap ones that come in a multi-pac at Babies R Us. I’d use 2 or 3 each day – hang them to dry and then wash them whenever I was doing a color or dark load. I have separate cloths for dishes.
We also use cloth napkins. I have several sets but a matching set is rarely out at once. Each person in our family has a napkin ring with their name on it. I found wooden napkin rings at Goodwill and painted our names on them – I’ve seen people collect vintage silver ones with engraved initials for everyone in their family. You could also just give each person their own color – which is what I do for guests. When a napkin gets dirty I just change that one – not the whole set. The napkins sit in their rings in the middle of the table between meals. I have to bug my 3 and 6 year old (and husband) to put their napkin back in their ring sometimes.
Love your blog – THANKS!