Good-bye, Paper Towels

One of the household items I could never see myself getting rid of was paper towels. I just always appreciated the pure convenience of them. Who doesn’t like to clean up something really messy and then throw it all in the trash?

My family always used paper towels for so many things- drying off freshly washed fruit, cleaning up messes, as napkins, etc. Paper towels have always been an essential part of my family’s dealings in the kitchen.

One day, while I was in the kitchen at my friend’s house, I asked her where the paper towels were. She responded that they didn’t have any. This was a totally new concept to me. People were capable of living without these handy items? We talked about them for a while and my friend told me how horrible she thought they were for the environment.

In all honesty, I had never even thought about this aspect of my paper towel use before. I just saw it as a necessary evil, something that modern humans just had to have. At the time I couldn’t quite fathom how my life without paper towels could be. (Silly, isn’t it???)

I have come a long way since then. We are a cloth diapering family going greener by the minute. We have been gradually weaning ourselves off the use of our trusty little paper towels, only going through a roll every six weeks or so. I couldn’t quite bring myself to completely cut the cord- what if a paper towel emergency presented itself and we had none available in our house?

However, they had to go. Our paper towel holder will remain empty from now on. In its place, we now have two neat little baskets- one for clean rags and one for dirty ones. We cut up some old t-shirts to use instead of the disposable paper towels. With this system, we will not only be a little kinder to the environment, we will also be saving money.

Aren’t they cute?