How I Folded my Paper Towel Habit!

A couple months back I wrote about my love and addiction for paper towels. And how my husband burned me with the comment, "You cloth diaper, but you still use paper towels!"

I was using about $10.00 a month in paper towels because they were easy, absorbent, and a little soft, blankety comfort I had always had growing up in my own house. Don't let that blankety softness fool you though, they are made from paper. Paper is made from trees or other fibers, and it takes quite a few processes to make trees into blankety softness. He was right.. it was time to change my ways. $10.00 a month is $120.00 a year for a bunch of BLEACHED processed trees.

Here in the good ole USA, we are currently the top user of paper towels. In fact, we use 50% more paper towels than all of Europe combined. Europe has about 738 million people living in it. The United States has about 350 million. So we have half as many people here and use twice as many paper towels. Using my mad math skillz, that comes out to the average person here uses four times as many paper towels as someone in Europe.

So, environmental issues aside, we are just really trying to make our own family become sustainable. By "sustainable", I mean living off the grid. We're slowly getting there, but paper towels were seriously one of the things I didn't think I could get rid of. My love for blankety softness ran deep. I could imagine myself living off the grid and having to go make a trip to a Wal-mart because I NEEDED to stock up on these things, despite their bulk and lack of storage ease.

Instead of outright going cold turkey on the PT issue, I researched paper towel alternatives for weeks on end. I looked at everything from bar mops, to cloth diapers (Okay, maybe I just looked at cloth diapers to look at cloth diapers), to birds-eye cloths. I even thought about somehow rolling bar mop towels up on a dispenser. In the end I couldn't find a suitable alternative.

That's when I realized my addiction to blankety softness was indeed more than a physical need to have something available to clean up spills. It was a psychological addiction. Nothing I researched was good enough to replace the convenience of buying something to clean stuff up with and then throwing it away. I was addicted to the thought that I don't like using cloth to clean up spills.

So, I let myself buy that one last package of Bounty (Never the Select-a-Size) Paper Towels. And felt guilty. Very guilty. In fact, I got the third degree by The Husband when I brought it home. I tried defending myself. It didn't work. If I was going to make a change, I would have to do it within myself.

I thought about the reasons again why I don't like using cloth to clean up spills. Here they are:

1.) I don't like cleaning up a mess with something that is dirty. (Aka a cloth that has already been used.)

2.) I HATE doing laundry.

3.) Cloth is not nearly as absorbent as paper towels it seems.

4.) I don't like streaks. 

5.) Paper Towels make AWESOME napkins.

After thinking about the reasons why I was psychologically opposed to cloth towels, I thought about solutions to those problems.

Perhaps if I had enough towels that I could easily use a clean one every time I needed one, then I wouldn't have to use a dirty cloth to clean up. I already do a boatload of laundry. What if I actually got on top of the laundry problem and always had the washer empty and could throw the dirty towels in there? Then, maybe I could use a special bucket beside the washer if it is full. With cloth diapers you quickly realize the solution for absorbency is two-fold: material makes a difference and you can in NO WAY use ANY softener on it or it reduces absorbency. As far as the streaking goes, I could possibly find a cloth that doesn't leave streaks. The realization that I needed to buy some everyday cloth napkins was slow to come, but I finally realized that I couldn't solve my paper towel problem with JUST ONE solution. I needed several different cloths for different things.

When I got to the final solution, it came with a realization: THE reason why I was so addicted to Paper Towels was because they were literally a "one-size fits all" solution to many cleaning problems. I couldn't expect to go back to the basics and replace the paper towel with a different "one-size fits all" solution.

So, now I have an arsenal of cleaning cloths. For around $25.00, I replaced my paper towel habit with 12 cloth napkins, a dozen bar mops and various kitchen towels, 2 microfiber towels for cleaning streaks, and several sponges which I only use on dirty dishes and put in the dishwasher every day. 

My husband is very happy with me. I'm happy for myself that I kicked the habit. 

Now, my next challenge is to think about Family Cloth.. I don't know if I can psychologically get over this one. But, I may try.