Oh. My. God. That is so gross!

This was my roommate's (and, I must admit, my) response to the idea that we discontinue the use of paper towels in our home in favor of cloth towels and dishrags.  I couldn't imagine anything more disgusting than reusing something that I use for cleaning.  I guess that's societal.  We grow up thinking that new is good and old is bad.

At first, I told myself that using washcloths would be just as bad for the environment, because while paper towels are biodegradable, cloths have to be washed, which uses detergent, water, and energy to power the washer and dryer.  That's got to have an environmental impact, right?

Well, not necessarily.  This article discusses the pros and cons of paper vs. cloth towels for everyday use.  I did my research, then broke the news to my roommate.  We're going paperless in the kitchen.

At first, he balked.  We used up the last of our paper towels, and invested in some cheap bundles of rags from the dollar store (a greener option would have been buying used rags from Goodwill, I now realize).  With a grimace, we began our first meal with cloth napkins.

You know, it wasn't that bad.  We wipe our grubby little hands on towels, we dab delicately at pizza sauce on our chin with clean rags, we wipe our kitchen counter with washcloths and spray cleaner, and always put dirty rags in a special basket.  Since we do use more rags than before (though not nearly as many as the piles of laundry I'd imagined), we designated a laundry basket next to the washing machine for used towels.  We usually run one load a week of just house towels.  Our general hand towel for clean hands, we might reuse a couple of times, but anything used for messy clean-up goes directly into the basket.

Kitchen towels do get grubby after a while, so we'll throw some bleach in the wash with them.  Since I don't have he sophisticated equipment to measure bacteria levels on my countertops, I don't know if the germ levels are higher now, but I'd imagine that as long as we use disinfectant spray, it's all right.  We haven't noticed an increase in colds or illness in our house.

It's been a few months now, and honestly, I don't miss paper towels at all.  Our water bill certainly hasn't gone up, our grocery bill hasn't either, but that's because everything else costs more.  At least we're not paying for something we just throw away.  Except toilet paper.  I refuse to even think about going there.