Wednesday, July 16, 2008

WFMW - Kitchen Towels

We waste paper towels at our house. I bet we could go through an entire roll in a day, between my husband and I. They are such handy dandy little things. We use them mostly for wiping up small spills on the counter, wiping off Little Miss after she eats, cleaning off the highchair, and drying our hands. All of this and they are used up and in the trash before we realize it.

A couple of months ago I decided I'd start using plain white dishcloths as much as possible instead of succumbing to our need to use paper. White so that I could bleach them and keep them looking new. So I went and bought a few dozen of the cheapest dishcloths I could find and tossed them into a kitchen drawer. They have been so handy and I feel like I keep my kitchen a bit tidier because of them, just grab, wipe and toss into the laundry. I have been making every effort to have a hand towel set aside for drying our hands on too.

But, where do I toss my dirty cloths as they begin to pile up?

I have placed a 10 qt handled bucket underneath my kitchen sink to store these dirty little guys. That seemed to be working well, until a few extra days would pass that I didn't take them upstairs to throw in the washing machine and we starting having issues with mildew. Yuck! I throw all of the dirty cloths in this bucket, wet or dry.

So I now start out with my bucket half full of hot water and oxyclean and just add dirty dishcloths as I go. Once full, I carry the bucket to the washing machine and pour it in, water and all. I may have to wash a mini-sized load of dishcloths every few days, but I'm sure it's saving us some cash not wasting all of those paper towels. Not to mention, it's doing our planet some good too.

For more WFMW posts, go here.

4 comments:

marigold said...

Excellent idea. You can get the dishcloths fairly inexpensively and reuse, reuse reuse! Thanks!

Brooke said...

i found a pack of 4 at the dollar tree last week! with that price i can stock up.

Rebekah said...

Good idea with the bucket!

Anonymous said...

Good idea. I used to work at McDonald's and we kept a bucket with warm water mixed with sanitizer and lots of white cloths. When we needed to clean up a mess, there were cloths ready. We also had a bucket to throw the dirty ones in. I may try that. I use lots of paper towels too.