Ditching the paper towels...

When I get bored or frustrated with life in general my coping mechanism of choice is to change something in my environment.  I used to change my hair color but that can get out of hand...it took one time of returning to blonde from red to cure me.  Then I started to reorganize my home...changing where things were to make things more efficient.  Rearranging furniture etc.  A couple of months ago I was bored and looking for something to change.  We had been going over our budget looking for ways to save and I was flabbergasted about how much we were spending on paper towels! Yay!  Project.

To add some fun to this we were picking up our 8 week old puppy the same week.  So, we needed a good plan for dealing with the messes that puppies can and do make...daily.  We cloth diapered our three children so this shouldn't have skeeved me at all but there is a world of difference between puppy messes and baby messes.  Just sayin'.

We committed to trying for a month and this is what we came up with. 

Puppy messes and other ick: my husband's socks were suddenly no good for him to wear (she really liked to chew HIS socks) so those became what we used for those messes that just couldn't be recovered from.  I had a huge stack and when the puppy would do something particularly awful on the floor...I didn't feel obligated to wash these.  In the (outdoor) trash they went.  Thankfully she mastered the art of relieving herself outdoors before I ran out of socks.  I think it is probably a good idea to have something on hand, in reserve, that is okay to throw away.  Stomach flu season and three kids comes to mind.

Dishtowels, counter wiping and little messes: Since the knitted ones are more dense they do seem like they would harbor more bacteria.  In times past where I have used those they will get an odor after a while so I think I will stay with the simple wipes pictured below.

Drying towels, counter drying and wiping up non-skeevy messes:  All hail the all mighty sack cloth from walmart.  I got these in packages of 4 for about about as many dollars.  I have 2 packages one I already had on hand.  I also have regular dishtowels but as they wear out I will replace with the sack cloth.

Table napkins:  My daughter and I sewed these out of birdseye weave (diaper fabric) that I purchased from JoAnns.  These get annihilated on a daily basis as my children have yet to master the concept of all food goes IN the mouth as opposed to all AROUND the mouth.  I keep waiting for this skill to settle in.  Now that we are beyond our one month trial period I plan on investing in some "getting dressed up for guests" table napkins OR I will convince my husband that I desperately need a serger so I can make some. 

Whoopses and cleaning: MOOOOOOOOoooooom.....I spillled my milllllllk!!!!!!  I have these rags from when we lived in Japan.  They are what the Japanese school children take to the school with them as they are all assigned cleaning chores IN the school house.  <pause for effect>  Why don't we do that here?  Hmmmmm.  Anywhoo....these are versatile and when they wear out I guess I will have to fly back to Japan to get more.  Or...I will replace these with the microfiber ones that they sell at Wal-mart.

I have a ventilated basket that I keep in a centrally located space that the rags go into after they have been used.  I am pretty liberal about tossing them in the basket.  If I see a kid use the towel..it goes in the basket.  If I don't recall taking the towel out (I forget everything ... sooo) ... it goes in the basket.  If the puppy got a hold of it and is chewing on it...in the basket it goes.  

The towels don't hang out long before they go in the basket.  I run a load about 2X a week on my washer machine's super heated sanitizing cycle with my home made clothes detergent and bleach.  Yes, bleach.  After watching this...I am okay with a little bleach.

More on ick...I, like most moms, live in fear of the dreaded stomach bug.  I still keep paper towels and instant sanitizing wipes on hand in the event that bad boy raids the house.  This will save me from burning my house (and all of it's contents) to the ground.  I use natural cleaners in the house but when there is a bad sickness I do pull out the bleach.

I was asked if I have noticed an increase in my electric bill and the answer is no.  It is only twice a week that I run the load (most often 1X a week) and at the same time we started the no-paper project we also acquired a very efficient dishwasher that we only run every other day (had been every day) so our electric bill has actually gone down.

So, for minimal investment I was able to save my budget roughly $480 a year.  I guess I could have just tried cheaper paper towels but then I wouldn't have regained all of the storage in my closet where we stored the paper towels.  This way is probably better for the environment too.