apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Just curious-- do you have pets? I guess it's the same concept of cloth diapering, but I'm not sure. I should give it a trial run-- those cloths are great!

This post has inspired me to get rid of my paper towel holder. I haven't bought towels in months. I usually use clean dish towels or an old package of Christmas napkins. I don't have Trader Joe's but I should look for something good to use for pet and human messes.

Oh come on. I've had cats, dogs, kids and I have not had paper towels in the house for decades. Worn out t-shirts, kitchen towels and cloth napkins work just fine.

i've been doing this for a few months, and while it's going well, i now save the un-used paper napkins i get with take-out to use for those times when something disposable is nice. also for those wary of the conversion, tp and kleenex are also decent substitutes for pet 'messes'.

I have a cat and a child, and have been doing great without paper towels.

I have a small dog, who still ocasionally pees on the rug, and if I used a rag to wipe that up, I would have to throw the rag away. There's no way I would put it in my washer! So I don't think I could give up paper towels completely.

They sell packs of cheap washcloths at the dollar store - I use these for just about everything. I keep a separate bucket of dirty washcloths so that I don't wash them with the rest of our laundry. They're also a different color so that we don't get them mixed up with our regular washcloths. Jooly - your washer will get dog pee out just fine!

remember jooly, urine is sterile. I totally want to do this when I move into a place with a washing machine. I am a fan of cloth napkins at home, they make an average dinner feel more special.

I'm torn on this matter, since isn't it also incredibly wasteful to run your washing machine all the time? If your washing machine is older, is it possibly more earth friendly to use recycled content paper towel and napkins?

"I'm torn on this matter, since isn't it also incredibly wasteful to run your washing machine all the time? "

Are you washing other sheets, towels and clothing or do you wear disposable clothes and sleep on disposable sheets?

As long as you keep only white dishcloths, napkins and dishtowels, tossing a couple of them in with the whites isn't the least bit wasteful - You're doing laundry anyway and not running a special load just for them.

Where it's an issue is for colored towels/napkins that you might need to do a separate load for - Just keep everything white/ivory and you'll never have that as a concern. I've been doing this for years - I still keep a roll of paper towels in the kitchen, but use it very rarely - maybe a roll every year or so...

I went back to rags (either white shop towels or bar rags) years ago. Sometimes I'll drain bacon on paper towels but newsprint works ok for that. Except I usually read the paper online. So I just don't eat much bacon now. :-)

Another thing you can do with a rag is put it on the end of a stick (google StickMop), and clean your floors with them.

As my rags get dirty, they also get tossed in the front loader to await the other clothes that accumulate there for washing.

Poster wins the award for the most conspicous environmentalist.

I have three dogs and am paper towel free. My rags are a host of worn undershirts and ugly, free teeshirts that we'd never wear.

I do a "dog load" of laundry once a week in my HE front-loading, water saving washer, with my eco-friendly detergent.

The dog load is towels from the dog's swimming, and their bedding, rags and towels from the kitchen, and, yes, pee soaked rags from occasional accidents, rinsed out. (I have SO many rags now, though, that throwing out one occasionally is NBD. I would do this for poop.)

It can be done. If I can with three mutts, anyone can.

Still use them but put used ones in a wire basket to dry and then put them out for recycle with the rest of the paper - it's a start!

My 110 lb dog has spells of diarrhea because of a super sensitive stomach..... and he has figured out how to open the fridge. Now I try to remember to duct tape it shut, however, I keep shop grade paper towels on hand for the times when I forget and he helps himself to a tub of butter and leftover sushi. I couldn't imagine using rags to clean up the messes he's created. Except for these instances I am paper towel free.

Erinorea, I highly recommend the childproofing latch that sticks on. Your dog won't be able to open it and it's probably prettier than duct tape :) - for what it's worth.

Once you start with rags they tend to multiply in the dark.

The thing with animal accidents... you can use toilet paper and then flush. Use a rag for the final wipedown with an enzyme cleaner. Wash with the rag load of wash. We have plenty of work towels (dog) and other stuff to do a non-clothing / non-dishtowel load.

We do keep paper towels around, but the bulk of cleaning and PT needs are met with fabric. Also, we have a laundry bag out of the way in the kitchen to throw the dishtowels and napkins into which helps if your washing machine is in the basement or somewhere else.

Oops, forgot the link. This one works pretty well on our oven: http://www.safety1st.com/product/detail.asp?ID=205

although if you don't pay attention and close the oven door on it when the oven has been on, it will warp a bit and be much harder to close. ;-)

Martha Stewart's Kmart line cloth towels and tea towels help rid me of my paper towel habit. If you are looking for a really sturdy, cotton, cheap, consistently-sized, wrinkle-free, non-fading, non-bleeding towel that doesn't stain easily -- you'll love her line. Don't buy the embroidered white ones -- go with the woven cotton towels They are amazing - Promise.

Not long ago I was truly addicted to paper towels and I used a lot of them. I began so wonder how much in the way of paper towels ends up in the landfill? So, I've now ended my addition to paper towels and replaced them with bulk cotton terry cloth car washing towels from Costco. I installed additional towel racks in my bathroom and kitchen to accomodate these towels for cleaning. I also rinse them regularly in the sink, then hang them back on the towel rack to dry. This minimizes laundrying. Like any addiction, ending it was not easy, but now that I'm clean (pun intended!), it sure feels good...!

Two things surprise me. The first is, doesn't anyone use sponges to clean up messes? Wet, sop up, rinse, repeat. A sponge can last several months. Which leads to my next question: do all you rag-washers have your own washing machine? Isn't this Apartment Therapy? I feel funny enough washing the bathroom rugs in the communal laundry room, let alone a spew-glopped rag. I'm a minimal paper-toweler, but I have found no better way to dry eyeglasses than to blot them on a paper towel. Cloth smears or does not absorb, toilet paper and tissues leave flecks of paper dust.

yes, it is wasteful to run your washer all the time, and yes it is wasteful to buy and throw out paper towels. i go for still-green in-between: use worn out clothes like old socks as rags, and throw them out when they're soiled.

Do yourself a huge favor and try the skoy cloth. Just google it. It is very absorbent like a sponge, but feels like a cloth. It has some texture to it so it does a great job of cleaning, but is not abrasive in any way. It drys at night so bacteria does not grow therefore it does not stink like some sponges. Added to which it is 100% biodegradable. I composed an old one and it was gone in 6 weeks. No trace what so ever. Everything is earth friendly which makes me feel good!

when i'm away at college I always save extra napkins when i get takeout or take the napkins my friends don't use and put them in a ziploc bag once I get into my room. When I'm back home I like to use cloth napkins and kitchen towels to dry my hands. My parents have a hard time doing this though.

I just want my husband to stop using paper towels for everything. Any suggestions for that?

all y'all have inspired me to treat my paper towel addiction, about which i have been feeling incredibly guilty. when our current batch is done, that's it! i'm off the sauce!

I haven't used paper towels in years, and I too save take-out napkins to use for especially nasty messes... also they come in handy when one of my paper towel-addicted friends just has to have a paper towel!

We had a hard time breaking our paper towel habit. I know this sounds like of lame but it was effective-- we started buying Seventh Gen unbleached paper towels. They are better for the environment but they aren't very good paper towels. The fact that they aren't very effective helped us steer towards a sponge, dishclothes, or rags.

Erinorea-- another suggestion if you pursue the childlock and that doesn't work out (my dog learned how to open that one, too, with some practice) might be a bunjee cord secured from the back of the fridge to the front handle, if your kitchen allows access to the back and the refrigerator has a single door. It isn't as aesthetically pleasing as the childlock, but if you're using duct tape now, I'm going to guess that isn't a huge concern, and it might be easier for you to unsecure/resecure and thus remember to keep the fridge dog-safe. We had the same issues with our dog, minus the sickness, and she managed to open cabinets, too, even with child locks. Good luck!

My dog doesn't have accidents - or at least unplanned and messy ones - since she uses pee pads. But I would love to find a more environmentally friendly option for that. I tried my neighbor's old newspaper, but I'm wondering if I can get her to pee on a cloth alternative that I can wash vs. throw away...or...something...

I don't use paper towels... Old t-shirts & plain white hand towels work perfectly for me. I have a dog & I'm surprised by the amount of concern there is over not using paper while having a pet in the house. He's been with me 6 years & I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to clean anything off the floor other than dog hair. I never really thought about it, but I guess I got lucky!

I think you did get lucky. We have six pets and about once, maybe twice a month or so something happens that needs to get cleaned up. I was also very curious, timi, that everyone who uses rags seems to be able to immediately toss them in the washer. We don't have a washer, and I don't fancy hand-washing rags full of gross or leaving them somewhere in the house to sit around for five days while we wait to accumulate enough laundry to shlep to our friend's house to use her washer. I guess for us the compromise will be toilet paper when necessary, and cloth rags the rest of the time. Does anyone have messy pets or kids and no washer who was able to lose paper towels completely and successfully?

We are not 100% paper towel free, however we do use vintage hankies for our napkins. They are fun and can be washed with the dishes then air dried after meals.

For those recommending toilet paper for animal accidents, I'm not sure how big your dogs are, but I've got 2 golden retrievers and a lake of dog vomit or a big potty accident in the house would use up a TON of toilet paper! It seems less wasteful to use up the few paper towels I ever use and more hygenic too rather than using half a roll to soak up the yuck or putting something nasty in my washer (and I try never to use hot water in the washer to save on the gas bill, so the fewer gross things in there, the better).

NancyInLA Instead of pee-pads you can buy baby changing pads and wash them. They are about 30" square and work very well. Be sure to get the plastic backed kind. Good luck!

Nice post. I'm trying to convert my boyfriend to using more cloth products to replace paper ones. I've been marginally successful in that he now has cloth towels in the kitchen, though he still claims he doesn't know what to do with them :) Maybe something advertised specifically as a paper towel alternative would help...

use once, then enter landfill=not sustainable and creates more of that thinking. i'm still trying to convert, not quite there yet, but thanks a bunch for this post.

some of the reasoning above is faulty, if not unaware. if anyone knows of a good lifecycle calculation website, pls suggest. it is safe to do the laundry--vets, pet shelters do it. paper towels=plastic to wrap them, shipping, bleach, paper tubes inside, etc. a graphical presentation of the lifecycle of paper vs. cloth, including great suggestions for the end-of-life bit and water/land/shipping/less plastic etc. measurements would be helpful. we need images to show the problem, as words are not getting through.

We had a puppy who had constant messes before he was house trained, and just used rags to wipe up the liquid ones. A quick rinse in the sink and then we would leave them in the laundry basket till the next time we did a load. Any solid messes we would wrap up in a newspaper, plastic baggy, or scrap paper from the recycling pile and toss it in the trash, when wipe the floor with a cloth rag, rinse that and toss it in the dirty laundry.
I never noticed a smell, I never thought of it as gross, and we never really did a special 'messy load' either. I think maybe it's something you get used to.

NancyinLA:

Go buy some Pooch Pads right now!!! Most pet stores have them (probably hanging right next to the disposable pads that you're using now). They are amazing. They don't leak, they keep odors down, and they don't stain. They are a little expensive but pay for themselves in about two months. My dog had no trouble transitioning from the disposable pads to them.

Also, for people with dog messes: Urine is sterile, and hot water takes care of the rest. I know that hot water isn't great, but I truly believe it's better than paper towels. I haven't used paper towels for years. I thought I was going to die at first, but now I don't even notice. Get some car clothes from Target and a ShamWow (!) or two, and you're set.

If you are reluctant to give up paper towel you should check out Scott Naturals paper products. The towels are 60% post-consumer recycled fiber which make them a good choice if you are trying to take green steps in the home!