This is Day 214 of the Green in 365 series!
Guest Post by Anjanette of Raising the Barrs:
I have unpleasant memories of the wet dishrags from my childhood. I remember them being threadbare and an unidentifiable dingy color.
And the smell…
I wouldn’t have dared wash my face or hands with it after a meal any sooner than I would have stuck my face into a sink of dirty dishwater because that’s what it always smelled like.
I assumed that when I had a home and children to care for, I would use paper towels (the thick kind that we could never afford) for absolutely everything in the kitchen. I did decide to add a set of kitchen cloths and hand towels to my wedding registry just in case, but I honestly never intended to use them – and didn’t much for the first couple of years!
Then I had a baby. How many blog posts could we write that begin that way? They change everything, don’t they?
My Conversion to Cloth
While pregnant I researched EVERYTHING. I really had no pre-conceived ideas about childrearing… I was utterly clueless. So I read. And asked questions.
We also went down to one primary income so that I could spend more time with my little one. That meant MORE research on the best ways to save money. In addition to becoming a one-car-family and learning how to cook more at home, we decided to cloth diaper our baby. That was the beginning of this cloth journey.
As examined our budget, we realized that there were other disposables that we could cut back on. We ditched the ziplocks for reusable containers, started using grocery store bags in lieu of buying new trashbags, and eventually we even decided to stop using toilet paper!
As you can imagine, it became difficult to justify purchasing paper towels no matter how much I dreaded the smell and the extra work. I knew I needed to find a better system than what I grew up with though!
How I Got Over My Stinky Rag Trauma
My mom had maybe 5 rags that she used over and over. She’d rinse them, ring them out, and let them dry hanging over the faucet. They got washed when there was enough similar laundry to do a load, or whenever she got to it.
After reading through the experiences of others and experimenting a bit myself, I realized that the key to making cloth in the kitchen a pleasant experience was having enough cloth to use each one only once or twice and then wash them when there were enough dirty for a full load of laundry.
It has worked out so well for us that the only time we’ve purchased paper towels in the last 5 years has been after the birth of a baby when housekeeping is on the back burner, and recently when I fell ill with pneumonia and my hubby had to take everything on himself.
The Logistics of Cloth in the Kitchen
Cloth in the kitchen can really be very simple. We have three types of cloth:
* Wash rags for cleaning faces/hands, surfaces, and dishes.
* Larger kitchen towels for drying hands and clean dishes.
* Nicer cloth napkins for dinners with guests.
When a rag is soiled, we toss it into a mesh hanging laundry bag that offers plenty of air circulation to keep the wet rags from molding.
When the bag is full, we toss everything in the washer together and wash on hot, with an extra rinse cycle. Since we use only mild and natural cleaning solutions (like vinegar and essential oils), it’s not a problem to wash towels used on the counter tops with the towels used to wipe toddler faces.
You can use oxygen bleach to get rid of stains if you’d like, but we just leave them be. We purchased a huge package of cloths from Costco so that we can toss any that have outlived their usefulness.
After these photos were taken, we purchased a mesh bag that can be washed right with the kitchen laundry, so everything gets even cleaner now! I don’t miss paper towels at all, and even forget to use them when we have them!
What about you? Have you replaced any paper items with cloth?
More Green-Cleaning Kitchen Ideas:
Clean a White Kitchen Sink Without Harsh Chemicals
10 Green Cleaners for the Kitchen
Using Cloth Napkins and Towels
Green Spring Cleaning in the Kitchen
5 Simple Castile Soap Cleaning Recipes
Anjanette Barr is a wife and mom of three living in Juneau, Alaska and loving the life God has blessed her with. Her days are filled with lots of silly antics and laughter, mountains of laundry, and more love than she could ever hope for or deserve. She blogs at Raising the Barrs. Find her also on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Find all the Green in 365 posts.
__________________________________________
If you’d like to learn more about living green and living frugally I’d love to have you as a Live Renewed reader! You can subscribe, either by email or in a reader, to get the latest posts, ideas and inspiration for living frugally green. You can also connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest!
Please visit our Sponsors:
Wild Mint Shop – A conscious movemint.
Diaper HQ – Your cloth diaper headquarters.
List PlanIt – Lists to put your world in order.
Jenuinely Pure – 100% natural and pure products for the body, face, home and baby.
Mighty Nest – Every product sold on Mighty Nest is free of harmful chemicals and handpicked for durability and design.
We use cloth dinner napkins already. I’m trying to eliminate as much paper towel usage as possible. What do u do for cooking tasks where the towel or rag might get funky before its washed? Do u use cloth for messy cooking clean ups? This is the step I always have problems with. I have plenty drying towels & dish cloths as well as cloth napkins. It’s the messy cleanup a that I can’t seem to find a method that wrks well for us. Thanks I. Advance for any advice.
Yep, Emily! I use cloth even for cleaning up grease and food spills. If the cloth gets very saturated, I recommend rinsing it out a few times before throwing it in with the others. Since everything is washed on hot, I never notice grease transferring to other cloths or anything. If your nice cloth napkins are a particularly dark or light color that might be affected by grease or stains, you might want to consider washing those with the bathroom towels. 🙂
We use cloth napkins for meals and school lunches and rags for cleaning.
But don’t have the best system for cleaning them.
I really like the hanging net that you put soiled cloth in and then grow it in the washing machine.
Where did you get it?
I use one that I like better now, but I purchased them both in the laundry section at Walmart. They are sometimes on sale right before the college kids start. 🙂
Loved you post. i just hated spending money on paper. i know what you mean about having stinky dish rags. this was always a problem for me also, but not anymore. We stopped using paper towels and napkins a year ago. I purchased the 24 pack of white washcloths from Costco. Found a basket that hold all 24 and put it on my kitchen counter, very handy. When I doing a lot of cooking I can go thru a lot. Found a good buy on ebay for 50 white cloth napkins, this way everyone gets a clean napkin at each meal. Everything being white makes it so easy to do the laundry. Recently started adding a cup of Hydrogen peroxide, which I purchase at Costco, to each load with my soap, I let them soak for an hour, all stains come out and everything is nice and white, no need to pretreat any stains.. Since these items are small and same shape, it is very easy and good chore for little ones to fold.
yes! i have my kiddos fold, too! And we probably purchased the same pack of wash cloths at Costco! 🙂 I wish we had a top-loading machine so we could soak. We just have to wash twice every once in a while. It would also be nice to live someplace that we could line dry and let the sun do its work.
I have been using wash clothes for cleaning for ages. I have different sets in boxes for different chores. Depending on how soiled they get, I’ll either soak them or leave them in the tub. I always make sure I have spares as you never know when you need more 🙂
Where do you soak yours, Melissa? I’ve considered getting a 5 gallon bucket to keep soapy water in on heavy cleaning days so that they all get well rinsed and can then dry on the side of the bucket if I don’t get to the laundry right away.
We use mostly cloth in our home too. I still buy paper towels occasionally but I only use them for our animals…we have 3 cats and 1 dog and if they get sick in the house I want to clean it up and throw it away outside as quick as possible. I’m a bit of a baby when it comes to that! 🙂
Nice post! We do our kitchen cloth almost exactly the same way. The mesh bag is crucial. Target has them in the laundry or storage department year-round, and they do tend to go on sale this time of year.
We use paper towels for really greasy and sticky stuff–about 2 or 3 rolls a year.
If cloth towels get stained, yucky smelling, or grayish looking, we soak them in oxygen bleach (Oxi-Clean or similar) mixed with hot water in an old plastic dishpan, then wash as usual.
I can’t imagine using paper towels for all of that stuff! I have used rags since the beginning but my biggest discovery was Norwex. I use one envirocloth per week in my kitchen for wiping surfaces, about two per week for kids fingers and faces, and a hand towel and dish drying towel. Wash a very small load every two weeks. And since Norwex is antibacterial, I don’t need to use cleaners in my kitchen plus they rarely get stinky! No, I don’t sell them. But I totally love them 🙂 And their mop too. love that I can give my floors a good clean with just water.
You ladies are super clean. I have used cloths all my life. I usually have one cloth per day, that is used only for wiping down the work surface. I have different cloths for the bathrooms and toilets. I cant imagine using a clean cloth each time I need to wipe, it seems like a lot of work.
I grew up using cloth napkins, and I picked some up second hand at a garage sale a few years ago for a couple of bucks. Other than that I use cloth bags for shopping (I usually have about a dozen or so plastic ones for lining my garbage cans, which are emptied less now since I’ve switched to cloth items.) I also use cloth menstrual liners (to go with my reusable menstrual cup), cloth handkerchiefs, and a reusable cloth mop pad (similar to a swiffer).
I’ve always used cloths as well…as did my mother! I always have good luck at estate sales–the linen closets are always filled with clean washcloths, usually priced very low! The estate sale companies don’t try to sell dingy or dirty washcloths and it’s a cheap, green way to replenish your supply.