Kick your paper towel habit!
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Would you throw $1000 in the trash? Maybe it's time to kick your paper towel habit
That adds up to a whopping $1000 in five years. Small change to some I know. Not to my family. Maybe not to yours.
It's easier than you might think to find alternatives to paper towels. On this page I'll share two more big reasons, in addition to the cost savings, we eliminated paper towels and how we did it. More importantly, by the end of the page--in just minutes--you will have a complete plan, in four easy steps, to chuck yours too.
Image: Paper towels/No
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved.
Two more important reasons we pitched our paper towels
Garbage, garbage, garbage and plastic, plastic, plastic
At the time we decided to give up paper towels, we were throwing out one to two big cans of trash a week. That's not light. It's heavy.
Chucking the paper towels was one of our first steps in reducing waste and moving closer to our goal, one day, of becoming a zero waste household.
Then we learned what is happening to much of the plastic we toss, including the plastic wrappers around paper towels, toilet paper, well, just about everything we buy these days.
We could not bear the thought of one of our plastic bags choking sea turtles and strangling wildlife. We made a decision to cut back on plastic, one step at a time, starting with the wrappers around tissue paper and paper towels.
We thought this change would be tough on us. It wasn't. In fact, it was so easy, we wondered why we hadn't done it years ago.
Image: Our (much smaller) trash can,
about six months into our quest to become a
zero waste household--still full of plastic, alas
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved
Can you kick your paper towel habit?
By the time you finish this page, you'll have a plan
Whether you're just curious how a busy family can get by without paper towels, are thinking of giving it a try yourself, or have tried and failed in the past, by the end of this page, you will have a plan for pitching your own paper towels once and for all, if you choose to do so.Plus, I share the resources that gave us the boost we needed to keep at it.
Each step of the way, I encourage you take advantage of the opportunities to engage and interact while you develop a plan that is right for you. It takes only minutes.
Image: Routine household trash collection bag*, full of
paper towels, before we pitched them for good
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved
*Yes, the trash bag in that image is plastic. At that time, we had 100 plastic trash bags in our pantry. We have about 20 remaining. We are currently using them at the rate of 1-2 per month. When we use the last one, 1-2 years from now, that's it. We will not replace them.
Before we begin
Where do you stand?
Before laying a plan, it's good to know where you stand. Have you tried giving up paper towels and failed? Are you thinking about it? Is this a radical concept for you? This short poll lays the groundwork for what comes next.
Jenn
We urge you to rethink your 'insignificance'
and get on and make a change anyway. Once your friends and family see you making changes they might be inspired to join in. Before you know it you will be making a real difference.
The Green Family in All about my zero waste
What is your #1 reason for giving up paper towels?
A clear objective sharpens your focus
Another preliminary step to laying a plan is getting clear on what you want. This questionnaire brings your purpose into focus. After you vote, take advantage of the opportunity to tell us more about how you feel about giving up paper towels--or not giving them up! Writing your thoughts down deepens and expands your sense of purpose.
Where is away?
When you say you're going to throw something away--Where's 'away?' There is no away.
Four easy steps to eliminating paper towels from your life
Or reducing how many use
I thought it would be difficult to give up paper towels, but it was a piece of cake. We laid a plan, followed it, and I'm happy to report more than a year later, we haven't a paper towel in the house. I no longer remember when we last bought a roll.Here are the four easy steps to the plan. Below, I'll take you through the steps, one at a time.
- Analyze how you use paper towels
- Brainstorm, evaluate and select alternative solutions
- Anticipate and prepare for stumbling blocks and obstacles
- Implement and refine the plan as you go
Image: Let's eat cake
a morgueFile free photo
Step 1: Analyze how you use paper towels
So you know how best to replace them
- Clean up spills -- Has this happened to you? An egg slips from your hand and drops, slow-motion, to the floor. Eggs on the floor are gooey, slimy messes. Paper towels make quick work of them. Spilled milk, juice, soup--all sop up quickly in a wad of paper towels. What's not to love about that?
- Clean icky messes we don't want to touch and want to pitch quick - Then there are those icky messes: The cat's hair balls; fur and hair that accumulate behind the toilet; food bits in the drain catcher (Not all of us have a garbage disposal!); and the worst, vomit.
- Use in place of napkins and plates - Paper towels are so doggone convenient! It's easy to grab a paper towel and plop a sandwich or a peach on it, rather than dirty a plate when I'm at my desk, focused on finishing my next Squidoo lens or blog post.
Coming up: How to replace those paper towels with something just as convenient, but first, a quick questionnaire to help you analyze how you use paper towels.
Image: Broken eggs
a morgueFile free photo
Questionnaire: How do you use paper towels?
(Step 1: Analyze your paper towel usage)
Take this poll, and you'll have completed Step 1 in kicking your paper towel habit! Make it easy on yourself. Copy your selections into a notepad text file or your word processor, or make a list with good old pen and paper.
Step 2: Brainstorm, evaluate and select alternative paper towel solutions
Go creative!
This step begins with letting your creative mind go wild. On either a virtual or in-hand notepad, jot down every idea that comes to you--no matter how nonsensical--for alternatives to paper towels.Resist the urge to censor or edit. Everything goes. Funky spellings, crazy ideas, weird words. Jot them all down. Give your brain free reign to point the way to the best possible solutions.
When you feel you've exhausted all possibilities, scan the list and pay attention to what pops out. What makes your head spin? Where do you say, "Whoa!" or "Yeah, right!"? Do you say it sarcastically or with enthusiasm? Either way, you're on to something. Your brain is giving you clues about hidden agendas, hidden solutions, and hidden areas of resistance.
Select a few alternative solutions and imagine how they might work for you. Keep the ones you feel are genuine possibilities. Set the rest aside, for now. Later, you may find yourself returning to them. If they keep popping up, you will know you need to pay attention.
Don't spend more than a few minutes with this exercise. It's just paper towels, not world peace!
Here's what my brainstorm list looked like
I liked the maid idea!
See what I mean about not censoring or editing? Lay everything out as it comes to you. With this exercise, I actually anticipated most of the stumbling blocks we would encounter in the implementation of our plan, such as where to store the wet rags until they dried and could be laundered.
List of viable solutions after evaluating and revising
The maid is gone, alas
During revision, I added a few To-Dos and other suggestions to discuss with my family. When you're making a significant household change, it helps to get buy-in from the fam. My sweetie later came up with the idea of repurposing an old shredder basket that had been taking up space in a closet since the shredder ground to a halt. The shredder basket became our kitchen linen "hamper."
Did you brainstorm a list of ways to reduce your paper towel consumption?
How did it go?
What amusing whacky solutions came up? What did you decide might work for you?
Step 3: Plan how you'll handle inevitable stumbling blocks
Pick low-hanging fruit first
One of the best tools for achieving success in any endeavor is to visualize potential stumbling blocks and plan, in advance, to overcome them. You don't have to wrack your brain for every possible pitfall, but do plan for the ones that come easily to mind.For us, the biggest stumbling blocks were our habits. Change isn't easy, sometimes, least of all when you think the change might make life more difficult.
Knowing how stubborn entrenched habits can be, we opted to pick the juiciest, lowest-hanging fruit first. After we had built some successes, we would tackle the more difficult changes. For us, that meant taking the problems one at a time.
Going back to the ways we used paper towels, we decided to reduce our consumption in three phases, starting with the easiest.
- Phase I: Change the way we clean up spills.
- Phase II: Retrain ourselves to use cloth napkins and washable plates every time we eat.
- Phase III: Change the way we clean up the icky messes.
Next: Take the easy questionnaire below to help you plan for obstacles that may get in your way.
Image copyright Lisa Solonynko
morgueFiles free photo
Questionnaire: What stands in your way?
And how can you turn it to dust?
What might keep you from achieving your goal of kicking your paper towel habit once and for all?
After the poll, you'll have space to tell the rest of us how you plan to overcome those stumbling blocks. Who knows? Your solution may be a no-brainer to you, but might be a slap-on-the-head, why-didn't-I-think-of-that for someone else. Besides, sharing is good.
Step 4: Implement your plan
Refine as you uncover new information
You've identified some solutions and planned how to handle potential stumbling blocks. Now it's time to implement your plan.In our case, to overcome our chief stumbling block--resistance to changing long-standing habits--whatever changes we made had to be as quick, as easy and as convenient as using paper towels.
Finding alternatives was the easy part. Making them easy and convenient, well, that was surprisingly easy too. After all, when it came down to it, there weren't all that many uses for paper towels that a washable plate and napkin, dish cloth or floor rag couldn't handle just as nicely.
Below, see how we implemented ours, in three phases.
Image: Handy basket of dish cloths where our paper towels used to sit
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved
Phase I: Change the way we clean up spills
This was super easy
Rather than tearing off a paper towel, we would grab a clean dishcloth instead.In the brainstorming and evaluation step (Step 2 above), I had already identified a few problems and their solutions. We encountered a few more along the way. Below are each of the problems and how we solved them. Maybe some of these will work for you.
- Not enough clean dish cloths for the counter top messes between launderings.
Solution: Buy more. - Tucked away in a drawer, those cloths weren't handy. We couldn't just grab and wipe, like we could with paper towels.
Solution: Store a bundle on the counter top where the paper towel holder used to stand. The footprint of this basket is nearly twice as large, but the tradeoff is worth it. We don't miss those few inches. - Insufficient supply of absorbent rags for the floor messes.
Solution: Cut a couple of worn out bath towels into rectangles in two sizes--One small for those tiny messes, one larger for big spills. - As with the dish cloths, no convenient to-hand supply of floor wipes.
Solution: Fill an attractive basket with neatly folded floor flags on a nearby kitchen shelf, low enough so it's not a focal point, handy enough to reach when the grandbaby tips over her juice. - No place to hang wet floor rags out of sight to dry.
Solution: Install hanging bar in mud room just off kitchen. - Laundry hamper too far away for quick disposal of dirty rags.
Solution: Install a hamper/basket for floor rags in mud room; Tuck a second basket in out-of-sight kitchen corner for dirty kitchen linens. - Paper towels too handy; we keep using them instead.
Solution: Store the roll on top of the refrigerator where we can get to it if we have to, but so it's out of sight and out of the way otherwise.
Once we identified and solved each of these problems, retraining ourselves to reach for a dishcloth or floor rag was easy. In fact, it was so easy, that when we used the last paper towel from the roll on top of the refrigerator, we put off buying more. To this date, we haven't felt a need.
Image: Handy basket of dish cloths where our
paper towels used to sit
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved
Tip: Save your worn out cotton t-shirts!
Worn out cotton t-shirts, bath towels and other absorbent materials make excellent rags. Get in the habit of saving them in a rag bag or bin.
Switching to cloth is cost effective
Even when you buy organic cotton
We bought a variety of eco-friendly reusable cloths, including organic cotton dish cloths. They averaged $2.99 apiece, which was exactly the price we were paying per jumbo roll of paper towels.
Image: Roll of paper towels with inexpensive cloth alternatives
© L Kathryn Grace, All rights reserved
Recently I discovered Tookies hand knit dish cloths
Made of 100 percent organic cotton
Toockies Multi-purpose Scrub Cloths, Organic Cotton, Hand knit, Dish Cloth Pattern, 3-Pack
Amazon Price: $10.99 (as of 06/01/2012)
Best dishcloth I've ever used. Absorbent, strong, durable and just plain good scrubbers. At first I thought I wouldn't care for the size and heft, but they turned out to be just right.
Phase II: Retrain ourselves to use cloth napkins and washable plates
Every time we eat
This turned out not to be nearly as difficult as we expected. We already used cloth napkins for breakfast and dinner, and always have plenty on hand. Each member of our household has a distinctive napkin ring, so we can reuse our napkins until they become soiled.The main problem was retraining ourselves when we grabbed breakfast or lunch on the run. We were in the habit of tucking a sandwich or cheese and fruit into a paper towel. At snack time, I tended to snag a paper towel to hold my cookie or pear at my desk.
Solution: Consciously build a habit of grabbing a reusable container and small cloth napkin for on-the-go meals and a plate for lunch or snacks at my desk.
Coming up: If you don't already have a supply of eco-friendly napkins and napkin rings, I've included a selection of lovelies sure to please. Afterward, we hit the third and final phase of implementing your plan to reduce, perhaps even eliminate, paper towels from your life.
Image: Hand made calico print napkins
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved
It's easy to make your own napkins
even if you don't have a sewing machine. I'm working on a page now that shows how to do it.
Teaching children to respect the planet and her resources is easy
With colorful, reusable cloth napkins
Fabkins Everyday Organic Cloth Napkins for Kids (Garden Friends--Solid Turquoise)
Amazon Price: $18.99 (as of 06/01/2012)
Children love the bright colors and cheerful designs on Fabkins organic cloth napkins. Let them pick a new napkin ring each week to save their napkin from lunch to dinner.
Organic cotton napkins wash well, get softer with every use
Double as place mats
Your children will love choosing their very own napkin
All in colorful organic cotton
Grownups need napkins too
Organic doesn't have to mean rustic weave in olive drab
Save laundry - Let each member of the family pick a napkin ring
Reuse the napkins if they are not soiled
Phase III: What about those icky messes we don't want to touch?
And don't want to have to clean out the cloth rags after
That turned out to be one of the easiest solutions of all. In fact, it turned out to be a win-win, kill-two-birds-with-one-stone solution.You see, as part of our quest to eliminate plastic from our lives, we had already searched for and found toilet paper in bulk with no plastic wrappers. Believe me, it wasn't an easy feat. We're fussy about the tissue that touches our tushes.
Turns out, Seventh Generation makes a soft two-ply, 100 percent recycled tissue that comes in whopping 500-sheet rolls. That reduces the number of cardboard rolls we have to recycle by a fourth. What's more, we can take advantage of a bulk discount, and what's more, the rolls are individually wrapped in a very nice, 100 percent recycled paper. You can imagine, this little Reuse Maven wanted to find a use for those wrappers.
Sure enough, that paper worked just fine for cleaning those icky bits of goo from the drain catcher and grabbing the fur balls that accumulated behind the toilet faster than you can spit. A handful of them worked nearly as well as paper towels to clean the slime and hair ball from the floor, too. I had to retrain myself just a smidge to take a cloth floor rag and a small amount of spray cleaner to the smear that remained. I'm not as squeamish as I thought!
Image: Our toilet tissue supply
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved
Cleanup easier without paper towels?
Surprisingly so!
Green your bathroom AND save big on my Seventh Generation Bathroom Tissue
48 rolls packed in a simple cardboard box
Plus, we're saving money. These 500-count rolls aren't available in any of the stores where I shop. They last twice as long as our old brand, and we're contributing one-fourth fewer spent cardboard rolls.
Seventh Generation Bathroom Tissue, 2-Ply Sheets, 500-Sheet Rolls (Pack of 48)
Amazon Price: $65.00 (as of 06/01/2012)
Because this item is available for Amazon's Subscribe and Save discount, the total cost for the paper adds up to big savings each year. Add up the pluses: 1) Almost as comfortable-to-use as our previous "ultra-soft" virgin tissue brand; 2) 100 percent recycled tissue paper; 3) Recycled content packaging; 4) NO PLASTIC! 5) Half as many cardboard rolls to find uses for or recycle; 6) 100 percent recycled wrappers that double as icky mess cleanups; 7) Eligible for Amazon's Subscribe and Save discount; 8) More money in our pockets. What's not to love?
As of May 2012, Amazon offers this item only through external sellers. The cost has nearly tripled! I'm looking into alternative sources and will update when I find a viable one. In the meantime, I'll buy it at my local organic grocer.
Every day plastic chokes sea turtles and other wildlife
We are responsible for our part in that. To cut back, first we got in the habit of carrying reusable, cloth shopping bags. Next, we eliminated the plastic wrappers around toilet paper, and now around paper towels.
If you don't have enough shop rags, try these
Tough, absorbent, organic hemp and cotton all purpose cloths
EveryDay Willow Organic Hemp Forever Cloth
Amazon Price: $4.95 (as of 06/01/2012)
Hemp is one of those amazing super plants that is highly sustainable, requires little water and no pesticides to grow. Our first president, George Washington, thought it one of the best crops Americans could plant, so versatile and useful it is. Sadly, later politicians gave it the thumbs down, thinking erroneously it could be smoked like its close relation. Now we Americans have to import all our hemp products, but hey, we're spreading the wealth across borders.
From a 9-gallon (40 liter) trash can every week
To a 2.3-gallon (10 liter) trash can every month--or less
When we reduce our contribution to the waste stream, we reduce the amount of carbon heating up our climate. Plus, we save taxpayer dollars that can be reallocated to ensure our safety through increased fire and police protection, who knows, maybe even better schools. Now that would be something.
So you can see that one family's contributions add a lot of drops falling into the giant bucket. My decision--and yours--is to decide which bucket we want to add to: The bucket that leaves a brighter future for our kids and grandkids, or the bucket that leaves them with a burnt-out husk of a planet and an intense struggle for survival.
What, if anything, has changed for you after reading this page?
Do you have a viable plan?
At the beginning, you had an opportunity to participate in a poll indicating where you stand regarding paper towel usage. Have you changed your mind along the way? Did you learn something new? Did you make a plan? How do you feel it will work for you?
Copyright notice
Important
All text and images on this lens, with the exception of advertisements, product images and Squidoo-generated images and text, unless otherwise noted, are copyright L Kathryn Grace, all rights reserved. To request permission to use any of my images or text, contact me. Have you given up paper towels?
Would you?
If you've already given them up, how has that worked for you? What are the pros and cons? If you're considering it, where do you stand on the idea after reading this lens?
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Jenn
May 5, 2012 @ 12:35 am | delete
- 8 months and counting with no paper towels, paper napkins, or paper plates in our house. I call our kitchen a "paperless kitchen". We use alot of bar mops for counter and table clean up, a few microfiber towels that I use with my swiffer wet jet (which I just refill with vinegar water now that I've used all of the chemical cleaner that came with it), and home made cloth napkins galore. My mother in law is a partner in a quilt shop and when they get to the end of a bolt of cotton fabric, she cuts a 12"-16" square and makes a napkin for us. We have all sorts of prints....flowers, dinosaurs, fairies, princesses, trucks, race cars....
We have a small bin behind our pull out trash can that the dirty napkins and towels go in. My 4 year old son gets paid a penny for each item from bin that he puts into the washer machine. My 3 year old daughter get paid a penny for each napkin she folds and 2 cents for each towel she folds and puts away.
By the way, we also make our own laundry detergent...we'll never go back to store bought again. :)
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danielmccarthy
Apr 22, 2012 @ 7:47 am | delete
- I do quite a bit to reduce my carbon footprint but I don't think I'll be giving up paper towels just yet. Really funny lens though, thanks!
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click2cause
Apr 18, 2012 @ 1:25 am | delete
- Thank you for a positive and needed lens! Change the world...one less paper towel at a time!
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TateFisher
Apr 3, 2012 @ 12:28 pm | delete
- Thank you, Graceonline, for a really wonderful lens. You convinced me! I'm going to follow your lead and will begin with paper towels.
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orange3
Apr 3, 2012 @ 12:13 am | delete
- Our house is paper towel free :) I haven't bought paper towels in years. The switch was really easier than I expected.
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About Kathryn Grace
aka graceonline
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by Graceonline
Giving up paper towels turned out to be a lot easier than I thought. I never miss them and can't for the life of me think why I waited so long.
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