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Depends... I use both. The paper ones to wipe smelly and bloody mess only.
The rest is cleaned with a dish rag.
The dish rag does not have to be nasty. If gets dirty I take a clean one.
I rinse all my dirty rags first, then soak with a little bleach ( to get rid of all the kitchen "colors") and wash in a washer.
I abuse paper towels and I know it is wasteful. I have been trying to break that life long habit. I bought about 3 dozen white wash clothes. I keep them in the kitchen. Most of the time I grab a paper towel just to dry my hands...now I use a wash cloth. I can also dry dishes or wipe down the counter. With so many washcloths, which I bought marked down, I never have to use a dirty one, and I never will I can also use them as napkins.
I still use paper towels for greasy messes. I'm getting better at not wasting paper towels. I use a sponge for the stove top.
Interesting subject, never really thought about it! I use paper towels for spills, drying my hands, cleaning windows/mirrors, squashing bugs. I use clorox cleanup and a dish rag for cleaning up counters/stove/tables and washing pots/pans. I change it everyday, so not worried too much with the "ick" factor.
Suggest pointing out to dh that it takes water and electricity to clean the nasty dish towels so, to an extent, each may have some element of waste. When it comes to kitchen wipedowns I've actually switched from sponge to the clorox wipes.
I was raised that paper towles are wasteful but sometime they are simply the right tool for the job. Especially when you want to throw that mess away.
Main thing is that the kitchen is usually the woman's domain and that means it is yours, not your MIL's. Therefore, your husband should be willing to compromise and not let his mother rule your kitchen!
Last edited by lifelongMOgal; 09-21-2010 at 08:48 PM..
I was raised using paper towels. My dh, on the other hand was not. He uses a very nasty "dishrag" to wipe up stove and counter top messes and such.
He gets this from his mother who would sooner have her toe cut off than use a paper towel because it is "wasteful".
So, my question my frugal friends. Do you think that paper towels are "wasteful" and expensive or do you use them.
Thanks
20yrsinBranson
I,too, was raised in the day of the dishrag. However, those days are long gone due to the fact that most peoples immune system can't deal with some of the nasty germs that have evolved over the last 40 years.
Hubby may not like it but not using paper towel invites illness on a silver platter. So ask him.......do you wanna pay for paper towela or do you wanna pay the doctor/hospital/mortician bills we might get from a nasty germ laden dishrag.......your choice.
Hubby may not like it but not using paper towel invites illness on a silver platter. So ask him.......do you wanna pay for paper towela or do you wanna pay the doctor/hospital/mortician bills we might get from a nasty germ laden dishrag.......your choice.
So, my question my frugal friends. Do you think that paper towels are "wasteful" and expensive or do you use them.
Thanks
20yrsinBranson
Yes and yes. We use dishcloths for most kitchen duties - a clean one every day, and a second clean one if the first gets nasty (greasy, etc.). We use paper towels for occasional nasty messes like cat barf. I make all of our dishcloths.
For cleaning windows, I use homemade window cleaner and microfiber cloths.
LOL - I would get along great with the OP's MIL, the one who would soon cut off her toe than see the life of a valuable paper towel "sacrificed" unnecessarily.
I am a nearly-blackbelt tightwad, and so is my best friend. I totally understood her reaction recently when she found her 21-year-old son using the better part of a whole roll of PT's to clean something up - her lungs constricted, her eyes bulged out, she went pale - and that's NOTHING compared to what happened to her son once she got through with him!!!
I buy paper towels in a big package from Costco, I think there's eight or ten rolls in there, and I buy a new pkg maybe once a decade. (And it really hurts when I do - they cost something like $18.00!! ) On the rare occasions when I do actually limber up and use an actual paper towel, it's with a sense of an awesome and momentous occasion- as though the PT were made out of gold. If I use it for something non-icky, I carefully hang it on the rung of a kitchen stool to dry off, and then store it folded under the sink to use again (at least once) for another similar task.
Instead of expensive PT's, I use: 1) Rags. I tear up every piece of laundered clothing, bedsheet, towel, etc. that's worn out and not good enough to give to Goodwill. Therefore I never run out of rags, so if I use one to wipe up something messy, I just throw it away. 2) If I'm eating out and someone takes too many paper napkins, doesn't use them and is going to throw clean ones away, I grab them (my friends are used to me by now!). They're good for things like wiping grease out of my black iron pans before I wash them. 3) A dishrag, which I wash with a load of other things that can go in hot water.
Quote:
not using paper towel invites illness on a silver platter.
Tightwad, you don't work for Scott Paper Co, do you? LOL I never get sick, nor does anybody get sick from being in my house. You know there have been studies showing that people get sick BECAUSE they haven't been exposed to enough germs to develop immunity?
The thing is, I do better financially compared to friends who have a lot more income than I do but a laissez-faire attitude toward paper towels (and a lot of other things). It would drive them crazy to be tearing up old sheets into rags & saving paper napkins - just like it would drive me crazy to drop $18 on paper towels two or three times a year!
ETHO, YMMV
Carol
Last edited by wishiniwashere; 09-21-2010 at 10:02 PM..
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I can also use them as napkins.
Am I the only paper towel miser here?
) On the rare occasions when I do actually limber up and use an actual paper towel, it's with a sense of an awesome and momentous occasion- as though the PT were made out of gold. If I use it for something non-icky, I carefully hang it on the rung of a kitchen stool to dry off, and then store it folded under the sink to use again (at least once) for another similar task. 
I never get sick, nor does anybody get sick from being in my house. You know there have been studies showing that people get sick BECAUSE they haven't been exposed to enough germs to develop immunity?
