Thirty Second Thrift
February 7, 2009 by Katelyn Thomas
Filed under Doing it Yourself
If you’re anything like me, you have no free time. Thrifty things that are insanely complicated and time consuming are too frustrating to do, no matter how much I save. What we need is thrifty things we can do in just a few seconds. Simple things that we can do to save money and resources.
Replace Paper Towels With Cleaning Cloths
I used to go through paper towels like water. I still use them for some things, but I have cut back by making and using cleaning cloths.
- Gather old flannel sheets, baby diapers and towels that are a bit ratty. (Think absorbent as you gather your cloth making materials.)
- Then, cut all the items into nice, rectangular paper towel size pieces.
- If you plan to reuse the cloths and the fabric has a tendency to unravel, you may want to quickly hem them. I didn’t bother to hem any of the cloths I made from a flannel sheet and I used them five or six times now with no problems.
- Stack the cloths in an easily accessible spot. There’s no way you’re going to run from the living room, through the kitchen, past the paper towel roll and into the pantry to root around for your cloths when someone spilled juice on the coffee table! I used a basket to hold my cloths and keep it near the paper towels.
- Have a place to put cloths that aren’t too yucky to reuse until you can do a load of “gross” laundry. I have a small plastic tub that I toss mine in until there are enough to do a load. Throw out cloths that have been used to clean up any messes that are extra germy or extra gross. For example, if I grabbed a cloth to wipe up some chicken blood, I’d toss the cloth afterwards.
Do you have any tips for replacing paper towels with another cleaning option?
Photo by Ronny Satzke
Let them run out. Not having them around will force you to get into the habit of not using them. If you find that you can live without them, then you probably can. I have an empty holder and we’ve learned to adjust.
Diana,
Great tip!
Old T-shirts make great cleaning cloths – soft and absorbent, and they don’t fray at the edges when you toss them into the washer. We keep a bag of them near the back door in the winter for wiping dogs’ feet and cleaning up the splodges of salty-muddy snow that collect where winter boots get parked, and another one under the kitchen sink (on a towel rack mounted inside the cupboard door) for quick floor clean-ups when there’s a spill.