Paper Towel Pigs, Reformed

Not so long ago, our household was incredibly wasteful with paper towels.

I say “our household” because it’s a more diplomatic term than “my husband.” I wasn’t using them nearly as much as Mark, who would grab 3 or 4 to dry his hands every time he washed them. And he washed them a lot. I preferred the ever-so-chic method of wiping my wet hands on my pants. But I still did use paper towels to a certain extent – for occasional drying of the wet counter, wiping my son’s crusty face, and so on.

This overuse added up to a roll-a-day habit, and it made me ill. I wasn’t so much concerned with the cost – paper towels are less than $1 a roll at Wal-Mart – as I was with the waste. We probably felled a few small forests of trees with our paper-towel use.

So one day about 3 weeks ago, I was at Wal-Mart, and I passed down the paper goods aisle. I approached the shelf and put out my hand to grab our usual 6-pack of towels. But something made me stop. Maybe it was the aisle full of packaged paper in various forms, from cups to plates to toilet paper. They all seemed to softly whisper, “Come on, who are you kidding? Make it easy on yourself.” (OK, so maybe the toilet paper wasn’t saying that. But you get my point.)

I left the aisle and went to the back of the store, where I purchased a set of blue and white dishtowels for $6. They, along with the dishtowels we already have, are now meeting all of our hand-drying and counter-wiping needs.

It’s been a painless switch, for the most part, but there are some bumps. Mark still complains about the absence of paper towels, but he’s not ambitious enough to go to the store and actually buy some himself. And there are rare times when I actually do need a paper towel, like last night, when I was making banana bread and needed something to grease the loaf pan. I ended up using the corner of a freshly-washed dishrag, then removing the leftover Crisco in the sink with my fingers and some dish soap. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I probably could have retrieved a couple of fast-food napkins from my car to do the job. I guess I could also hide an emergency roll of paper towels somewhere in the house, but that seems risky, kind of like leaving cold medicine on the counter in front of a meth addict.

Oh yeah, and if you like numbers…I figure we’re saving about $20 a month by skipping paper towels, so my $6 investment in dish towels will pay for itself within 2 weeks.