After a few years of using cloth towels for the kitchen, I'm still trying to get my dh use to using them for wiping his hands and picking up kitchen messes. We still use paper towels but we use the 7th generation paper towels and I'm trying to get those to last a month. I like to use them to cover food in the microwave.
Zig
I went to a paperless kitchen about a year ago. It's been wonderful and has gone much better than I expected, but I think I'm going to be adding back a limited amount of paper towels for microwaving foods with cheese on them (the melted cheese is impossible to get off the cloth napkins, but I hate when they get soggy underneath, so I need something to soak the moisture up with) and cooking bacon in the microwave to soak up the grease (yes, I cook bacon in the microwave).
Have you tried a plastic microwave food cover? It's vented and lets most of the moisture out, big enough to cover a dinner plate. Saves on paper towels, though maybe the plastic is going to give me cancer!
Laetitia in Australia: I can, denim or linen. There wouldn't be a risk of pilling, they're just as absorbent as paper AND they have a higher flashpoint... It would be *harder* to burn them.
Heh, my in-laws visited over the summer (all of my in-laws, we had 10 people in the house for a week!) and kept asking me about paper towels, paper plates, napkins. My SIL uses paper plates almost exclusively, and I hide mine so they only get used when *really needed.*
I keep a roll of "shop towels" (heavy duty paper towels) in a cupboard for particularly nasty messes (grease, pets) that I don't want to stain my fabric; other than that, we're paper-free all the way. Dish towels ($1.99 for a 3 pack @ IKEA; I bought 3 packs, they've lasted for going on 3 years now and are very absorbent) and cloth napkins all the way. I'd estimate my kitchen fabric equals less than half a load of laundry, and it's super-easy to just throw it in with regular laundry.
I took my "paperless" one step further and scanned my paper recipes into EverNote, which I access from my kitchen laptop (set in a corner right next to the cooking area). I use Microsoft's OneNote software to copy/paste recipes and my inevitable changes and notes. :)
We used to have a full garbage can every week... now, it's more like half full, if that, for the weekly pickup.
You must log in to post. If you do not already have an account, you can register here.
