Seven Weeks Without Buying a Roll of Paper Towels

The first week was the hard one. I had a stack of eight Eulnars Swedish dishcloths sitting on the counter beside the sink, and every time I reached for a paper towel out of habit, my hand found the empty holder instead. I am Joanne Whitaker, sixty-eight, a retired school librarian in Loveland, Colorado. I live alone. I am not an activist. I just got tired of buying something I used once and threw away.

The push came last winter from my granddaughter Nora, who is fifteen and treats the recycling bin like a hall monitor. She counted the paper towel rolls in my pantry. There were six. She did not say anything. She just looked at me the way a teenager looks at an adult who has failed a simple test. A week later I bought the Eulnars eight-pack. I told myself it was to get her off my back. That was partly true.

The cloths come in a pack of eight, made from 70 percent cellulose and 30 percent cotton, with clips included. They arrive stiff, almost like a thin piece of cardboard. You wet one and it softens in your hand. I put one by the kitchen sink, one in the bucket by the raised beds, and the rest in the drawer with the dish towels. I have used them for seven weeks now. I have not bought a roll of paper towels in that time.

The first thing I noticed was how much liquid they hold. I knocked over a watering can on the kitchen floor and one cloth took the whole puddle. A swipe across the counter after I cut tomatoes takes one cloth, not three paper towels. I use them on the table, on the stovetop, on the front of the refrigerator where Caleb leaves fingerprints. Caleb is twelve and eats like the food might be taken away at any moment.

What I did not expect was how often I would reach for them outside. I wipe clay soil off my trowel. I wipe the rim of a pot before I fill it. I wipe my hands on the way back to the house. The cloth gets filthy, I rinse it, wring it out, and it comes back. That is the whole test for me. Does it still work after it looks like it should be thrown away.

Seven weeks in, I have bought zero rolls of paper towels, and the same eight cloths are still in rotation.

Once a week I run the used cloths through the dishwasher on the top rack. They come out stiff again, which I take as a good sign. The listing says they are odor resistant. I have not noticed a sour smell, which is more than I can say for the sponge that used to live by my sink. When one side gets grimy, I flip it over. They are reversible, so I get a clean face without hunting for a new cloth.

They are not perfect. A greasy skillet still needs a rag and soap. The cloths are small, so a big spill on the floor takes two. I lost one of the clips behind the coffee maker for a week. And if you leave a wet cloth wadded up on the counter, it will start to smell like a wet cloth. That is not the product failing. That is me being lazy.

I still keep a roll of paper towels in the pantry for bacon grease and for the bottom of the vegetable drawer. I am not going to pretend I have eliminated them from my life. But I am not buying them every week anymore. For a household of one, that adds up to a lot of trips to the store I no longer make. Nora noticed. She also noticed that I now keep a cloth clipped inside the cabinet door, which she says is the most Grandma thing she has ever seen.

The garden is where they have surprised me most. I use one to wipe down the outside of my tomato pots after watering. I use one to clean the pruning shears before I put them away. I use one to wipe the back of the Subaru Outback after a trip to the nursery with a load of soil. That last one is not what the package is for, but it worked. I rinsed it out and hung it over the faucet to dry.

Caleb came in from the backyard with baseball dirt on his hands and reached for the paper towels. I handed him a damp cloth instead. He wiped his hands, looked at the cloth, and said it was just a sponge that got flat. Then he used it on the counter without being asked. I will take that as a win.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you not to buy them because you feel guilty about paper towels. Guilt wears off by February. Buy them because they work better than a paper towel for the small messes that make up most of the day. Keep one where you actually make a mess, not in a drawer where it looks tidy. Wet it before the first use. Wring it out. If it gets gross, wash it. If it gets stiff, wet it again. The Eulnars cloths are not a cure for everything. They are just a better tool for the counter, the sink, and the garden bucket. And if you are like me, you will forget the paper towel holder is even there.