5 Tips to Minimize Paper Towels in Your Home

In the last few years I have become passionate about producing less waste in my life and home. I love the phrase, "We don't need a few people doing zero waste perfectly. We need a lot of people doing it imperfectly."

I don't think I will ever create zero waste, but I know I can make an effort to produce less--and it's actually pretty easy to make some changes! Eliminating paper towels was an easy change for me, but I know how intimidating it can seem!

I actually stopped using paper towels (for the most part, see below) like five or six years ago. I can't remember if it was because I wanted to be less wasteful or because I'm kind of a cheapskate and hated spending money on something I was literally throwing away. 

Have we completely stopped using paper towels? No! We keep them on hand for pet messes, but really that's the only thing we use them for. I consider this a major win! Look at us doing that less waste thing imperfectly!

It can take some time to adjust to any changes made in your home, so here are some tips that will help you with the transition to minimize your paper towel usage!

1. Move the paper towels to an inconvenient place. Maybe this sounds super simple, but it is a huge help! Ours are under the kitchen sink and towards the back. Because they are inconvenient, we don't reach for them when there's a spill or we need to dry our hands.
2. Leave a hand drying towel beside every sink. The kitchen sink, the bathroom sink, the guest bathroom sink. Put a hand drying towel there and you won't be tempted to dry your hands with a paper towel. We have six white hand towels for the bathroom and I change it daily. In the kitchen, I have a towel hanging on the cabinet door beneath the sink. I love using cute towels for the kitchen. (TJ Maxx always has cute ones and I love when people gift me cute kitchen towels.)
3. Stock up on kitchen towels and cleaning rags. I am the world's messiest cook and baker, and I'm in the kitchen pretty much every day. If *I* can rock not using paper towels, so can you! We have a drawer full of kitchen towels-- it has small rags, bar mop towels, and flour sack cloths. (They're all from Target.) Sometimes I go through the entire drawer in a week, and I just pop them in the wash. It's really no big deal. For cleaning rags, someone gave me about 30 shop rags a few years ago and they come in so handy! I keep them in a basket in the bathroom cabinet. Maybe that seems like a lot of rags, but I just folded 12 cleaning rags from the last few days. We use them A LOT.
4. Use cloth napkins. I LOVE using cloth napkins. I might just be eating a grilled cheese, but the cloth napkin makes it seem like a fancy meal. One thing I've noticed is that people don't like to use cloth napkins because they are afraid they will get dirty. Um, that's kind of the point. If you have pretty ones you want to keep in pristine condition, just pick up some at the store or Goodwill that you don't mind using. You can also make your own! (Sometimes when I have just a small square of fabric leftover from a project, I turn it into a napkin!)
5. Have a dedicated basket for dirty rags. In the kitchen, there is a basket beside the sink for dirty kitchen towels. In the bathroom, dirty cleaning rags go into the laundry bin with the bath towels. Having a dedicated place to put your dirty rags makes it easy on wash day!

There you have it! In your journey to quit paper towels, do give yourself some grace. It can take some time to get used to, but it is absolutely worth making the switch!