How To Quit Paper Towels And Still Have A Clean Kitchen

How to Quit Paper Towels

And Still 

Have a Clean Kitchen

It's good for Planet Earth (and your wallet) to cut back on this cleaning staple. But you need the right strategy (and the right gear!) to pull it off. Tired of the heaping trash can and paper towel waste in your kitchen and the spoiled food in your fridge? We've been there also.
Last year, my family began making an effort to reduce our household waste, and I started thinking about how I could adopt some more mindful kitchen habits. Many of the changes we’ve since made—like always carrying reusable shopping bags and swapping out disposable lunch containers and bags for cloth, glass, and stainless steel were easy to implement. But it wasn't long into our low waste journey before I realized that our paper towel addiction might be a trickier nut to crack.

Without really thinking about it, over the years (and especially after becoming parents—sooooo many sticky fingers and spills!) my husband and I had become utterly dependent on that omnipresent roll on our counter. How serious was our habit? Let’s just say that every time we found our under-the-sink stash unexpectedly empty, it triggered a sprint to the 99-cent store and a minor panic attack.

I knew that in the grand scheme of wasteful household habits, this particular vice was a minor offense — after all, lots of paper towels are compostable (as long as they’re not soiled with chemical cleaners or grease) and arguably, it takes just much water to produce a roll of paper towels as it does to wash an equivalent amount of reusable ones.

So, I decided to give quitting a go. I thought 

about tapering off or just cutting back to buying 

paper towels on a monthly rather than weekly 

basis, but ultimately I reasoned that, as with so 

many other vices, going cold turkey just might be 

the most successful route. And that is how one 

fateful weekend, I decided to announce to my 

the family that the roll of paper towels currently 

dwindling on our countertop would not (gasp!) be 

replaced.

It’d be a lie to say the transition has been entirely seamless:my husband’s withdrawal turned out to 

be even rockier than mine, and still he still lets 

loose some sporadic curmudgeonly grumbling. 

But more than 7 months later, I’m pleased to 

report that on the whole, cutting paper towels out 

of our everyday kitchen routine has been much 

less painful than I ever expected, thanks to these 

three essential tools—and one not-so-secret 

strategy. Ready to try kicking the habit yourself? 

Here’s what worked for me:

1. Cotton “Car” Towels (Lots of Them)

Car towels: Good for your vehicle, even better for your countertops. Once we decided to try going
paper-towel free, the obvious first question was
what we would use instead—i.e., what we would
we reach for every time we needed to catch a spill
or dry our hands or swab the counters. I knew I
wanted whatever we used to be inexpensive,
durable enough to stand up to repeated laundering,
and made from natural fibers if possible. When I started googling it soon became clear that there are plenty of appealing options out there, from reusable Swedish dishcloths to classic, lightweight flour-sack cloths. But in the end, I found my favorite solution in the unlikeliest of places: the automotive aisle of Costco.  Sold in packs of 52, a suburban-sized brick of Unitex 100% Cotton Towels sets you back about
$20 and provides months and months and months
of hardcore household cleaning [Editor's Note: We
found a similar pack of towels on Amazon, too on
Amazon, too]. Though billed as a car-washing
tool, these are really just big, absorbent, white
cotton rags—not unlike a terry side towel, the
utilitarian workhorse that is a staple of professional kitchens everywhere.  The fact that these puppies come in a super-sized pack is key: if you want to set yourself up to succeed with this transition, you’re going to want a lot of towels on hand at all times. After some trial and error, I settled into a two-pronged approach—I now keep one big bucket of 20+
clean towels under my kitchen sink and another
container of towels hanging from the pantry door.
Not to say there hasn’t been a learning curve. If I
was to do it all over again, I would have bought
two batches of towels in different colors (say grey
and white)—the darker variety for serious
cleaning tasks and ickier spills and the lighter
shade for more delicate dish drying and food prep. But thanks to my haphazard laundry sorting, many 

of our white car towels turned pink, so we've managed to color-code them anyway!

2. Cloth Napkins

We used to set our dinner table with paper towels. 

But now we do not! Instead, we have a few sets 

of cloth napkins that we rotate night by night.

These are practical napkins, not a party napkin.

with embroidery or luxe fabrics here. 

Simple fabrics (cotton, linen) and darker colors 

(I’m partial to navy) stand up to heavy washing 

and do a better job of disguising the juice stains 

and grease smudges that are sure to accrue over 

time, especially if, like mine, your household 

includes some sweet, grubby little children. You 

can get a big set for not much money online or at 

discount retailers like Home Goods and T.J.Maxx—

or, even better, take a look at what’s priced to sell 

at your local Goodwill (thrift stores tend to be 

lousy with Grandma’s discarded table linens). 

Really want to go for it? Assign yourself (or your 

kiddo) a weekend project and sew your own.

3. A Kitchen Hamper

I won’t sugarcoat it: if you ditch the paper towels, you’re going to dirty a lot of rags every day. And you’re going to need a place to put them once they’re dirty. Cross-contamination inadvertently transferring harmful pathogens onto clean surfaces—is a real health hazard in the kitchen and should be taken seriously. That’s why I separate the towels we use for cleaning and countertops from the ones for drying dishware and food prep and try my best not to mix the two. I’m also careful to hang the towels to dry when they’re damp (moisture breeds bacteria) and not to use any towel for more than one day. Instead, at the end of every day—or sooner, if the towel is seriously soiled—I toss everything into a dedicated kitchen hamper: a small basket that holds the kitchen towels and aprons that need laundering. That said, while I’m lucky (at least by NYC standards) to have a washer/dryer in my house, I don’t always wash everything every day. More often, I take a couple of days for the hamper to fill and then wash the entire contents—usually along with a good glug of bleach—spin them dry, and start the whole process all over.

4. A “Secret” Roll for “Special Occasions”

For a serious (and stain-prone) spill, sometimes nothing else will do.