It’s easier than you think to replace paper with cloth in the kitchen. Here’s how my family stopped using paper towels and transitioned to a paperless kitchen!
Happy Earth Day! I thought today was the perfect day to tell you about my family’s transition to a paperless kitchen. Over the years, I’ve been on a slow journey towards a greener lifestyle. Certain things were easy, like ditching plastic water bottles, because not only was that a good choice for the Earth, but I also had a vested interest in my family’s health.
Eliminating paper in my kitchen seemed much more daunting. Paper towels and napkins have become so ingrained in our society as the standard, and reaching for them was second nature, making the task of getting rid of them overwhelming. Even though I knew it was a greener, less wasteful choice to get rid of paper products in my kitchen, I wasn’t sure I was ready to let go of the convenience factor.
Well, I’m here to tell you my fears were unfounded. Going paperless is so much easier than I anticipated! These are the steps I’ve taken to replace paper towels with cloth and transition to a paperless kitchen. If we can do it, so can you!
How to Stop Using Paper Towels and Go Paperless in the Kitchen
1. Set a timeline for going paperless.
When I decided once and for all I wanted to go paperless in our kitchen, I set a timeline in my head. I had large amounts of paper napkins and paper towels, but said that once they were gone we’d be completely paperless. I used that time when those products were running out to make the transition, so it wasn’t a cold turkey kind of thing. We started by using cloth napkins for dinner only, and would use the paper napkins other times of the day when we needed a napkin. I tried putting the roll of paper towel in a less convenient place so I wasn’t so used to grabbing a paper towel for every little thing. For us, a slow transition was key.
2. Stock up on enough cloths to replace napkins and paper towels.
You want to make sure you have enough cloths that you aren’t doing laundry everyday. I’m not doing more laundry than I was before. I just throw the cloths in with the rest of the towels I’m washing anyway. We have 20+ cloth napkins on hand. I didn’t buy them all at once. Some are from way back when we got married and registered for them and a whole bunch are random napkins I’ve picked up over the years for my pictures for this blog. We don’t care that they don’t all match, in fact I kind of love that they don’t. You can pick up cloth napkins whenever you see them on sale to start your collection. Great stores to get for great prices, especially if you find sales, are Target, Homegoods, Pier 1, and World Market.
You also want to have cloths for all the things you would normally use paper towels for: dish drying, hand drying, food drying, and wiping spills.
3. Have all your cloths in a convenient place.
Our cloth napkins are in a basket on our dining table. In my eyes, it looks fine for everyday use. If we are entertaining, it’s easy enough to put away and replace with a nice centerpiece.
I bought two cookie jars and put them by the sink, within arm’s reach. In one are the cloths designated for drying food, and in the other are the cloths designated for wiping up spills.
Wiping up spills is probably what you use paper towels for the most. Having these in a convenient place is key. You don’t want this process to be less convenient than using paper products.
If you want to know how to get rid of paper towels and made it stick, my answer is to make it EASY.
The two other types of cloths we have are for hand drying and dish drying. Those are kept on separate sides in a drawer by our sink. One hand drying cloth is kept on the dishwasher handle, used for drying clean hands, and is replaced each day. The dish-drying towels are kept in the drawer until needed.
4. Have a laundry bin close by.
The next part of this process if having a place to put the used cloths. Just like throwing away paper products in the trash was easy, this needs to be easy, too. We keep a metal bin in the pantry. You could use the space under your sink or on the edge of your counter. It just needs to be close so that it’s easy to throw the used cloths in there. The key to success is have a convenient system in place! I clean the kitchen cloths about two times per week, and just throw them in with the other towels I’m already washing.
5. Get who you live with on board.
Whether it’s your spouse, your kids, your roommate, or all of the above, going paperless in your kitchen will be a much smoother process if you have everyone on the same page. I’ll admit that Tim rolled his eyes at me a bit during this process. When he saw the cookie jars with rolled up cloths he asked, “What, are we opening a spa?!” You’ve got to love a husband with a sense of humor. In the end, he was on board because I had a system in place to stop using paper towels and keep the convenience level the same. I know I keep saying that, but only because it’s so important!
This process has been a lot easier than I ever imagined it would be. Once you have a system in place, you’ll wonder why you ever thought it was necessary to waste so much paper on a daily basis. Make the transition to a paperless kitchen and you’ll save money and not lose any convenience.
Helpful Products for a Paperless Kitchen
You can purchase products from my affiliate links to help get your kitchen ready to go paperless! Thank you for supporting Happy Healthy Mama and my mission.
I got my wire basket that I hold my napkins in at Target. Click here to shop wire baskets and find the perfect napkin storage for your kitchen!]
Glass storage jars like these make a pretty display for white cloths.
Stock up on white cloths so you’ll have plenty between loads of laundry.
Find some cute and colorful napkins that you’ll love displaying in your kitchen.
Edited to add: It’s been almost two three years now since we went paperless in our kitchen and it’s still going well! I love our paperless kitchen and hope I’ve inspired you to take the plunge, too.
Using cloth napkins is so nice and it really doesn’t cause extra laundry because you just throw them in with the towels like you said. I fold into quarters and roll them, then stand them up in a cute container- all the pretty colors look like a bouquet! When the napkins get too stained (especially white) I use them as I would paper towels, I keep those in a small, clean stainless steel trash bin on the counter so they are not visible. On the occasions that I need to wipe grease out of a pan, I will use a coffee filter (cheaper and smaller than paper towels) or even paper from the recycle bin. Since I have a napkin addiction, I always have plenty- sometimes even dye my own using the shibori method.
A good idea except microfiber cloths are not really environmentaly friendly from what ive learned they are made from manmade fibers rhat are shed in wShing and drying and bad for the environment. I think i would use rhe traditional dish towels.
For those who may not have space for a laundry bin in their kitchen, we use a nice looking wet bag (like for cloth diapers) hung from hooks on the side of our island. Ours actually has two separate pockets, so one is designated for the “messier” cloths, preventing the nicer ones from getting stained.
We made the big leap to washable towels years ago. We were doing what we could to save paper towels like when we’d wash our hands and dry them, we’d save the wet paper towel and hang it up for use later. Well, I just finally made the leap one day when my husband said we were out of paper towels and I just reached in the drawer and pulled out a kitchen towel, looked online for paper towels and saw just how expensive they were. All I could see at that point was the image of pulling money out of our billfold and throwing it right in the trash. One thing I noticed was we make way fewer messes now than we ever did when we were paper consumers. And we have been on a quest to learn how to make paper from junk mail, news paper, circulars, lint from the dryer, cornstarch and left over wood and screen materials. It has been wonderful.
At the moment I do have extra fabric on hand, plenty of cotton fabric as well. What type of fabric would you recommend using as napkins? My thought is if I have it why not use it.
I would think cotton would work well.
I used soft, worn sheets, some from my linen closet and some from a thrift store in place of paper towels. The only time I miss paper towels is if I’ve cooked something greasy and want to wipe out the pan before washing it. My paper towels do have some stains but I have them ina basket, keep the stained ones near my old 1938 Chambers gas stove, and the others handy by the sink.I cut them the size I wanted, doubled them, and serged around the edge. I prefer all cotton. The others aren’t as absorbent. I do have a reusable “paper towel replacement” from Bed, Bath, and Beyond that is washable and absorbent. It takes the place of multiple rolls, eventually needing to be thrown away. I made my own sponges with scraps left from sewing, poly filling, with a plastic screen for scrubbing on one side. It can be made to a size that fits your hands. It is great to use on dishes but leaves too much water when wiping the counter. It also goes in the washer so no soured sponge anymore.
Would having a spray bottle with diluted clorox to spray the towels (white) with when throwing in the dirty bin help keep the germs down and the towels white? As long as you don’t over spray them?
Hi Toni,
I use white vinegar. It is healthy for the planet, kills germs and whitens. I mix a little dawn and 1/2 water and 1/2 white vinegar and put in a quart glass sprayer.
2 tablespoons of dawn and the rest water in a quart sprayer will stop wasps, gnats, flies,spiders in their tracks if they get inside your home. Just spray till they fall. Vinegar and dawn have never stained my walls when I overshot.😞
Thank you for your inspiring blog 🙂
When I wanted to go paperless in the kitchen years back, I was lucky enough to have a huge stock of towels from my husband’s grandmother. I kept the nice quality ones for drying the dishes, the thick ones for hand, the low quality one for drying surfaces, and I had even some ones for drying fruits and vegetables (after washing). I had also some microfiber cleaning towels, very absorbent, and I swear by that a lot in the kitchen. So, I was a mom at home at that time, fortunatly, because four kinds of towels was a little bit too much organized for them to follow.
Now we move to Asia, I am not anymore a mom at home but a teacher, means I have a lot of things to prepare a home, but I keep being paperless with towels, just I have the clean ones for the dishes, then I move them for hands, then surfaces…
I stopped also to by sponges for washing the dishes, instead I use small honeycomb weaved towels, about 8″x8″, that I fold 2×3, and it is like a sponge, but washable and it last a long time.
Well, I can say we are 100% paperless because we have also asian toilets, I use a moon cup and my teenage daughter washable pad 🙂 For some things it is just a bit of habit to change, and at the end it become something very natural. I am very glad to have done all this change, these are things I never ever forget to bring from the store!
Love
Ekinorev
Thank you!!
I used 12” x 12” squares of unbleached muslin then finished the edges. I threaded my serger with the colors in my kitchen and just finished the edges. I have a few odd shaped ones I use for cleaning my cast iron. No meat issues, we are vegetarian. I also made muslin cone shaped coffee filters. No paper anything to throw away. We also have bidets in our bathrooms with blow dry functions. Pretty handy for saving on paper products, especially in these days of shortage.
What do you do with cloths that are used to clean up raw meat spills?? I‘d get nervous if I have chicken juice on the table and then the rag sits at the bottom of the pile For a week or two…
For really dirty things like this, personally, I rinse them in the sink before throwing them in the laundry bin. I do laundry once a week, I haven’t had any issues in that time frame yet. I hope that helps!
How do you keep you white towels so white? Like a hotel. No matter what I do, my whites eventually become dingy looking.
They eventually do get dingy. I replace them 1-2 times per year. I use the old ones for other purposes and don’t buy super expensive cloths in the first place.
What about drying off fresh meat prior to seasoning?
What do you do about things that are greasy???
I have old towels I use that are dedicated for “dirty” jobs. 🙂
I am very happy and glad that simple transition tips is very useful for me