Cloth in the Kitchen
There is some serious discussion going on over at Simple Mom’s blog. She wrote a really informative post about How to Create a Paperless Kitchen and the comments are continuing to pour in. She obviously struck a chord with many people.
Our family has been paperless for about a year. This does not include toilet paper or kleenex. I will admit that the road has been a bumpy one. My husband has been nice enough to support my endeavors and not complain (too much), but I have noticed that he has tended to clean up messes and do the dishes a lot less than he did before.
I think that is why I loved Simple Mom’s post so much. She hammered in the importance of an organized system. While I did bite the bullet and go paperless, I wasn’t very organized about how I did it. The result is that my husband, children and guests are not quite certain how to go about cleaning up a spill. My parents visited for several weeks this summer and while they were gracious enough to not complain about a lack of a papertowel roll, they did tease me about its absence. “I thought a paper towel holder is like necessary furniture in a kitchen,” my dad quipped. I think the teasing helped cover up their uncertainty about how our kitchen operated.
What I need to remember is that not everyone understands my system and this can cause discomfort (and lack of helpers). I thought I would take a moment to pen my system here (and hopefully give you all some ideas to chew on) and then I’ll get things organized so it is easy to use for everyone. My family will know where everything is, and next time guests come into our home for an extended time, I will let them know how the kitchen runs as well.
1. I have a ton of terry cloths that I use for washing dishes and wiping up spills. I have a plastic bag that hangs at the top of our stairs leading to the basement that holds used cloths. These go into my daily load of laundry. If things go right, nothing has time to get moldy or stinky.
2. I have some old, ugly cloth napkins that are used for greasy stuff like blotting bacon grease. Some of the comments over at Simple Mom’s site also suggested using old newspaper for this job.
3. We use cloth napkins. I used to reserve these for special occasions but I now use them for all meals. Also, a very thoughtful friend now makes them for us for special occasions. Beside our every day cloths, we now have Christmas, Easter and Independence Day as well. She also made some adorable ones for the kids’ school lunches.
4. I use a combination of Norwex and Enjo cloths for window cleaning, spill wipe-ups, and general cleaning. I also have a cool toilet scrubby brush that goes in the washing machine after use. No more disgusting brush full of pee.
My goal is to make the location of the cloths and napkins very accessible for everyone. No more excuses from dear husband.
Filed under Cleaning and Organization, Easy Being Green |5 Responses to “Cloth in the Kitchen”
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[...] I realized that there was one paperless aspect of our kitchen that I failed to mention in my last post (an amazing thought considering that I hadn’t had my morning coffee [...]
we do the same, but my visiting in-laws are not psyched about no paper towels. they found an old holdover roll that we use for bacon grease and the occasional pet mess and demolished it when we were having our baby. they wouldn’t even use cloth napkins!
do you wash your bacon-greased linens by hand?
Suzannah- My parents were certainly not thrilled with our lack of paper towels! I am not apologetic about that, but I do wish that I had communicated our system a bit better so that they felt more at ease.
I try to rinse out our bacon grease cloths as best I can. I wash them in our regular laundry but am cautious about what else is in the machine because I worry they will stain the other clothes. I often wait until I have a load of towels/rags to wash them with. We have also cut back significantly on our bacon consumption so this is becoming less and less of an issue.
Thanks for your comment!
We started using cloth napkins a while back (I made them from scrap material & old towels and wrote a post about it: http://www.paulanix.com/?p=225 ) My girls think they are very cool and love picking out ones for our guests.
But I LOVE the idea of a reusable toilet scrubby you can wash! Please share where you picked that up!
Hi Paula,
ENJO is the company that has the reusable toilet scrubby. Their products are sold through home parties so you will need to go on the sight to find out who is a distributor in your area.
Their cloths are a bit on the pricey side but I find the toilet scrubby worth it. In theory, the scrubby can be used alone without any cleanser in the bowl. I found that the bowl didn’t seem to be staying as clean throughout the week so I usually throw a little borax and a couple drops of tea tree oil in the mix. Then I just throw it in the wash with my other cleaning rags when I’m done. Brilliant!