Many months ago, I wrote about the baby rules I break for the planet.  One of those “rules” included mopping up baby with wads of paper towels.  I don’t think I’ve ever bought a roll of paper towels in my life.  We do have two rolls of paper towels in my house.  One roll was generously left here by the previous owners.  We moved the other roll over from our last house, where it sat in the back of a closet for at least four years.  My husband bought that roll long ago, without my consent or knowledge.  I cannot be blamed!


Aren’t trees nicer than paper towels?

Last May, Peggy from Treehugging Family issued a paper towel challenge.  She personally wanted to reduce the number of paper towels she used and asked readers to do the same.  You will see my comments on those posts, urging people to try the “hide the paper towels at the back of a musty closet” technique.

I hate to see paper towel commercials that make it seem like these tree-killing/landfill-filling products are indispensible to modern life.  The one that really gets to me shows a mother going through her house, allowing all the glorious messes of family life because she has paper towels to help clean them up.  “If you knew he’d make a mess, but let him anyway, you’re crazy,” it begins.  At the end of the commercial, she plops down on the couch with a magazine, confident that she’s cleaned everyone up with Bounty.  

Giving up paper towels when the baby comes along might be an even greater challenge than eschewing them under normal circumstances.  There’s always a mess to clean up–on the baby, on yourself, on the floor.  I got a few packages of baby washcloths as gifts, and I used those instead of paper towels.  I just threw them in the wash when I was done, and they’re so small I’m sure they didn’t add to the overall amount of laundry I did.  Of course, any old rag or washcloth will also do the trick.

Think of all the money you’ll save by giving up paper towels.  Say you normally go through a pack of six rolls a month, at $10.00 a pack.  In ten years, you’ll spend $1,200 on a completely unnecessary product!  And if that’s not motivating enough, think of the trees.  Paul on things that make you go green says, “The NRDC estimates that if every household in the United States used one less roll of paper towels, we could save 544,000 trees.”  Saving a few thousand trees seems like a much better reason to take a self-satisfied couch break! 

Never buying paper towels works for me.  For more Works for Me Wednesday ideas, check out Rocks in My Dryer.