Lose the Kitchen Paper

After reading (no I haven’t seen the movie) An Inconvenient Truth I decided to find as many changes that I could make in my household immediately to help become more “green”. The first thing we did was to quit using paper napkins and paper towels and, you know what, it wasn’t that difficult.

Did you know that if every household in the United States replaced one roll of virgin-fiber paper towels with 100% recycled paper towels; we could save 1.4 million trees. If every household in the United States replaced just one package of virgin fiber napkins with 100 percent recycled ones, we could save 1 million trees. Now imagine the numbers of trees saved if you switched to cloth all together. With those numbers in mind, using virgin fiber for single use items seems simply outrageous.

Here’s what I did to keep my kitchen for 4 messy children and 2 “work from home” adults moving along smoothly. Have a basket of napkins near or on the table ready to use when needed. You’d be surprised but adults don’t always need a new napkin for every meal. My mother even found these small napkins that are just the perfect size for kid use. I also keep a bowl full of washcloths next to the sink for extra messy clean up of face and hands or wiping up a spill. These, in conjunction with our usual dish towels has kept paper usage down to a minimum. I can’t say that we’ve wiped out our use of paper towels all together. I do sometimes use them for the dirtiest of jobs but a roll of paper towel can last us for a month or even two! Now that is amazing.

To be certain the dirty cloths stay out of the way I have a small laundry receptacle in the kitchen as well. Now I don't need to bring dirty napkins or wash cloths to another room each time I need to put them in a hamper. This also presorts the laundry. You can plan on everything coming from the kitchen needing to be washed in hot so that it is sanitized.

I thought this switch would be much more labor intensive but once you have the system set up not only are you buying and storing less paper products but you are also producing less garbage. Less clutter to control and fewer trips to the trash have to be good. Try it and see if you can green up your kitchen a little more.