I did buy a roll of paper towels . . . about 3 1/2 years ago. A few friends from the neighborhood were over to take on a messy craft. And I thought some of my friends would be more comfortable using paper towels than rags, even my nicer rags. I did set out a stack of my nicer rags, just in case someone would prefer to use those instead of paper towels. The rags sat side by side with the pristine roll of paper towels. Well, guess what? Not a single paper towel was used. Every one of my friends chose a rag to wipe up their messes with! What a great bunch!
So, that lonely roll of paper towels sat on the top shelf of the pantry for 3 1/2 years. Occasionally someone would tear off a sheet and use it. I would use them myself, to wrap salad greens in, before storing in a plastic bag in the fridge. And I used a few paper towels to drain some fried foods at the stove.
About a year ago, we finally ran out of that one roll of paper towels. I thought about buying more. But, you can probably guess this about me. I find myself too cheap to buy even one roll of paper towels when I know there are so many alternatives to them. That's right I'm just a cheap old bird!
So, here's my list of what I use now, that I would have used paper towels for, years ago:
For draining deep-fried foods
I use brown paper bags, torn into 10 inch squares. I like to top a few layers of brown paper bag with a single take-out napkin, unfolded.
The take-out napkin helps pull the oil away from the fried food. When I don't use a take-out napkin, the oil tends to pool on the brown paper bag pieces, leaving the fried food to sit in the oil. Our supply of take-out napkins is hit or miss, and depends heavily on someone going through the take-out restaurant drive-thru, but bringing the take-out home and using their cloth napkin at the table. The leftover paper napkins get squirreled away for future use in frying.
For washing windows
I am addicted to using newspaper for windows. I use the store circulars, printed on newsprint, that come in the mail. They leave my windows squeaky clean.
For greasing baking dishes
In the early years of living away from home, I used a corner of paper towel, dipped in butter to grease my baking pans. It's how my mom always did it. Then I realized that the waxed papers that butter come wrapped in make excellent pan-greasers. As it turns out, almost everyone else already did this with butter wrappers. So no great revelation on that front. I just wonder why my mom always used a paper towel to grease a baking pan?
For cleaning up ordinary spills
We keep a stack of rags in the laundry room cupboard just for this. These rags are old dish and hand towels, and are just the right size for this sort of clean-up. I also use these rags on my Swiffer mop. They wrap around the mop head, and are secured with two fat rubber bands.
For cleaning up disgusting messes or really filthy ones that may not come clean in the laundry
We keep a second stash of disposable rags, cut from extremely worn t-shirts. You know those shirts that are so thin you can literally see right through the fabric. Most of these rags were previously pj tops, worn until they're indecent in mixed company.
I cut these very worn t-shirts into pieces about the size of a paper towel. After using, we throw them out.
Examples of disgusting things I've had to use these for include cleaning the shower drain (you know that thing that looks like a moldy mouse that you pull out of a shower drain that 3 women in the family, 2 with very long hair, have used on a regular basis), cleaning up after a sick cat (both ends of sickness are too disgusting to use a washable rag on), wiping off the dipstick for the oil reservoir in the car's engine, and wiping up oil-based paint or varnish and cleaning the brushes.
I sometimes have a difficult time remembering what I used to use paper towels for. If I were to buy another roll, it would likely be for the exact same reason as the last time, to make someone visiting my home feel more comfortable about cleaning up after a project. I "get" that other people may simply prefer paper towels over rags. We all have certain things that, to us, just feel normal. But for me, for now, paper towels are something that I am content to live without.
