I'm currently in the "conversion" stage - I am almost paperless with the exception of a recycled tissue here or there for a greasy spot.......I am using my children's old cloth nappies/diapers cut into quarters - I find a quarter sized nappy is the perfect size. After use, I drop them in a soaking bucket until I have enough for a wash and then line dry them. I agree with Maya, one of the keys to success is to have the cloths handy, so you can easily grab one when needed and break the habit!
As of today - no more tissues! Cloth all the way.

We went paper towel-less by accident, and I didn't realize it until after reading this post. We ran out of paper towels one day over the summer... and every time I went to the store, I forgot to buy more. Then we were gifted a few extra dish towels, and before we knew it, the washable towel drawer runeth over. I think what made the conversion so easy was forgetting to add paper towels to the shopping list! Granted, some of our towels have some unwashable stains on 'em, but hey. They do the job, repeatedly. Good luck with the conversion!

i'm really not trying to sound smug, but growing up in my korean-immigrants-parents' house we never used paper towels there (we bought/made dish rags) and i never started using them in my own house as an adult. both houses do buy/accummulate paper napkins though and use them on occasion. anyone else grow up with rags and if so do you think it's a cultural thing?

I have a hierarchy of cloth towels. The nasty stained ones that I use for the floor or spills. And then the not-so-nasty ones for drying dishes, shining things. And then the nice cloth napkins for dining. It works out well. I never had paper towels growing up either.

"I have a hierarchy of cloth towels." Hahah, I love it, darcitananda! I have a similar system that I'm still trying to get my boyfriend to follow. But it works great for me!

Also, I was just given some hand-me-down cloth napkins that I'm so happy to add to my kitchen. I even think they make my meals taste better ;-)

we are trying to go paper towel-less...I even asked for barmop towels and new flour sack towels for Christmas this year - and received a whole lot of them. I let my husband know what I was up to...

Then he pointed out cleaning up dog messes. She is housetrained, but every once in a great while will throw up. We don't have kids, so I don't have cloth diaper left overs. And I'll be honest, rinsing out dog barf and washing something sounds pretty yucky...and he wouldn't do it either! we're sort of gross-out wimps, I have to say!

learnbydesign, I have a similar situation, and I use old newspapers (usually the grocery store circular I can't seem to get them to stop sending me) to clean up in that case.

I also grew up without paper towels. We had a lot of rags of varying materials on a "rag shelf" in the laundry room, and we used them until they unravelled.

mimo - same here. i grew up in Poland, never used paper towels & still don't. but this article makes me want to go to a thrift store & collect colorful materials for rugs!

As an adult I have never bought paper towels. I can't stand the idea of buying trash, but it is an incredibly frustrating task to keep my boyfriend from using all the freakin' toilet paper to wipe off the counters. The key is having plenty of absorbent rags on hand, and having a small laundry basket in the kitchen for the nasty ones.

I went paperless in the kitchen for just under a week and I was super diligent but then at the end of the week, I had almost a full laundry load of towels, cloth napkins and rags to wash. So aren't I just negating my good effort by using more water (and detergent) to wash all these cloths??

The timing on this post is perfect - my husband and I just made a commitment this weekend to significantly reduce (and hopeful eliminate) our paper towel use. I have already bought more cloth towels and made room for them in the kitchen. Now we just need to build a new habit. We did it with re-usable shopping bags, so I am sure we can do it with this.

I had a long period of living without paper towels in the 90s, then I moved to a place without a washing machine and I went back to using the paper again. Once I moved into my own house with a washer I was determined to go back to cloth only, and have. I have kitchen towels that I use for most of the light daily cleanup, and a whole bunch of microfiber dust cloths that double as heavy-duty rags as well. As soon as I'm done I toss them in the washer for whenever I run the next load. I bought about 30 of them in a bundle and I expect I'll be using them for the rest of my life.

My mother kept a ragbag which I do now, too, but I'm less apt to grab those unless the job is really messy. They aren't as sturdy and absorbent as the dedicated cloths.

I never had paper towels growing up which is why I think I HAVE used them so much in my adult life. ("So convenient! I was missing out!")

I've been transitioning to green in all areas of my life (I have the reusable bag thing down) so I bought a pack of skoy cloths (http://www.skoycloth.com/) for myself and my mother (who still refuses paper towels) and they work great!

I have a ton of tea towels and the like, but I dislike having to wash them so often...

We recently bought a home in September, and there happened to be 3 rolls of paper towels in the kitchen. I think I am on roll #2. It's pretty luxurious to use them. Otherwise I use cloths, and I definitely have a "hierarchy" to them as well.

I've had the same question that HelloChloe posted: What about my water consumption when I wash my rags? I actually use both cloth and paper towels in the kitchen, depending on the chore. I enjoy the paper towels with the extra perforations so that I can tear off smaller sections when I want. As far as my cloth towels' "hierarchy," I sat down and sewed huge a huge letter "A" on each towel that I used for my dog! It was kind of obsessive, but it provided some peace of mind. 'Probably would've been easier to use paper....

I've been pretty much paper towel-less for the past two years. I still leave a roll of paper towels out, but it takes almost a year to go through one. I use them for drying meats and for cleaning up the occasional dog puke.

Wet hands and dishes are dried with pretty towels that hang over the oven handle. Pretty cloth napkins are used at dinner. Surfaces are wiped with rags that I use until they're falling apart, and even then I usually cut off the loose threads and run a quick zig-zag seam along the edges with my sewing machine to keep them together. These rags are labeled "Kitchen" with a Sharpie and are neatly folded and stored in a dollar-store crate underneath the sink, and dirty ones are put into a small step trash can in the pantry.

In the bathroom, I have nice Martex washcloths ($15 I think for a pack of 20 at Costco). There's also a dedicated can for tossing them after you dry your hands. When the "nice" washcloths start looking ratty, they are transformed into kitchen cloths.

On laundry day, I simply collect all the towel bins and dump them directly into the washing machine. Then I spray the inside of the bins with cleaner (water + vinegar) and wipe it with a rag (which I throw in the washing machine as well).

For those who are concerned with the increase in water usage, I think it's very small compared to the use of paper towels. In order to make paper towels, trees are cut down, a ridiculous amount of water is used to make pulp, chemicals and resin are added, it runs through multiple machines which require electricity, designs are printed ... whereas with reusable rags, I run them once a week in the washing machine, and they take so little space I can usually just add them to the pile of whites.

Oh yeah, and that makes everything easiest - use all white or light-colored cloths. Sure, they're not as fun, but you also don't feel as bad when a pretty tea towel gets permanently stained and you can bleach them to your heart's content.

My scrub brush has been a godsend. Tossing a dirty, wet rag into the laundry bin puts me off a bit but the scrub brush can scour off grime with soap and water, then all that's left is the drying.

@smellofsawdust - I wouldn't worry about water consumption. Just toss in the rags with your oven mitts, tablecloth, aprons and / or reuseable bags and you should have a full load.

But paper towels, soaked with food scraps, make up a significant portion of my compost. And I'm not convinced that the electricity required to wash rags would be so much less than that required to make (and ship) the 100% recycled paper towels that I buy.

@Doddibot -

Good idea to use the paper towels for compost, but it takes much more water to produce paper towels than it does to wash them, plus deforestation for the paper towels harms water supplies (hemlock trees ameloirates streams, for example).

100 percent recycled towels are good but rags are better so long as you wash them with the same load as your reuseable bags, table cloths etc so you have a full load.