My Mom Loved This Old-School Cleaning Gem, and Now I’m Using It in My Home

Confession: Even though I love using microfiber cloths for dusting, I still use too many paper towels to clean up around the house, especially in the kitchen. I decided it was high time to break up with paper towels and started looking for reusable options online. While scrolling through Amazon, I spotted a listing that brought me straight back to my childhood: Clorox Handi Wipes.

My mom always kept a stack of these blue-and-white striped cloths in a kitchen drawer. She’d use one to clean the kitchen countertops and the table after dinner every night. As I got a bit older and started to help more around the house, I would take over wiping duties. I’d clean off crumbs and food spills, then rinse it in the sink and let air dry. The perforated cloth was so thin that it dried in no time. 

I sent the listing to my mom, and we were both amazed that Clorox Handi Wipes still looked the same after all these years. Now, I wanted to see if it still worked as good as I remembered.

Clorox Handi Wipes come in a pack of 72, which is equivalent to a whopping 24 rolls of paper towels. Plus, you can rinse and reuse each wipe up to 20 times. Given that the pack was only $20, I’d call that a steal.

But wait, it gets better. I remember my mom cutting each cloth in half whenever she removed a new one from the package in the drawer. It wasn’t because she was being extra frugal, it’s that these cloths are extra long. I decided to “splurge” and use a whole one while cleaning the inside of my stove. Sure enough, I found that the extra length bunches up in my hand too much while cleaning; I’ll go back to cutting at least some of them in half. 

After cleaning the stove, the wipe did naturally emerge looking a little worse for wear. But it was just stained, not falling apart. I decided to toss it in the wash. I should have just air-dried it, but I forgot and tossed it into the dryer. It came out a wrinkled mess, but it’s totally usable.

I’m really glad that I reintroduced Clorox Handi Wipes back into my life. Now, I keep some all around the house within grabbing distance to clean up any spills. I stowed one under each bathroom sink — I like it better than using a sponge to clean my vanity — and a couple in my desk drawer to wipe up condensation from my water bottle or to clean my electronics.

These wipes hang on fairly well, but I know they’ll eventually need to be discarded. I suppose the perfect cleaning cloth would disintegrate into nothing, but I feel better that I’m not sending it to the landfill as quickly as I did with all those paper towels.

Buy: Clorox Handi Wipes, $20