As with many of these practices I will be posting on here, you might balk at this to begin with but hear me out. This is an easier transition than you might think. All I did was cut up Andrew’s old white undershirts along with an old baby blanket from the hospital into paper towel size pieces and put them in a container I keep by the sink. You can cut up anything that will absorb… old towels, or throw in some old washcloths, for instance. I also put a handful of rags in a drawer that Lucy can open so she is able to “clean up” her spills (those of you who have observed a 2 yr old cleaning up their own mess know why that’s in quotes). After the rags are used for various purposes, here comes the fun part, we open the door to the basement and shoot them like a basketball down into the bucket. Side note, the cloth napkins also get thrown into this bucket. I’ve also read that some folks keep the bucket under their sink, but where is the fun in that? At some point during the week, they get chucked into the wash. We do keep, what I call, our “rogue roll” of paper towels under the sink to use for bacon grease and dropped raw eggs (it’s like toddlers find it their job to do this). It’s important to keep it out of easy reach so you’re not tempted to grab it first. I think you will find it quite easy to stop using paper towels if you have the tools and system in place.

I hope your baseline data collection and cloth napkin usage is going well! I want to keep these posts short so the ideas they are conveying don’t seem overwhelming. Therefore, I won’t go into great detail about certain aspects of each practice. So let me know if you have any questions that start with “What about…” because I get it and I’ve probably had that same question. Hopefully, I will have an answer for you. And if not, I will respond, “Do what you can and try not to feel guilty about what you can’t!” That’s the goal of this movement! We all just need to do better than we have been doing! Now go cut up some old T-shirts and hide those paper towel rolls from your grabby little hands!