Sewing Fool

I have been a sewing fool lately and it just feels so good. My serger, coverstitch and sewing machines have been burning rubber. I'm motivated to actually process my 500 yards (this is a guess I have no idea how accurate it is!) of stash fabric. Today's project was unpaper towels.



The loops of the 'basket' hang over the paper towel rack...which is now empty.

There was a time not too long ago that we used more then a roll of paper towels every day. And this was a roll of Bounty, not cheapo paper towels so it was a BIG roll. The main thing was that we used a paper towel EVERY time we washed our hands. Change a diaper, wash hands, use a paper towel to dry. Rinse or wash a dish, use a paper towel to dry hands. Clean the bathroom? Use 10 paper towels. Get the picture? A lot of paper going in the garbage!

We had dish towels but we really used them for the lowest jobs...cleaning messes on the floor or big spills on the table. I think we all had a germ phobia about what that towel might have been used for. Paper just seemed cleaner.

It wasn't until after I started using cloth diapers that I started thinking about the waste of it. So I made an effort to use dishtowels for my own use. I hung a hook up high for my own dishtowel that wouldn't get used to wipe a little snotty nose and then rehung. (Who am I kidding, my kids just leave it on the floor after they use it!)

My dh has been a bit resistant about giving up paper. 1) he's a germaphobe and 2) dish towels are nothing like paper towels. Neither is flannel. It's too thick or something and just doesn't seem very absorbant to me. I made flannel dinner napkins a while back. The kids and I use them but not dh.

Anyhow, it wasn't until we inherited dh's grandmother's thin dish clothes that dh started to like using cloth. The only problem is that they are kind of big. They are very thin, similar to birdseye so I ran with that thought. Just today, I made over 40 unpaper towels that are smallish - 10 x 8 inches. I'm pretty excited! For the first time ever, we did not buy a case of paper towels when we went to Sam's. For each roll of paper towels that we don't use, that's $1 saved! This should save us almost $30 a month!! Sad, but true.