Friday, March 12, 2010

Living in a Paperless Kitchen

We have done it, we have a paperless kitchen!!! It has been over a month and I have to say that we don't even miss our paper towels or napkins.  I had been contemplating this change for years but it was this article by Simple Mom that finally convinced me to do it :)  I want to thank S and Z for jumping on board and understanding that this not only helps our planet but also our wallet! 

So what have we done to go paperless???  I collected all of my cloth napkins (I had about 12 of them) and purchased 10 more.  These are all kept in a drawer in our dining room and Z loves to go and get new napkins out when we need them.  Z and I painted napkin rings (one for each member of the family) and so we save our napkin for the next meal if it is not that dirty, this saves on laundry.

On the kitchen table I have a bucket of baby washcloths.  These are for quick spills, wiping of faces etc.  Z has easy access to them and goes to these whenever he needs to clean up something.  Under the sink I have a bucket full of microfiber cloths, mopinas and everything else I use to clean with.  I only had to buy a few more of these, I had already collected quite a few.  Finally we have our stash of dish towels that we use to dry dishes etc. 

I keep all of the dirty towels in their own bin in the closet and wash them along with the rest of the towels....so I don't have any extra laundry.  If a towel is really dirty then I will soak it in the sink before putting it in the bin.  We do have a roll of paper towels stashed away for when we are dealing with raw meat, grease and other bacteria ridden things but other than that we are paper free.  It has been working out really well and our next project is to get rid of all of our plastic bags and reduce our use of tin foil....I will keep you posted.

13 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow. This is a great thing too. Looks like Z is enjoying it. Nice pics. Glad I found your blog.

Have a good day!:)

Annie said...

Yeah, great job. So glad Z, enjoyed it.

Have a wonderful weekend.

PS: I have another giveaway on my blog from CSN Stores if you want to check it.

Babe in Babeland said...

I am SO IMPRESSED!!! That is amazing. Please keep me updated on all the changes--you are inspiring me. I have always been a big environmental enthusiast, and yet I sometimes use paper towels...not so good. I might have to do the switch, too!

Lisa Anne said...

Very cool. I'm all for being green however I don't think I could live without my paper towels and or my tin foil. I'd think I'd find other ways to be green. We don't use water bottles or soda cans anymore. Just sugar free koolaide in our house.

Alice in Wonderland said...

I buy a 4 pack paper towels a month, I never use tin foil or cling-film, and plastic bags are a definite No, unless I can recycle them. Vegetable waste goes into the compost heap, and I cut up old T.shirts to keep for spills. J-cloths too, are used for washing dishes. Dishes are left to drain dry, and washing up is only done once a day.
Laundry is usually hung outside to dry, weather permitting, and I love the clean fresh smell of sun-dried clothes!
I think that there are loads of ways to cut back and save money too as well as our planet.It is so easy to get into the habit of going back to the "Old Ways" of using proper napkins, dish cloths and dusters, and it is no more work than the work that you create for yourself.
I loved this post! More people should follow it.

Lee-Ann said...

That is great! I don't have paper towels in the house at all and we go through a lot of time where there really has been no need for them. For the most part I find I need them to deal with animal grossness but other than that for regular cleaning and such we don't use them. I should buy some to deal with animal grossness though since for now I just use old gross baby wash cloths and then toss them but eventually I'm going to run out! LOL

Kim_Office_Team said...

Congratulations! You should consider spreading your paperless fever to the rest of your house. It's easier than it seems. You can do it easily with Office Live Workspace. You get 5GB for free and you can manage, share, and edit all your files virtually. Learn more about how you can here: http://workspace.officelive.com/en-us/learn-more.

Happy paperless organizing!
Cheers,
Kim
Microsoft Office Live Outreach

Nicolasa said...

Good for you! That is awesome! I'd be interested in doing this but I am just a germaphobe... I don't know.. I definitely see how it saves so much paper!!!

A To Zebra Celebrations said...

Great job going paperless in the kitchen! I need to do that as well :) You are the winner of our giveaway. Please email me at atozebracelebrations@hotmail.com What size t-shirt would you like and your address. Thanks!!! CONGRATS!

Annie said...

Congratulations you won the Easter giveaway.

I send an email to you!!

Tracie said...

You are doing a great thing!

We have cut way back on our paper towel use. Hubs was terrible about using them for everything until he realized how much they were costing us each month. I really need to switch to cloth napkins, too.

Christa @ Little Us said...

I want to do this so bad! It's good to know that the adjustment wasn't that bad!

Connie said...

I've been wanting to do this after I read that article!

Great job!

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