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.