How to clean properly with cloth vs. paper towels

I talk a lot about green, healthy, and non-toxic cleaning here. Why – because green cleaning has to be one of the easiest green changes any household can make. It takes almost no start-up money, no advanced skills are needed (like when building a solar house), it’s an extra healthy change to make, and it’s cost efficient.

One of the major green cleaning tips I go over again and again is to ditch the paper towels and use cloth. You can save so much money and so many trees with this one tiny step that it seems lame not to try. However, sometimes friends I have say, “BUT paper towels are way more hygienic than cloth for cleaning.” Is that true?

Fact: It is true in a general sense. Paper towels, while bad for the environment, do have one thing going for them – they’re cleaner. One paper towel per mess. No spreading of germs.With a cloth or sponge you do spread around germs to a point IF you don’t clean correctly.

However, you can clean well with cloth. In fact, you can make cloth cleaning towels work just as well as paper towels only without the cost and paper use.

HOW TO CLEAN PROPERLY WITH CLOTH:

For general cleaning like wiping down a counter or for things like apple juice spills (no major lingering bacteria in apple juice) or other non-bacteria spills you can use a cloth to death for the mess. Wipe up the juice, wring out the towel, get it wet, and wipe again. It’s all good.

For spills like blood from meat, raw eggs, cake batter, and other items that may carry bacteria or to wipe down cutting boards you need to take a different approach, but that doesn’t necessarily mean reaching for the paper towels.

1. Use one cloth to wipe up the liquid part of the spill.
2. Use a second cloth drenched in hot soapy water to wipe down the area.
3. Use a third cloth to dry the area.
4. Toss all the cloths into the laundry.

It seems like a lot of cloths, and another argument is cloth takes water resources to wash, but it takes quite a few cloths to make a full load. At my house we bought a bunch of packs of generic washcloths and some smaller fiber dishcloths (all in small sizes) and use those exclusively for cleaning. We only end up washing about one or two loads of cleaning cloths a week. It’s not a big deal.

If you clean smart you can still ditch the paper towels, cut costs, and over time, save some trees.