Paper towels: Not necessary

My third "Sustainable Tip" for Growcology's March newsletter:

With paper towels, "disposable" is an understatement. Their purpose is to be used once and discarded. Many things you do with a paper towel (mop up spills, wipe counters, clean kids' faces, dry your hands) can also be taken care of with a cloth. What's stopping you? Using cloth instead of paper saves both money and trees.

To get started, collect your cloths. You'd be surprised how many cloths you have within reach. You can use stained table napkins, worn T-shirts, clean cloth diapers, old dish towels or pretty much any fabric items that have run their course. Keep a clean stack or two of these in a drawer or under the sink -- possibly separated into a "nice" stack for drying/wiping things and a "yucky" stack for big messes. (You'd wipe your hands or face with cloths from the "nice" stack, but not from the "yucky" one.)

After using a cloth, either rinse and line dry it or rinse, wring and throw it in the washing machine until your next wash. Soon enough, you'll be weaned off your paper towel habit.

Reel it in

The clotheslines are down for the winter.

Forays into air-drying my clothes have been less and less successful as the days have grown shorter, colder and a bit more humid.

Most detrimental to my efforts is the limited amount of sunshine I receive. Sometime in early October, the sunlight stops entering three-quarters of my enclosed patio. Where the walls are situated and the height of the buildings block all direct light, except for the top of the far wall.

And my HOA doesn't allow residents to hang clothes off upstairs balconies. Natch.

Would have taken the lines down sooner, but the motor died in my dryer mid-October (despite my drying only 1 out of 5 loads in it the last few months) and it took awhile to get parts to fix it.

Drying inside during the winter makes sense. Just like baking -- my favorite winter activity -- it heats up the house!

Backsliding

Today, I just threw all the wet, clean towels from the July Fourth holiday right in the dryer.

Bought a bunch of fruit and vegetables today and didn't even look at where it was from.

Dreading the diaper experiment.

Still cleaning with vinegar and baking soda though! And heard of a new way to make dishwasher soap. Two teaspoons borax and two teaspoons baking soda. Hope springs eternal!

You mean you put your clothes outside and they got dry?

(For all you awesome, long-suffering, longtime green people out there, skip this one. It may induce eye-rolling and possibly a gag reflex.)

I couldn't help but be intrigued by the concept of line-drying (as though it were something new and humans haven't been doing it for thousands of years), but it is new ... to me ... as a modern, suburb-grown person who never even considered putting wet clothes outside. Why should I ever have, when my own personal clothes dryer has sat there beckoning, offering tumbled ease?

So anyway, it worked like crazy! The weather (100-plus degrees, very sunny, slight breeze) aided my task. I cheated a little by keeping all socks separate and throwing them in the dryer for one big sock load. Other tips: Use vinegar as a natural fabric softener. Avoid windy days. Towels get scratchy this way. (Help, please?)

This is how to do it:

1. Keep the kids inside and occupy them with something.

2. Tie a strong piece of string or twine very tightly between two sturdy points, preferably at least 5 feet up and more than 10 feet apart. A long nail hammered into a wood panel worked as a point for me.

3. Fetch wet clothes from washer and carry outside in a basket. Shake each piece well and attach with clothespins to line. A clothespin makes a small hole near the middle of the pinch through which a string can run smoothly, then clothing is clasped separately by the end of the pinch. Surprisingly strong.

4. Put larger items near ends of clothesline, smaller items near middle where it sags. Use two pins for larger items and one for undergarments.

5. Start next load in washer.

6. Check dryness of clothing after an hour or so, when next load is finished in washer.

7. Take down each dry item, shake it and then fold it into a basket. Voila.

Putting up and taking down clothes took 5 to 10 minutes each time. I probably will continue to line dry my clothes; it wasn't too tough. But the socks and towels may still get tumble dried.