Cloth towels

With all of this baking, cooking, and experimenting going on, I think I've mentioned the mess it makes. Combine that with a 2-year-old and a spitty baby and there is just always mess, everywhere. Lately, we had been going through a lot of paper towels.

It is just easy to get a nice, clean paper towel, wet it if needed, and throw it away. You don't have to worry about there being something on it from a previous clean up as with a dish towel or washcloth. When cleaning little ones hands' you want something sterile. The amount of paper towels started to bother me though. Really bother me.

So I figured the reason I don't use more washable cloths is just because they are not easily accessible in our kitchen, and when I need a paper towel I need one ASAP. I also didn't want to have dirty cloths laying around after I was done using them. So I had my problem, and just had to solve it with a few quick changes.

First, cut up a few flannel receiving blankets into 8 pieces - perfect towel shape. We have a ton of them, and they are really absorbent. I still use them as burp cloths with baby girl, but I don't go through all of them like I did with baby boy! So I had a few to spare. Then I just set them out in the kitchen where the paper towels usually go. I also placed a small basket on the floor by the door for tossing used towels. I wanted it to be really easy. So now we just take a cloth towel, use it, and toss it in the basket. They get thrown in with whatever wash I am doing that day.

We haven't used a paper towel in over a week! My next project is cloth wipes - whoa!

This is how I divided up my receiving blankets for cutting. You can also just get flannel fabric from the store - or any other absorbent material. I like the flannel because it is nice and soft on the kids' faces. I did notice some fraying so I may sew up the raw edges a bit - but I'm not doing anything fancy. I feel so accomplished!