The greener things in life…our go at a paperless kitchen!

So, inspired by our recent switch to cloth diapers, our family decided to green up other aspects of our life.  First item of order, PAPERLESS KITCHEN! I figure if we could mold our lives around the extra work associated with cloth diapering, we could add cloth napkins and un-papertowels to our routine. 


One thing I know about my family is that this would have to be easy enough to execute.  We already had kitchen towels that we use for drying our hands and dishes so that was taken care of, however, we could go through a roll of paper towels in record time!  That was going to be our biggest hurdle, replacing the napkins would be a simple as putting them in the napkin drawer and setting the out instead of paper ones with our meals.  I also figured that we were going to need enough of each to get through a week, that way we wouldn't ever be out of them.  It sort of defeats the purpose to be doing a specific load of laundry for these as well as for the diapers.  It would also hurt our routine if we had to go back to paper before I could get to the laundry.  So, armed with that knowledge, off to JoAnn Fabrics I went. 

For our un-paper products, I decided to use what I know about cotton and 
absorbency, and off to the utility section I went. I figured that I could use birdseye cotton; if it was absorbent enough for flat diapers, it had to be good enough to wipe muck off our hands and faces with!  To bulk up absorbency of our un-paper towels, I decided on birdseye for one side and cotton flannel for the other.  For the napkins, I just cut the birdseye into thirds by width and then measured the height to about twelve inches and overcast stitched all four edges.  For the towels, I cut the birdseye into thirds by width again.  For height, this is a bit more complicated, but I determined the height by dividing the width of the flannel.  That way I would end up with straight cuts on both fabrics. Once the towels were measured and cut, I sewed them together with about an inch and a half seam allowance and then overcast all four edges.  Once that was done, the family pep talk was given…ANYTHING you would use a paper napkin for (so really any informal family meal) you know use the white basic napkins, ANYTIME you would use our fancy cloth napkins we pull those out, and now ANYTIME you would reach for the paper towels you now grab the cloth ones. Everything is stored in the drawer below our flatware so its super easy to find and to use. 

Basically, the only other item we needed in our paperless arsenal was a tiny laundry style basket to keep under our sink next to the trash can…helped us keep the transition as easy as possible. Now, after dinner, we dump napkins in the bin and everything else in the trash can.  Anytime I am washing a load of laundry and its appropriate, I grab whatever we happen to have in the bin under the sink.  SUPER EASY!




And heres the math for those frugalistas out there…


I bought 4.75 yards of birdsye, 1.5 yards of flannel, and 3 spools of thread at JoAnnes.  Both fabrics are $4.99, but I had a 50% off coupon for one, the other was on sale 50% off, thread was 40% off.  So, I spent roughly $20 on materials.  A six pack of bounty paper towels costs roughly $8 at the grocery store.  Package of paper napkins is about $3.