#ragbag

Please, enjoy another silly side of me interviewed in this “oddcast” podcast episode with Ragbag’s droll host, Frank Burton. You can hear and subscribe to Frank’s podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bonus-bag-with-kat330/id1347311604?i=1000422984106

and/or you can listen to it at Soundcloud here:

https://soundcloud.com/frank-burton-912417543/bonus-bag-with-kat330

Literally.  You’re literally buying them so you can throw them away.

Like, for some disposable products that’s justifiable.  Toilet paper, for example.  Insulin syringes.  Kleenex.

Paper towels are neither of those things.  Paper towels are 100% waste.  We’re killing trees to clean our homes, when for millions of years people managed to do so without committing arboricide.  Your great-great-great grandparents didn’t have paper towels growing up.  But I bet they didn’t live in filth, either.

How did they do that?  With rags, that’s how.

This is our rag drawer.  It’s not fancy.  It could use a coat of paint.  But it’s efficient.  It’s a drawer full of rags.  When we have a spill or something we want to scrub or dust, we grab a rag, wipe it up, and then stick it in a small laundry basket in our laundry room.  When the basket is full, we wash all the rags with a little bleach and hang them to dry in the sun.  UV light has sanitizing properties, see.

Is this as convenient as paper towels?  Not quite, but if you’ve got enough rags you’ll do a load once a month or less.  They’re much more durable for scrubbing than flimsy paper towels.  Most importantly, they aren’t wasting trees and filling landfills.

Now, we can hear you asking: what will we wipe our faces with while eating?  Previous generations of humans had this figured out, too.  It’s called a napkin.  It’s made of cloth. Civilized people wipe their hands and mouths with it while dining. Or, you know, you could just not smear food all over your face like a motherfucking toddler.*

It’s been three years since we bought paper towels.  Our rags came from a local commercial laundry facility, but you could also buy them on Amazon or in your local general store.  Or, you can cut up old clothes and sheets and towels as you accumulate them.  Like other projects on our blog, you don’t have to do this all at once.  Start collecting rags.  Someday you’ll have enough to phase your paper towels out entirely.

We use ours until they are so holey there’s nothing left.  If a mess is gross enough or toxic (car grease, for example) we just throw the rag out.  And when we get low, we get on the lookout for new sources.  Wal-Mart has big packs of plain white washcloths for a few dollars, that’s a good place to start.  Look for actual terrycloth or other towel material, rather than microfiber.   If you can get ahold of a pack of cloth diapers and cut them into halves, those work well. Gather enough, then stop buying paper towels.

We’re not kidding, this is serious you guys.  We are convinced that someday mankind will collectively realize that the very idea of paper towels is completely bonkers.  It’ll be tough though; we’re fighting corporate machines here and it will take more than just a few of us to make real change.  So, as some wise man once said, be the change you want to see.  Then spread the word.  Paper towels are for losers.