I’m trying to wean myself from paper towels. When I found myself wondering how I got along without them, I realized it was time to quit. I can remember a time without paper towels and it seems we got along just fine.

We could save a couple of dollars a week and in a year it could really add up! Think about it. Even though many households have dishwashers, I think dish towels could once again be a staple of the kitchen. And dish towels are a standby as a gift for that hard-to-buy-for relative.

Paper towels, once used, take up a lot of space in the recycling bag, and if they’re really dirty and covered with spilled spaghetti sauce, they can’t be recycled. The cupboard shelves could easily be filled with something more useful – like sandwich bags or tin foil.

For a while, I got so addicted to paper towels that I had a roll in the car but that got out of hand one day when I left a window open and one of my cats decided to spend the night in the vehicle and shredded the towels for an impromptu nest.

Another modern convenience I almost fell prey to was the neat little squares of aluminum foil. It was frustrating to roll out a sheet, having the box not shut quite perfectly and ending up with an uneven piece of foil. Then one day at the checkout counter (the consumer trap) I noticed these boxes of pop up precut pieces of foil. They were wonderful even though one piece didn’t quite fit in a baking pan, yet was too large to cover a small bowl. For a while, I shoved aside the old roll of foil and replaced it with this tidy pop up box. This was a temporary fad on my part and I soon returned to the old standby.

This addiction to paper towels will be easier to break now that manufacturers have decided to make the sections smaller, about the size of a paper napkin. To really be useful now, one has to unroll about a half dozen of these sections. And time was when nearly every Sunday paper included coupons which could be used for household products, like paper towels. Who wouldn’t want to save a dollar on an item which cost a couple of bucks? Even the coupons have changed, though, and nowadays one coupon is good for two or three rolls per purchase. Not much of a bargain.

It’s true that one can buy paper towels in the dollar stores and sometimes they’re less than a dollar at the major grocery stores, but they’re made out of inferior paper, I think, because they disintegrate when wet. Kind of defeating the purpose.

There are brands of paper towels that are so tough and so strong that they seem to never wear out. I had an aunt once who used to wash paper towels and lay them against the sink to dry. The first time I saw her do this I was speechless. She carried the thrifty reputation of downeasters a little too far, but that’s probably why she could afford to live on the coast of Maine.

I think of giving up paper towels as one small step of womankind toward saving the environment and fattening my fuel account for the winter.

See you next week.