I scrunched up my
nose as I wiped down our outside table with a rag wondering if the washing
machine really could get out all this dirt. It may seem silly, but when we
decided to switch from paper towels to rags, I had in my mind images of cute
sanitary spills that I could swoop in and wipe up. You know, like the
commercials for paper towels. I had temporarily forgotten all the nasty stuff I
sometimes wiped up where I was only too happy to throw it away. My generation
grew up with this idea of “disposable”. It had somehow never dawned on me that
there was another possibility, like washing a rag.
I’ve been inspired
lately by library books I’ve found on re-using materials and items that I, in
the past, would have thrown or given away. For example, re-using tee-shirts. You can cut
up a tee shirt into squares, sow a border around the edge of the square and
ta-da, you have a cloth napkin that’s soft and absorbable.
I also invested
a little time and money into a couple of yards of Muslin fabric to make re-useable
coffee filters. It was easy. I bought it from the store, washed it and then cut
out squares which I use as coffee filters, (see directions below). I love them
cause my coffee actually filters better using them.
If you are a loose-leaf
tea drinker, I’ve found a system to make cleaning out the tea leaves easy. Make
tea in a teapot, using loose-leaf tea. When you go to pour it, pour it through
a mesh colander into your cup. The colander collects the leaves. When you are
done, swish some water in the teapot and dump out over/through the colander. Then
bring the colander to the trashcan or compost can and turn over and “whack” it
on the edge so the leaves fall into the can. Easy clean up!
Couple of
lessons learned – Wash rags separately as its own load, not with your clothes. Wash
coffee filters with your darks. I found the muslin picked up dirt etc. if I washed
them with the rags.
You can always keep
some paper towels for things you find too gross to try and wash out, but you
may find as I did that the truly gross items to clean up are a lot less than I
thought. I hope that you too will be
inspired to make a switch.
To make cloth coffee filters:
(Make sure to wash
the Muslin cloth before starting the project.)
Take a piece of
un-died Muslin cloth and a current coffee filter that fits your coffeemaker.
Trace the filter, adding about 1 and 1/2 inch border. (It you want, you can sow
around the edges to finish it. I didn’t and they work fine.) When you go to
make coffee, wet the cloth filter and place in the coffee maker overlapping the
extra cloth around the edges of the basket, tucking the edges under the basket
as you place the basket inside the coffeemaker. This keeps it from flopping
over into where you put the coffee. Put in the coffee grinds and make coffee.
For clean-up, bring filter to trash or compost bin and shake (gently) the coffee
grinds out. Then rinse the residue out and put it aside to wash.