Save Money on Paper Towels

Paper towels are undoubtedly useful. They serve certain functions that dish clothes don’t. For example, I would rather wipe my mouth with a paper towel than a dish cloth. I don’t like cleaning a toilet with a dish cloth because afterwards, I have this icky cloth I have to contend with. I would rather throw away a used paper towel and be done with it.

However useful, we use far too much. Annually in the U.S., we use more than 13 billion pounds of paper towels, and that number is growing every year. This leads to over 3,000 tons of paper towel waste just in the U.S. alone each year. If each U.S. household used one less 70-sheet roll of paper towels, 554,000 trees could be saved every year. If each U.S. household used three less rolls per year, it would eliminate 120,000 tons of waste.

Discarded paper towels create 254 million tons trash every year globally. By cutting back on paper towel use, you can save money, reduce landfill waste, save trees, and more. Let’s look at some ways to use less and save money on these glorious paper towels.

Price Compare Like a Champ

Buying paper towels is surprisingly complicated. There are different numbers of rolls in a package and different amounts of square feet on every roll, so the cheapest price may not be the best deal. The best way to determine what to buy is to compare apples to apples based on the price per square foot. To do this, divide the price by the number of square feet listed on the package. So if a 100 square foot package of paper towels is $5, you would divide $5 by 100 and end up with $.05 per square foot.

If you do that with the different packages–the cheapest ones versus the ones on sale, and so on–you will find the lowest price per square foot of paper towel. That is the one to buy.

BUT buying the cheapest brand can backfire. It is true that very cheap paper towels (Walmart’s brand, for example) don’t absorb well, which means you end up using more of them, going through the roll faster, and losing the money you thought you were saving by buying the cheapest price per square foot.

Consumer Reports did an test on paper towels and found that Bounty Extra Soft, Walgreens Ultra Quilted, CVS Big Quilts, Kirkland Signature from Costco (which is what I usually use), and Up & Up from Target had the best absorbency. I generally believe in buying the cheapest roll of paper towels unless a brand has proven itself to be bad.

Recycle Old Clothes

I have found that cutting up an old cotton tee shirt, sheet or a flannel sheet has worked great at making cheap napkins. I keep them folded in a little basket on the kitchen table so we just pull one out when we need it. If I have company at the table, I break out the good napkins.

When I have bought paper towels on sale with a coupon, I take my serrated knife and cut the roll in half and that gives me twice the towels for one price. Of course, you have watch yourself and not just use more from the halved roll.

Reduce Use

You may think, “I don’t use too many paper towels” but it’s easy to see how paper towel use can get quickly out of hand if you consider these estimates for a family of four. Use as napkins at meals = 84 sheets per week. Use as hand towel in the bathroom – (4 potty breaks a day x 4 people) = 112 sheets a week. Washing up before meals and before cooking (3 meals a day) = 105 sheets a week. Washing and drying fruits and veggies (assuming you eat them at each meal – which you should) = 63 sheets a week.

Cleaning two bathrooms once a week = 20 sheets a week. Wiping down the kitchen after cooking = 42 sheets a week. That’s 426 paper towel sheets a week (typically 3.5-7 rolls a week – most paper towels have 60-120 sheets per roll) and I haven’t even covered cleaning up spills, pet messes, kid messes, washing hands after baby diaper changes, snacks and more. Paper towel use adds up alarmingly fast.

If you become conscious of your paper towel use, you can easily cut down. Use one sheet to dry your hands, just give them a shake first. Use newspaper to clean windows, it works better anyways.

The Final Paper Towel Thought

While looking for ways to save money on paper towels, I realized something. There are really only two things you need to do to save money on paper towels… never pay full price. Use fewer paper towels. That’s really all there is to it!