10 June 2008

Toilet Paper on the Clothesline

This past winter, we decided to finally get rid of the toilet paper. My husband has, over time, brought home over 100 washcloths from work where he uses them to mop his brow. At one point I counted nearly 200, some of which I promptly gave away. So now I put a small stack of washcloths on the toilet tank behind the seat and we use those as our TP. I keep a bucket in the downstairs bathroom, and the washing machine is immediately outside the door to the upstairs bathroom. I can't put more than a few in each bathroom at a time or else the boy will take the whole stack and dip it in the toilet, which gets flushed every two or three uses.

So the other day I was hanging the laundry out to dry and realized that up to 1/4 of my clothesline space was used for drying toilet paper. How many other folks hang up their toilet paper to dry? Not many. I did notice that more of my neighbors are starting to use their clotheslines, though. Every apartment here has three lines run from the house across the patio, to the fence on the far side. They weren't ideally placed however, and the lines for my building are on the south side of the patio, right up against the fence. This means very little sun. On dry days at this time of year, though, I can still hang two sets of clothes, sometimes even three. I can fit anywhere from half a washerload to a full washerload at a time if I push things close together. If it is just adult clothes and/or towels, I can fit the whole load. If it is mostly kids clothes and/or washcloths, I can only fit half the load.

It is nice to know that we use almost no paper products now except paper to write on. We have an abundance of towels and washcloths that get used for everything that most people use paper for. I made up some nice muslin napkins for the table, and I haven't had a roll of paper towels in the house for over a year. Now to get rid of the last of the plastic. I still use ziplock bags for dividing up larger purchases into more manageable sizes, and gladware for leftovers.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm poop phobic. The notion of handling poopy washclothes makes me seriously feel nauseous (took me like four tries to spell nauseous properly). I just can't imagine doing that. Poop. *shudder*