Monday Q&A-Paper plates, wheat grinding, and tea towels
Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you want me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me(thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line.
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Dana asked, "Do you buy things like paper towels, paper plates, napkins, trash bags...etc? I spend a lot of money on these things, and feel like it's kind of a waste of money, but I don't want to give up these conveniences. I work part-time and believe they are huge time-savers. Please tell me your feelings.
I do buy some of those things, but I try to avoid them as much as possible, not only to save money but to reduce the amount of trash our family creates. I'm not as good as my pal Mrs. Green, who produces almost no trash at all, but I try to do what I can within reason to limit the disposable items that come into(and out) of our house. I'm on the fence about global warming, but regardless of the truth or falsity of those claims, I don't think we can continue to throw stuff away at the rate we do and expect to keep our planet healthy. All of that trash has to go somewhere, and I want to limit my contribution to the landfills.
To that end, I don't ever buy disposable plates or cutlery. I have a dishwasher, and really, it takes very little time to load the plates, cups and silverware. The time-consuming part of dinner cleanup(in my opinion!) is putting the food away and dealing with the dishes I used to cook the meal. Loading the plates into the dishwasher takes very little time, so I don't at all mind using real plates. I think eating on real dishes is a little nicer, too...it gives your dinner less of a "choke this food down really fast so we can run off to soccer practice" feel.
I use very few paper towels...instead I use washcloths and rags made from old t-shirts(a post on that is coming!). Really, the only time I use paper towels is when I cook bacon or some other greasy food that needs to be placed on an absorbent material. So, I buy a roll occasionally, but it takes me a LONG time to use even a small roll.
I've posted before about how we reduce our napkin usage...you can find that post here.
Using cloth alternatives to napkins and paper towels really doesn't take a bunch of extra time. The washcloths and rags just get thrown in with my regular laundry and since they're so small, they hardly impact the amount of laundry I have to do.
I definitely do buy trash bags, but I don't have to do it very often because we don't produce a lot of trash(I don't think I've bought any since I started posting grocery pictures). We compost all of our fruit and vegetable scraps along with our egg shells. This means we rarely have stinky garbage, so we don't have to take the trash out very often. In addition, we don't buy food that has a lot of packaging, and we don't use disposable items like paper plates, so it takes a while to fill up a kitchen-sized trash bag. And of course, we recycle everything we can(and I don't have to use trash bags in the recycling bin!).
By using fewer disposable items, you will not only save money by not purchasing those items, you'll also save money because you won't have to buy so many trash bags to encase those disposable items. And your life will be a little greener too. 😉
One final thought...when you spend extra money to save time(time that's used by you working), that money is eating into your take-home pay. If you spend even $25 a week on disposable items, that's $100 a month out of your after tax take-home pay that you've just lost. I don't know how much you earn or how much you spend on disposable items, but you might want to do some number crunching to figure out how much money you're spending on those items, and how much time they're truly saving you. And then you may want to think about how many hours you have to work in order to pay for the paper plates, paper towels and napkins....depending on your situation, thinking about it like that could be really motivating.
Mo asked, "How do you grind your own wheat? I'm kind of wow about that."
Um, those of you that have been walking about with visions of me getting comfy with a grindstone should know that I have an electric wheat grinder. So, please don't be too impressed when you hear that I grind my own wheat. All I have to do is turn the grinder on and pour the wheat in...the grinder does the rest. It just sounds like a hard project.
I have a Whisper Mill, which I got as a wedding gift 11.5 years ago, and it's still going strong.
Someone(I can't remember who!) asked, "Do you ever cover your bread with plastic wrap while it rises? I've had trouble with the dough sticking to tea towels."
I don't personally do that, because I try to use as little plastic as possible(see question #1 above!), but it's what Cook's Illustrated recommends. I do occasionally have trouble with the dough sticking to the tea towel, but that generally only happens when I've let the towel get too dry, or I've let the bread rise too long.
Great post! Thanks for sharing. We also use virtually zero paper/disposable products in our home. Even for draining fried items, we either use cut-up paper bags (but we shop w/reusable bags, so those are rare) or...now it's not a gross as it may sound...I buy Costco's brand toilet paper and each one is rolled in tissue paper. So after removing the tissue paper with CLEAN hands, I fold it up and put it in the kitchen drawer to use later. Works great.
Love this post! I think that frugality and living green go hand in hand. I am so pleased that you think this way too!
People always think that going green is more expensive, when in fact it's cheaper because you shouldn't be out there buying those so-called "green, eco-friendly" products when simple alternatives are available, namely my best friends vinegar, baking soda, elbow grease and olive oil.
I don't even use shampoo or conditioner any longer, and my hair has never looked better.
Am so glad to find someone like-minded. Am adding you to my reader.
Fabulously Broke in the City
"Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver."
I do use a large plastic Ziploc bag for rising my bread dough. I oil the inside to keep the dough from sticking, and when it's not in use I store it in the freezer to keep the oil from going bad. I use this bag over and over...I'm sure it's at least a year old now!
For those who aren't inclined to make their own rags ... about 7 or 8 years ago, I bought a big supply (maybe 50?) of small white towels (10" by 10") at Costco. They're very absorbent. They have paid for themselves many, many times over. I used to use so many more paper towels. Now I hardly use any except for greasing pans and bowls or, like Kristen, absorbing bacon grease. I keep them in a cupboard and just toss them straight into the washing machine when they're wet or dirty, then wash w/the next load of laundry.
I'm no environmentalist. I think Global Warming is the biggest lie perpetuated by the media to scare us into their chosen agenda.
That said, I applaud those who can use less of something and waste less. I'm not yet ready to do the cloth napkin thing (I am going to be moving out on my own again so having piles of dirty cloth napkins waiting to be washed doesn't appeal to me) but I do agree with your less plastic and less waste post. Seriously, how hard is it to wash a dish?
I live in a house with 6 other people and we have a ton of garbage! Literally we are filling a trash bag every day or so. I've been trying to think of some solutions to it but all I can think of would be to throw the food garbage in the woods behind the house (no garden to compost) and to reduce the amount of disposable containers we use. We are pretty good on recycling so it's boggling to me how we have so much trash.
Hey,
Re. the dough sticking to the tea towel. This may be overly simplistic, but can't you just put the dough in a bigger bowl so it has more space to rise? I have never, ever had that problem... as long as you remember to use a damp tea towel and a bowl with plenty of room it should be fine. I've never heard of anyone using wrap... surely that would restrict the air flow to the dough?
*confused!*
Just a thought, anyway 🙂
-Sera
Nice post. I have used cloth napkins for years and about a year ago gave up paper towels. I often use junk mail to absorb grease from bacon and fried foods. It's very satisfying to watch the grease soak into unwanted credit card offers.
As for the wheat grinding, it's nice to know there is a good product for grinding.
Global warming is not a myth.
FB-I tried the no shampoo thing, but it didn't work out very well for me, darn it! I'm glad it's serving you so well, though.
Battra-we fill up about one kitchen trash bag a week. I don't have a garden either, but I still compost. I figure I will just put the compost into the beds in front of my house, and I'll use some of it for potted plants and veggies.
Sera-the problem comes more when you have a pan of rolls that are rising...then the towel has to sit right on the dough, you know?
Liz-I think you're responding to Battra, but I just wanted to clarify that I'm neither here nor there on the topic. I'm totally sold on the idea of reducing trash output, though!
I was responding to Battra. I wasn't trying to sound mean, but my mom is an environmental scientist who has no media agenda and she definitely has seen the effects of global warming on our planet!
When I use a tea towel instead of plastic for bread, I just spray some Pam on top of the dough and it never sticks to the towel (and also it helps keep it from drying out). I didn't know if you ever tried that so I thought I'd mention it.
Glad to know the Whisper Mill is good. I am always thinking about getting a food mill, though one of the Retsel ones is most interesting to me (because it can be used w/ or w/o electricity).
You can use plastic produce bags for covering bread dough. One more product reduced and reused.
For rags, you can buy bags of "waste" fabric. I got mine at a dollar store for a dollar (what else?). It was a generous amount - uncompressed they would fill 1.5-2 gallons - and obviously started life as t-shirts, sweatshirts, and kitchen towels. Two-fer: very inexpensive and saving perfectly good stuff from the landfill. Supplemented with old flannel pjs and ratty t-shirts, this pile has lasted me 5 years and counting.
A tip I picked up in Japan is to place one sheet of paper towel on top of a phone book (with the cover removed). You then place greasy items like bacon on top and the excess grease is absorbed down a few pages. The paper towel serves as a barrier between the food and the ink. When you are finished you can just rip out the pages that have grease and put into compost. I love this because I don't need the phone books that land on our door step and I dislike putting them straight into recycling.