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re. paper towels: strictly non-essential items, yes, but it takes some lifestyle reconfiguration to make the alternatives work. My household is (I speculate as

re. paper towels: strictly non-essential items, yes, but it takes some lifestyle reconfiguration to make the alternatives work. My household is (I speculate asymptotically) approaching zero paper towel use, but we have ready access to laundry, the capital and bandwidth to have built up a comfortable supply of rags and towels, and our only occasionally messy coinhabitant is the cat (and you can bet that if he vomits, I'm using a paper towel to clean it up). We can make the conscious choice to reduce our dependence on disposable products, but at some point (for everyone, for every "easy" solution x) it's not worth reducing any more.

Natsu 5y ago
I've really cut down on paper towel usage and I used to use a lot due to having several small animals who are entirely too prone to accidents. I found it best to keep a box of a few dozen small cloths that I got as a bundle, and a small hamper nearby that I throw the dirty ones into, which also happens to be near the washing machine. I end up doing quite a lot of washing of said rags, but it's far more economical than the paper towels ever were and quite a bit more convenient in general to boot.
EdwardDiego 5y ago
The whole point of paper towels, or disposable nappies, is removing the labour cost of cleaning them. My ex-wife was a stay at home Mom for her religious reasons, and was determined to be the "best" Mom, only healthy food, no TV or devices, cloth nappies etc. Once we hit kid #3, the time needed to launder cloth nappies wasn't viable with two other kids on the go. I encouraged her to give disposables a go, and she was hooked, but very guilty about it. But yeah, disposables saved us (well mainly her) many hours of scraping shit, stirring a giant bucket of nappies with Napisan, washing them, hanging them out in the sun to let the UV sort the stains etc. So while paper towels are technically non-essential, I'm reminded of the old sarcastic comment that "Linux is free, if your time has no value".
- erikbye 5y ago
  > I'm reminded of the old sarcastic comment that "Linux is free, if your time has no value". Wow, a thread about supply chains and you manage to take a cheap jab at Linux. In response, try running Windows on a computer you only use once a month. You can watch it update every time instead of getting work done. Linux you can update while working.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    Not only: "Linux is free, if your time has no value." But also: "Free software: more expensive than money." Those old sarcastic comments remind me of Cygnus Solution's more up-beat slogan (they ported and supported free software like GCC, and were bought by RedHat): "We Make Free Software Affordable" Instead of just whining about cheap shots, Cygnus Solutions deftly channeled the doubts and problems raised by the first two slogans (which they didn't originate, but were going around at the time), into a successful service under the last slogan (which they did originate, in response). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1641664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1641664 http://www.h-online.com/open/features/GCC-We-make-free-software-affordable-1066831.html http://www.h-online.com/open/features/GCC-We-make-free-softw... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23884395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23884395 https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2020-May/021225.html https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2020-May/021225.html
  - lucumo 5y ago
    Once a month? No. I hardly even reboot my Windows machine once a month... Only the major releases of Windows 10 need a stop the world reboot. Those happen once every six months. And it's usually only a few minutes. That's for a home machine. I've seen some enterprise machines take forever. I have no idea how they managed to fuck that up, but it's on the IT organisation of those enterprises, not on Windows.
    - erikbye 5y ago
      I said once a month, because if you use your computer once a month there is no point having it powered on 24/7, not economical. What happens is you power it on when you need to use it, Windows starts downloading updates in the background, the next time you power on, installation starts on boot.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Oh, for sure (that was what I was angling at with my comment about roommates). I suspect we would absolutely rebalance our strategy if faced with that sort of circumvention of our ... er... usual waste disposal mechanisms. On the other hand, I've known grown, solo adults who went through a few full rolls of luxe-brand paper towels a week (who needs a plate when you can stack 10 sheets of paper towels?).
- wsc981 5y ago
  If you just get a bum shower as used in many East-Asian countries, you can get away with very little paper towel use and don’t have to clean towels as well. And these bum showers can be bought on Amazon quite cheaply and shouldn’t be too difficult to install on any toilet. You’d also be much cleaner I think. This is just one example of such a shower found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B086W1YZSH/ref=sspa_mw_detail_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3GLIMJW6APPOCp13NParams https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B086W1YZSH/ref=sspa_mw_detail...
  - EdwardDiego 5y ago
    Sweet, so I'd just need to pay a plumber to install that - if my water pressure was sufficient to run it (it isn't), as I'm not seeing a pump. I get your point, but yeah, differing circumstances.
  - dzhiurgis 5y ago
    I’ve got japanese one and drying function just doesn’t cut it. In the end i use more toilet paper but experience is better. Could use cloth ones but toddler would destroy those.
    - wsc981 5y ago
      > I’ve got japanese one and drying function just doesn’t cut it. In the end i use more toilet paper but experience is better. Could use cloth ones but toddler would destroy those. Might depend how dry you want your bottom to be. I live in Thailand, so we got bum guns everywhere of similar style as the linked Amazon product (no drying function). I usually just use 2-4 sheets to "dry" my behind. If it's still a little bit wet, I don't mind, as my behind will get dry after a few minutes with pants on anyways (perhaps because I live in a hot country). At least I am 100% sure my behind is clean.
      - tikkabhuna 5y ago
        After talking extensively about the benefits of bum guns with my friends when we were in Asia, the hot vs cold country is a big differentiator. We loved them when we were out there, feels so much cleaner. Its also quite refreshing. Back in the UK though you during the winter the water will be extremely cold and you really don't want to be damp down there.
- quadrangle 5y ago
  Seems to me like people just aren't sharing the wisdom enough about how to do these things both responsibly and efficiently. We used just use cloth diapers, put them in a diaper-only load in our washing machine, dry them in the dryer, and it worked fine. Scraping? We just used a sprayer attached to the toilet, held in a little clip thing that keeps the spray contained. Stuff went in the toilet, mostly-clean diaper goes in the pail. We also did "elmination communication" part-time. Just literally set the kid over the potty around the right amount of time after eating, and each time we take diaper off, and if it looks like they're about to go. It wasn't lots of extra work, and around 6-months, we had maybe half the times just going in the potty without needing to deal with a dirty diaper at all. The entire problem is that our society is set up for the disposable approach and you rarely even know anyone in person who can guide you through managing it better, so we all figure it out for ourselves using the internet. But like, the one other family we told about what we were doing it just followed our lead and had total success too. And kids end up fully potty trained before 2yo. It takes more than just good intentions, it takes sharing the wisdom more. Companies that profit off of a disposable economy work to get attention instead of the better wisdom we could be sharing with one another.
  - EdwardDiego 5y ago
    Or, different people have different circumstances. Like, say, a low pressure water supply, limited to 900L a day. There's a reason we went with scraping the solids off, then soaking the nappies. It wasn't a lack of wisdom. Wisdom is why we used a washing line instead of a dryer, as the UV in my country is amazing at removing the left over stains. It's also great at giving people with a Northern European heritage skin cancer, so you know, upsides and downsides.
    - bjowen 5y ago
      Super off-topic but national differences in washing lines vs dryer use are fascinating. In an early attempt to replicate the Japanese line-drying time forecast[0], I looked around for English-language articles about clothes drying, and the predominant advice was to always use a clothes dryer, because line-drying takes too long, encourages mould and mould is deadly and to be feared. Which seemed weird as I’d never owned a dryer. Props on sticking to your guns for so long with cloth nappies, I know some couples who couldn’t make it work and felt they’d let themselves down. [0] https://tenki.jp/lite/indexes/cloth_dried/ https://tenki.jp/lite/indexes/cloth_dried/
- eru 5y ago
  > But yeah, disposables saved us (well mainly her) many hours of scraping shit, stirring a giant bucket of nappies with Napisan, washing them, hanging them out in the sun to let the UV sort the stains etc. We are using (modern) cloth nappies (after having used disposables early on). Our washing machine handles it all with standard detergent. No stirring or Napisan necessary. The drying via hanging up is exactly the same as for any other laundry. I do see your general point, of course. We mostly went with the cloth nappies in the first place, because of fitting issues.
throaway46546 5y ago
>but we have ready access to laundry Thank you for recognizing this point. It costs me $6 to do a (small) load of laundry at my complex and the time cost of going to a laundromat makes it economically unviable.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Laundry is one of those things I've lived without comfortable access to for long enough to appreciate what I have now.

Natsu 5y ago

I've really cut down on paper towel usage and I used to use a lot due to having several small animals who are entirely too prone to accidents. I found it best to keep a box of a few dozen small cloths that I got as a bundle, and a small hamper nearby that I throw the dirty ones into, which also happens to be near the washing machine. I end up doing quite a lot of washing of said rags, but it's far more economical than the paper towels ever were and quite a bit more convenient in general to boot.

EdwardDiego 5y ago

The whole point of paper towels, or disposable nappies, is removing the labour cost of cleaning them. My ex-wife was a stay at home Mom for her religious reasons, and was determined to be the "best" Mom, only healthy food, no TV or devices, cloth nappies etc. Once we hit kid #3, the time needed to launder cloth nappies wasn't viable with two other kids on the go. I encouraged her to give disposables a go, and she was hooked, but very guilty about it. But yeah, disposables saved us (well mainly her) many hours of scraping shit, stirring a giant bucket of nappies with Napisan, washing them, hanging them out in the sun to let the UV sort the stains etc. So while paper towels are technically non-essential, I'm reminded of the old sarcastic comment that "Linux is free, if your time has no value".

erikbye 5y ago
> I'm reminded of the old sarcastic comment that "Linux is free, if your time has no value". Wow, a thread about supply chains and you manage to take a cheap jab at Linux. In response, try running Windows on a computer you only use once a month. You can watch it update every time instead of getting work done. Linux you can update while working.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Not only: "Linux is free, if your time has no value." But also: "Free software: more expensive than money." Those old sarcastic comments remind me of Cygnus Solution's more up-beat slogan (they ported and supported free software like GCC, and were bought by RedHat): "We Make Free Software Affordable" Instead of just whining about cheap shots, Cygnus Solutions deftly channeled the doubts and problems raised by the first two slogans (which they didn't originate, but were going around at the time), into a successful service under the last slogan (which they did originate, in response). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1641664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1641664 http://www.h-online.com/open/features/GCC-We-make-free-software-affordable-1066831.html http://www.h-online.com/open/features/GCC-We-make-free-softw... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23884395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23884395 https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2020-May/021225.html https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2020-May/021225.html
- lucumo 5y ago
  Once a month? No. I hardly even reboot my Windows machine once a month... Only the major releases of Windows 10 need a stop the world reboot. Those happen once every six months. And it's usually only a few minutes. That's for a home machine. I've seen some enterprise machines take forever. I have no idea how they managed to fuck that up, but it's on the IT organisation of those enterprises, not on Windows.
  - erikbye 5y ago
    I said once a month, because if you use your computer once a month there is no point having it powered on 24/7, not economical. What happens is you power it on when you need to use it, Windows starts downloading updates in the background, the next time you power on, installation starts on boot.
InitialLastName 5y ago
Oh, for sure (that was what I was angling at with my comment about roommates). I suspect we would absolutely rebalance our strategy if faced with that sort of circumvention of our ... er... usual waste disposal mechanisms. On the other hand, I've known grown, solo adults who went through a few full rolls of luxe-brand paper towels a week (who needs a plate when you can stack 10 sheets of paper towels?).
wsc981 5y ago
If you just get a bum shower as used in many East-Asian countries, you can get away with very little paper towel use and don’t have to clean towels as well. And these bum showers can be bought on Amazon quite cheaply and shouldn’t be too difficult to install on any toilet. You’d also be much cleaner I think. This is just one example of such a shower found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B086W1YZSH/ref=sspa_mw_detail_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3GLIMJW6APPOCp13NParams https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B086W1YZSH/ref=sspa_mw_detail...
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  Sweet, so I'd just need to pay a plumber to install that - if my water pressure was sufficient to run it (it isn't), as I'm not seeing a pump. I get your point, but yeah, differing circumstances.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  I’ve got japanese one and drying function just doesn’t cut it. In the end i use more toilet paper but experience is better. Could use cloth ones but toddler would destroy those.
  - wsc981 5y ago
    > I’ve got japanese one and drying function just doesn’t cut it. In the end i use more toilet paper but experience is better. Could use cloth ones but toddler would destroy those. Might depend how dry you want your bottom to be. I live in Thailand, so we got bum guns everywhere of similar style as the linked Amazon product (no drying function). I usually just use 2-4 sheets to "dry" my behind. If it's still a little bit wet, I don't mind, as my behind will get dry after a few minutes with pants on anyways (perhaps because I live in a hot country). At least I am 100% sure my behind is clean.
    - tikkabhuna 5y ago
      After talking extensively about the benefits of bum guns with my friends when we were in Asia, the hot vs cold country is a big differentiator. We loved them when we were out there, feels so much cleaner. Its also quite refreshing. Back in the UK though you during the winter the water will be extremely cold and you really don't want to be damp down there.
quadrangle 5y ago
Seems to me like people just aren't sharing the wisdom enough about how to do these things both responsibly and efficiently. We used just use cloth diapers, put them in a diaper-only load in our washing machine, dry them in the dryer, and it worked fine. Scraping? We just used a sprayer attached to the toilet, held in a little clip thing that keeps the spray contained. Stuff went in the toilet, mostly-clean diaper goes in the pail. We also did "elmination communication" part-time. Just literally set the kid over the potty around the right amount of time after eating, and each time we take diaper off, and if it looks like they're about to go. It wasn't lots of extra work, and around 6-months, we had maybe half the times just going in the potty without needing to deal with a dirty diaper at all. The entire problem is that our society is set up for the disposable approach and you rarely even know anyone in person who can guide you through managing it better, so we all figure it out for ourselves using the internet. But like, the one other family we told about what we were doing it just followed our lead and had total success too. And kids end up fully potty trained before 2yo. It takes more than just good intentions, it takes sharing the wisdom more. Companies that profit off of a disposable economy work to get attention instead of the better wisdom we could be sharing with one another.
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  Or, different people have different circumstances. Like, say, a low pressure water supply, limited to 900L a day. There's a reason we went with scraping the solids off, then soaking the nappies. It wasn't a lack of wisdom. Wisdom is why we used a washing line instead of a dryer, as the UV in my country is amazing at removing the left over stains. It's also great at giving people with a Northern European heritage skin cancer, so you know, upsides and downsides.
  - bjowen 5y ago
    Super off-topic but national differences in washing lines vs dryer use are fascinating. In an early attempt to replicate the Japanese line-drying time forecast[0], I looked around for English-language articles about clothes drying, and the predominant advice was to always use a clothes dryer, because line-drying takes too long, encourages mould and mould is deadly and to be feared. Which seemed weird as I’d never owned a dryer. Props on sticking to your guns for so long with cloth nappies, I know some couples who couldn’t make it work and felt they’d let themselves down. [0] https://tenki.jp/lite/indexes/cloth_dried/ https://tenki.jp/lite/indexes/cloth_dried/
eru 5y ago
> But yeah, disposables saved us (well mainly her) many hours of scraping shit, stirring a giant bucket of nappies with Napisan, washing them, hanging them out in the sun to let the UV sort the stains etc. We are using (modern) cloth nappies (after having used disposables early on). Our washing machine handles it all with standard detergent. No stirring or Napisan necessary. The drying via hanging up is exactly the same as for any other laundry. I do see your general point, of course. We mostly went with the cloth nappies in the first place, because of fitting issues.

throaway46546 5y ago

>but we have ready access to laundry Thank you for recognizing this point. It costs me $6 to do a (small) load of laundry at my complex and the time cost of going to a laundromat makes it economically unviable.

InitialLastName 5y ago
Laundry is one of those things I've lived without comfortable access to for long enough to appreciate what I have now.