Green and Tidy Cleaning Solutions in the Kitchen

After I finished tidying my kitchen I still had some work to do near my kitchen sink.

We've been trying to use less paper towel and for the last couple of years I've kept all our worn-out kitchen handtowels to use to mop up wet areas. This is how I clean without chemicals:

1. Wipe the bench with a wet Enjo fibre, or a knitted dishcloth

2. Dry the bench with a towel

3. Wash fibre/dishcloth and towels daily.

I kept the old towels under the sink where I could just grab one when I needed. But actually I didn't like to grab one, because they were stacked so tightly that if I pulled out one they would all fall out!

Another problem was nothing ever quite made it into the wash daily. The towels are quite absorbent, so we tended to forget to wash them, and just spread them out on the benchtop to dry. (Actually Steve would spread them out and about a day later I'd wonder why they never made it to the wash ...)

I had dreams of buying new sets of handtowels to use instead of the old ones, but that can get quite expensive and towels are quite big. I put it off and put it off ...

Enter my solution:

New white facewashers.

8 for $4.00 at KMart!

To tell them apart from other facewashers in the house I edged them with some beige twill ($1.00/m)

So for $7.00 I have beautiful matching cloths that look great in my kitchen. They sit near the sink on a little dish (to keep them dry).

Another problem I wanted to work on was The Compost.

When my husband makes a fresh juice in the morning (carrot, celery & apple) he collects the pulp in a plastic bag and during the day we put any food scraps into the same bag to go to the compost bin outside. But Steve doesn't have time to get it out in the compost every day, so there it sits in little bags on the kitchen bench. Eww.

So I've been looking out for something big enough to hide a bag or two of compost that will actually coordinate with the kitchen.

And while we were at KMart I found these great cannisters on special:

... for just $6.00 each! They are biscuit cannisters, but I remembered my spice jars and did the same trick, turning the label to the back - voila! Plain jars that match my kitchen. They even go with my vintage electric jug collection.

I've been meaning to do these things for so long, and I'm so glad I did!

Here's the area now:

And it makes me happy :-)

Linking with Anti-Procrastination Tuesday at New Nostalgia.