Homemade Cloth Napkins - the Easy Way

I've slowly been trying to reduce the use of paper products in our home. With children, our consumption of paper products was getting out of hand. They could use half a roll of paper towels to mop up a small spill. I want to encourage them to clean, but the waste was atrocious.

One of the best things I did was to take the paper towels out of the kitchen and put them in a more inconvenient spot. Under the kitchen sink I placed a pile of rags. Now a rag is the handiest available cloth for us all to use for a quick clean up.

I also placed a dish pan for dirty cloths under the sink since my laundry area is in the basement and not quickly assessable. Our paper towel use dropped to almost nothing.

Next I wanted to replace the paper napkins. I was planning to make a cute set of fabric napkins and I was bookmarking directions for cloth napkins all over the web. And, of course, I planned to blog about the adorable napkins I made myself!

But it just wasn't happening. The project never was getting to the top of the list and I didn't think it would hit priority any time soon.

This summer I had replaced my dish towels. The old ones were getting thin at spots but still had a lot of life. One afternoon I sat down with my scissors and cut several of the towels into fourths and zig-zagged the raw edges. It only took a few minutes and we now had a whole stack of child sized cloth napkins.


I keep them stacked in a basket next to the table. They have been easy to launder and dry and the children can easily fold them.

Nothing fancy and some day I still hope to make those cute napkins with mitered corners, but until then, this works for us!