Paper Towels ~ What's New Is Old Is New Again

It was 1987. Our company president tapped a security code and the heavy door whooshed open. He stepped inside our new mainframe computer room and we followed. Beaming, he explained what all the floor-to-ceiling, gleaming gray and silver boxes could do. So excited was he that as he talked, he kept popping up on his toes. We were duly impressed. Every customer, every transaction, and even demographics—sortable, retrievable, useable. Truly a new world.

In 1989, I took my 95-year-old grandmother to visit my brother and his kids, her great-grandchildren. When we arrived, my 3-year-old niece was engaged in an educational game at an IBM personal computer, clunky by today’s standards, but way smaller than my company’s mainframe. As she looked up at the big square screen, my niece’s chin was about even with the keyboard, which put her little fingers about even with her eyes. Grandma and I were amazed by what she could already learn and do on this magic box. Programs, games, computation available in homes with just a few keystrokes. Personal computers—yet another new world.

Certain she would say computers, I asked Grandma, “What do you think is the greatest invention of all time?” Without hesitation, she replied, “Paper towels.” Perplexed, I asked why. When she explained that for most decades in her lifetime, every spill or splash, every baby burp, every spot of mud had to be wiped with cloth towels, which then had to be laundered, I began to understand. Also, even after washing machines arrived in most homes, many people dried things on clotheslines. Doing laundry was not the snap it is today. I could see how the invention of paper towels, new in Grandma’s lifetime, was life-changing.

Projecting to my own messes, I noted that if the spill was coffee or tea or spaghetti sauce or chocolate, the laundering process involved the additional step of stain removal. And how many cloth towels would you have to own to avoid doing laundry every day or two? Lots. So although I hadn’t personally experienced decades of labor-intensive laundering, I got Grandma’s appreciation for paper towels and napkins. I used lots of them. And I especially enjoyed the years when paper towels came printed with cute, colorful designs like flowers, butterflies, and French café tables.

Fast-forward to the 2000s when the age of disposability got cut short by environmental concerns. To produce paper towels and napkins, forests are destroyed! I may not be a tree hugger, but I do love nature and do not want to kill or waste it. A few years after my adult nieces began setting a green example, I changed my habits. Unlike them, I still kept paper towels and napkins in my house. But I used them sparingly. My immune system can’t handle the strong chemicals needed to get out tomato and chocolate stains, so I wanted paper towels and napkins for cooking and eating spaghetti dinners and chocolate desserts. Still, I was very pleased with how long—months, usually—a roll of paper towels lasted in our house. Also, cloth napkins cover more of one’s lap and feel softer on the lips than paper. A win-win.

Fast-forward once again to COVID-19. What are the first items to fly off grocery store shelves as anxious citizens prepare for the pandemic? Paper products. Perplexed again, it took me weeks to realize that since we so diligently wash our hands now after doing just about anything, reusing possibly virus-infected cloth towels is dangerous. Even after bumping weekly hand-towel laundering to every other day, I concede the point. Paper towels were on our grocery list when we ventured out to Walmart for 7 a.m. senior shopping time. I hadn’t purchased an 8-pack of paper towel rolls in years. It felt odd to be back in a paper-towel era. Ripping off a paper towel each time I dry my hands is new enough, it feels wasteful and so eco-unfriendly, I feel guilty. And wow, how quickly we go through them!

I look forward to a time when we can relax about invisible virus enemies, and what was new, then old, then new, will become old again.