Works for Me Wednesday: Microfiber Cloths!

I know I’m way late to the gate on this one, but I’d never really tried microfiber cloths before.  I was very confused about the whole safe-to-use-with-cleaning-fluids issue, and I don’t like the feel of them on my hand–they’re just so sticky and they get caught and pulled in microscopic fingernail tears I didn’t even know I had–and they remind me of nothing so much as pantyhose.  Just, ewwwww.

But I kept reading about how they were literally the best thing to happen to housekeeping since sliced bread, and with the whole cloth diaper thing, it just seemed to make a whole lot of sense to try to reduce our astounding trash pile of paper towels.  So I ordered a great big pile of microfiber cloths and chomped at the bit until they finally came in and I could see for myself if all the hype was true.

It is.  The most amazing thing about microfiber cloths is to clean off semi-solid messes, like tomato sauce or peanut butter from R’s highchair; there is no comparison between these cloths and anything else I’ve ever tried.  They’re really good about not just pushing messes around, but actually picking them up.  They’re also more than competent at cleaning up liquid spills: one cloth, wrung out once, cleaned up about 10oz of spilt milk, which means they’re as efficient as most sponges and less work–and less leave-behind smearing.  They’re obviously good at dusting and picking up very small particles (like crumbs), but they’ve surprised me with their grippiness and ability to de-stickyfy surfaces as well.  Honey, for instance, is no match for the microfiber.

I’ve also been surprised by how often it’s efficient for me to simply rinse them, wring them, and keep using them.  I bought 36, and expected to have to buy more (or do laundry all the time) because we easily were going through that many paper towels in a day just cleaning the counters, the floors, and various other kid-dirtied surfaces.  And it is nice to have enough of them so that if one gets too grody, I can toss it in the laundry without worrying about whether or not it’ll make me run out too soon, but I definitely don’t anticipate buying any more.  I keep one on our paper towel rack for drying hands, one on the counter for cleaning counters, and one on another towel rack in the kitchen for getting little drips off the floor as they happen.  The floor and counter ones end up getting replaced at least a couple of times each day, but they still last a lot longer than paper towels did.

The only thing I really regret is that I didn’t know about microfiber cloths sooner!