Yes, I’m buying the expensive paper towels. Stop looking down your nose at me like I’m wasting money. I’m not. In fact, I bet I’m spending less than you are this month. So there.
Strange, nonsensical topics. Why do they stay with us for years and years and years? Back, way back, when I graduated from college and really moved out on my own (as opposed to living in a house with 4 girls and pretending to be independent while accepting monthly checks from my dad), I decided the expensive paper towels were so cool. They were thick, soft and much nicer as napkins than the Big-Man quicker super-soaker-picker-upers.
Being the recent-grad-with-no-common-sense, it took me another 6 months to realize money didn’t work quite the way I thought it did. So it was time to cut back, and of all the things that stuck in my mind to cut back on, it was paper towels. I was getting serious, darnit, so why in the world did I need nicer paper towels?
I think that lasted another 6 months. I got a better job, I had a little extra spending money, so after buying all new particle board furniture I turned to my top priority: paper towels. But I did always buy them on sale, so it’s not all bad. We’re talking about a difference of maybe a dollar or two a month. Sure those pennies and dimes and dollars add up, but I hadn’t quite gotten to that level of common sense.
About three years ago, my husband and I were at Costco, desperate for more paper towels and absolutely no desire to do any more shopping, and we bought the Big-Man etc. towels. It took using one towel, literally, for the all-time tight-wad of the earth (my husband, not me) to declare that we were never buying those towels again. We liked our Vivas, darnit, and that’s that. I have a feeling, knowing us, that we had a long discussion about the scientific and psychological reasons for liking those towels, beyond their softness, but I’ve slept since then. All that stuck in the back of my mind was that if the frugal king wanted Viva, then the reasons had to be good.
Two months ago Costco had a $3-off coupon for their gigantic, oversize, already cheap thicker-quicker etc. towels and I was, yet again, desperate with absolutely no desire to do any more shopping. How bad could it be to go a few months (years, given it’s a Costco-sized pack) with these towels? All I could remember is that we were towel snobs. I heaved the pack into my cart.
And it took exactly one towel to remember why I refused to settle for the less expensive. I started wiping down my counter-tops and the towel fell apart almost immediately. Two towels fell apart almost immediately. We all know we’re supposed to use paper towels in the kitchen because cloth towels spread germs, so I was going through four towels just to clean the island. I had a few Viva towels left on a roll in the bathroom so I used one of those to wipe down the kitchen. One towel cleaned everything: the counters, the stove, the sink, the microwave. I could even rinse the darn thing in water, ring it out and keep going.
So I did the math. Obviously not every job requires cleaning everything, but I’m not one to waste a perfectly good towel, so if I have to wipe down one thing, I wipe down everything. One roll of 60 sheets of Viva costs $1, or 1 2/3 cents per sheet. One roll of 100 of the other sheets cost me about 50 cents, or .5 cent per sheet. If I use, on average, one Viva for every four of the others, I actually save 1/3 cent per use. And those cents and dimes and dollars add up. Not to mention, I have flat paint on the walls that need a very soft touch for spot cleaning and the Vivas are perfect for that. They’re perfect for wiping down anything that scratches easily because, hey, they’re soft!
So don’t you be looking down your nose at me for buying expensive towels. I’m the one who’ll end up spending less.
Flygirl
Amen sister! We LOVE Vivas. I’ll take Bounty also, but NEVER Brawny or any non-brand. I guess maybe some people only use paper towels to dry their hands, but not to clean their houses.