The Towel Calculation

I’ve mentioned before how we use white hand towels in our house for many things.   I started using them over twenty years ago and since that time I’ve gone through a lot of towels and sourced them from different companies.   I’ve bought in bulk, found them at clearance at Walmart and gotten them at Costco.   Since we use them for so many things they need to be sturdy enough to last many washings, while also being cost-effective enough that they’re not at the, “premium towel” price level.

Costco has had the best price to quality ratio and the latest batch was at an even better price point at fifty cents each.   I was wondering how much value I get out of the towels over time and how it compared to paper towels / napkins as an alternative.   It’s one of those fuzzy logic problems because there’s a lot of play in the numbers, but I can hazard a guess.

I replace the towels about every four years and at that time get about one hundred new towels.   We go through about a hundred towels through loads of wash each week I would guess which means any given towel, should it be used equally among its peers over four years, would receive 208 washings before being, “retired”.   At fifty cents per towel that calculates to 2.4 cents per use.

I did a comparison to the paper towels we rather infrequently use and on bulk sale they’re listed at two cents per foot, which is about the same dimensions as my white cloths, only far less absorbent and possibly not equal for doing the same job.  So from a price point it’s fairly close.  

Our cloths don’t get thrown away when I retire them either.   They are either passed on to our cleaning lady who puts them through another series of uses and washes, or they’re marked for use in the garage for final use purposes like tire cleaning.

All in all, it’s a fair price comparison to paper products.    I don’t have a good gauge on total cost adjustment due to the washing and drying though.   That adds to the 2.4 cents per cloth.    That will remain an exercise for another day though as family just arrived from out of town.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband told my son to get his shoes and jacket on for school.   My son, clearly realized he still had time to dawdle though when he said, “Mom hasn’t even made her tea yet.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was playing some imagination game.   I said to her, “I just heard you say ‘monster’.”  She said, “yeah, I just like to say ‘monster’.”  She didn’t want to tell me what game she was playing it would seem.