Ok, this one might sound crazy to you because most of the people I know told me it was nuts, but we are in the process of phasing out toilet paper in our house. While we are still living in town until we finish our rural house, we use toilet paper for #2 around here, and reusable toilet cloths for #1. They have been named "Squangles" by my daughter, and Squangles they shall remain. You can name these things anything you want. Have fun with it and get the kids involved. (Zerbots, Quergies, Squarmies - the list is endless!) So, if you want to greatly reduce your toilet paper usage, give this a try.
You will need - Some amount of Flannel cloth. Remnant bins can have small amounts of this for very cheap, and you will get a few different colors. I made mine pink and purple as we have a lot of clothes those colors and wash at least one load a week. How much you need will depend on how many cloths you want to end up with. I made mine the size of a large index card, 8 x 5, so a yard of cloth should yield around 25 cloths. You will need a container with a lid to put used cloths in until washing. You also need a sewing machine or a whole lot of time on your hands to do this by hand.
1. Cut the cloth. Figure out exactly what size you want and how to best utilize the cloth you have.
2. Zig Zag the edge of the cloths. One time around should do it just fine. The cloth will fray a bit, but not badly and it is much quicker to do it once than twice, especially if you make a lot of these.
3. Optional - basket or box. You'll want someplace tidy and clean to keep your cloths before use.
4. Put your used cloths in your container. I just put them in my container and wash them once or twice a week when I wash the same colored clothes. On the floor next to the toilet is a good place for a container.
5. Optional - scent. If the odor of unwashed cloths is offensive, you can add a small amount of scented baking soda to the container. I will warn you though, a slight chemical interaction occurs with the baking soda and it may discolor your cloths a bit. They just end up kind of tye-dye looking. I use 10 drops of essential oil in one cup of baking soda for deodorant.
6. Wash and dry your cloths. These can be washed with regular laundry with no special care. I wash mine in cold water with my homemade laundry soap and vinegar and dry them either on the clothesline or in the dryer as the weather permits.
When we get into our rural house with our composting toilet, we will be using newspaper instead of toilet paper for #2. I'll keep you posted on that as it happens!
(If you want to use these to eliminate ALL toilet paper usage, I would recommend using white flannel and putting the used cloths into bleach water until washing in hot water, detergent, and non-chlorine oxygen bleach just like cloth diapers.)
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