Debra Pickett

I've been a big consumer of all those disposable "wipe" products: from Swiffer cloths to Clorox wipes (actually the Target store brand version of those) and the specialty ones with lemon-scented furniture polish and Armor-All for the car and some sort of magic stainless steel cleaner that takes the finger prints off our fancy kitchen garbage can.

But I recently decided that this was producing entirely too much garbage and the environmentally decent thing to do was to switch from all this one-time use stuff to something reusable.

Thus, I went to Ace Hardware and bought a dust cloth, a glass-cleaning cloth, a package of scrubbing sponges and a super-absorbent dish towel, for a total of $17.96, plus tax.

Later, it occured to me that I'd just spent 20 bucks on rags.