I spilled something a few minutes ago, and reached for-- <gasp> a paper towel, which got me to wondering whether Mr Annoying's math was on target. He said that I would be using $20 worth of paper towels a month, implying that I would do better to use Shamwows instead. I wish I could set up a couple of columns here, but I'll leave that to the Fray Wizards to fix next time they go a Fray overhaul. Meantime, we'll have to go vertical for this off the cuff cost benefit analysis...
On the Paper Towel Side: Cost. My paper towels are about $8 for a package of twelve. So I'd have to be using, according to the huckster in question, one roll of paper towels a day. Sorry, Huck-- not even close. Even on Bad Spill Days we don't use an entire roll of paper towels. We don't have enough time in our days to use a roll a day. Maybe if we spent more time making infomercials we would, but no, sorry. We probably go through one to two rolls a week, call it one and a half, for six a month, which is.... $4. Call that $50 a year, a dollar a week just about.
On the Sham (starting to sound aptly named, huh?) side, we have $28 for eight towels. Good, as we have seen, for soaking up spilled water (cola). Frankly, we don't spill water (cola) all that much, but now and then we do! I just did, in fact, spill a little water on the kitchen table, and I mopped it up with a single paper towel, which I threw away. If I had a Sham Towel handy, I could have mopped it up, wrung it out in the sink, and, uh, what, hung it on a cabinet door somewhere to dry. Real, uh, handy..
Here are some things I am not so sure the Sham Towel would be good at mopping up: Tomato Sauce, melted butter, spilled flour, oil spatters on the stove. Here are some things that even if Sham Towels could clean up, I don't see how the Sham Towel itself could be cleaned of: engine oil, automotive coolant, anti-seize compound, epoxy resin, Gorilla Glue, WD-40.
If I used a Sham to wax my car, would I want the washed and cleaned and dried Sham in my kitchen to wipe up something off a surface where I do food prep? Maybe not. And how convenient is it to have to keep track of these Shams and wash and dry them and carry them back to wherever I keep them handy? On top of the $3.50/per Sham cost I have to add them to my laundry stream, so the actual cost is more. Say it costs me only fifty cents/per to keep a Sham Towel clean and ready to absorb every year-- that's $4 per Sham, and I still need paper towels for dealing with french fries and fried dumplings that need draining, wiping out cast iron frying pans, and for the garage and automotive use where I really want the towel and toxic chemicals to just leave and go away for good. (Oh sure, I could "wring out" the engine oil, then take the Sham Towels to the dry cleaners for laundering-- that would certainly be cost effective!)
No, sorry, I just don't think that Shamwows are a substitute for any but a small fraction of my paper towel usage, and that the cost of using Shamwows where they could be substituted in would exceed the cost of using paper towels, and in the bargain would impose a time and bother burden that would make them truly expensive.
