Favorite Things Friday: Cloth Luncheon Napkins

For today's edition of Favorite Things Friday, I bring you one of my newest and most favorite Etsy finds: cloth luncheon/cocktail napkins from The Guestroom Closet. Hopefully, you already know about Etsy, having discovered it on your own or through me when I highlighted it as a previous Favorite Things Friday post.

Over the past year or so I've been making conscious efforts to "go green" at home. I use green cleaning supplies, we get all our milk and eggs and much of our meat from a local farm, we have a rain barrel, etc. In the past few weeks, I've used up and stopped purchasing paper towels and napkins* for our home. It took Abel a few weeks to catch on--he added paper towels to the grocery list several weeks in a row. And, my mom told me that she would stop visiting if we stopped using tissues or toilet paper! (Definitely not in the plans!) But, seriously, it is so easy to make this change!

I already had an abundance of kitchen dish towels and so we simply use those rather than paper towels to dry or wipe our hands. I generally go through 1-2 dishtowels a day, depending on the amount of cooking I'm doing. For cleaning spills and wiping the counter, floor, etc, I have a big bag of rags--cut up old towels, t-shirts, etc--that I use. All these get thrown into the wash with our other laundry and I hardly notice an increase in items to wash.

As for napkins, I already had a ton of cloth napkins. I just had to start using them! I dedicated the silver drawer (previously used as a junk drawer) in our dining room buffet for the cloth napkins and we grab one whenever we need one. If a napkin doesn't get very dirty during a meal, it stays at that person's place for the next meal. The only thing I don't like is the size of my cloth napkins--they're huge!

All this is a lot of background for my ultimate point: I am so thrilled with my purchase of cocktail/luncheon cloth napkins at The Guestroom Closet. I recently ordered three sets--one for us and two as little hostess gifts for my Boston visit. I loved them from the moment they arrived! The fabric is beautiful, incredibly soft and they are the perfect size. And, now that we've used, washed and dried them several times, I can fully confirm the shop's claim that they wash and dry beautifully.

The shop currently has several lovely patterns; they are $12 for 4 napkins.

If you are in the DC-area, you can find items from The Guestroom Closet live and in person at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring!


*Okay, okay, I do admit that I can't resist clearance priced paper cocktail napkins and do have a small supply for entertaining!