DIY reusable paper towels (cloth "unpaper" towels)

Cotton flannel or terry cloth, for absorbency. I cut up old flannel sheets and worn towels, since both soak up spills well and soften further with washing. Avoid tightly woven or synthetic fabric, which pushes liquid around rather than absorbing it. Two layers stitched together gives a more substantial towel that handles a proper spill.

You can skip sewing entirely. I made my first batch by cutting flannel into squares and snipping the edges, since flannel barely frays, and they worked fine. A neater version has the edges serged or hemmed so they last longer through repeated washing. The no-sew route gets you started the same afternoon.

I keep a stack in a drawer and a small bin or basket for used ones, then wash them with the regular laundry. For genuinely grim jobs like raw meat juices or cat sick, I still reach for a sheet of real kitchen roll, since those are not things I want in my laundry. For everything else, the cloths do the job.

Worth it if you use a lot of kitchen roll. A household can spend €100 or more a year on paper that gets used once and binned, while a stack of cloths costs that once and lasts years. The faff is washing them, which is minimal since they go in with normal laundry. If you barely use kitchen roll anyway, the saving is smaller.