What Kind of Towels Should I Use for Cleaning?
When choosing the right cleaning towels to stock for your home or business, it’s important to consider certain attributes in the towel such as effectiveness, absorbency, longevity, and environmental impact.
Many of us might not think of cleaning towels as a cleaning tool…but it is. Every tool that you add to your toolkit is an investment. A good cleaning towel can last you hundreds, if not well over a thousand washes before it disintegrates or needs to be discarded.
If your go-to cleaning towel is a paper towel, I highly recommend reusable cleaning towels as an alternative solution. It’s not only better for the environment, it’s also so much more effective. You’ll get much better scrubbing power, making your cleaning job that much easier.
In order for a cleaner to actually work + how it does its job: it needs agitation ⚡️
Agitation is created by applying pressure with a tool (either a brush or a towel). Example: a washing machine agitates the clothing in order to get them clean. You’re doing the same with other surfaces when you clean — but with ‘elbow grease’ and the tool.
When searching for cleaning towels, it can be overwhelming. There are thousands of options available with a quick google search, available at the tip of your fingertips. It took me years to find the right type of towel for my cleaning business. A challenge that I came across in my research was that the quality significantly deteriorated over time between washes and reuse.
There’s one towel in particular that I’d like to highlight, that’s far superior to any other towel I’ve used: terry cloth cleaning towels.
They really are the all-star, multi-purpose fully functional towel in my opinion. Let’s dive in.
Terry Cloth Cleaning Towels
Why terry cloth towels for cleaning? The fabric has natural micro scrubbers built right inside of it, naturally. There are tiny loops that create a texture. The loops help with the agitation needed when scrubbing/cleaning/polishing. It’s naturally absorbent, which is super important when choosing a cleaning towel. There’s a variety of application methods that you might use a cleaning towel for. This might include spray + wiping surfaces, cleaning up spills, hand mopping, drying + polishing surfaces, and more.
Terry cloth towels are far superior over paper towels or microfiber towels for various reasons (such as environmental). The biggest reason we use these at The Tidy People is for their effectiveness.
If you’re going to use one towel, make it be this one. It’s multi-purpose, heavy duty + durable, eco-friendly, lint free (when dry), absorbent, and reusable. You can use it to dust, glass clean, and deep clean surfaces. Here’s a recommendation for you: Simpli Magic Terry Cloth Cleaning Towels
Image by Shvets Production
Flannel Towels for Dusting
There’s a very specific use and application method that you would use flannel towels for: hand dusting. I’ve seen flannel towels used in a few ways:
(1) Dampen the towel with an all purpose spray and hand dust surfaces.
(2) Saturate the towel in mineral oil and hand dust with it. The towel can be reused many times after the mineral oil application.
While I recommend a feather duster for regular maintenance dusting every 1-4 weeks, this is a great application tool for hand dusting surfaces that haven’t been dusted in a long time. There is a natural static cling to flannel once you wash and dry the material. The static cling will begin to lessen over time — this is something to keep in mind in choosing this towel.
Ritz Flannel Dusting Cloth
Guardsman Pre-Treated Dusting Cloth
Image by Liliana Drew
Microfiber Cleaning Towels
In almost every case, I do not recommend these towels for cleaning. They can be an effective towel for dusting and glass cleaning. However, if you’re going to have a specific application method for the towel, I would strictly use them for that method. For example, a good glass cleaning towel should have no other particles, chemicals, etc. on the towels to reduce the chance of streaking.
Most microfiber towels that you’ll find on the market are made out of a synthetic material. This can be irritating to the touch, they lose their ‘static’ cling over time, and they don’t properly break down in landfills in their end of life cycle. Not to mention, they don’t have anywhere near the scrubbing power that terry cloth towels do.
While I’ve added this towel on the list of potential towels that can be used for cleaning, I don’t currently have any recommendations for microfiber towels that I can stand by in quality, positive environmental impact and multi-use function.
Image by Towfiqu Barbhuiya
Nanolan Cleaning Towels
This is a sister towel to the microfiber towel family, but it’s different in that the fibers of the towel are “nano” sized. The fibers in this type of towel is 100x smaller than the human hair making it:
💦 super absorbent - can absorb up to 10 oz of fluid without dripping
✨ quick drying
☁️ soft to the touch
⚡️ durable
