My life would be a lot messier if it weren't for...

Paper towels. Unsung, but indispensable. At least to me.

I can’t imagine cleaning up spills and other mishaps without them.

I mean, wiping up spilled milk, coffee, or tea is not that bad. Nor is cleaning up dropped food or other more solid stuff.

But when it comes to dog or cat barf…

Or any creature’s bodily produce for that matter (perhaps except sweat).

Paper towels are my life saver. A god sent, if I believed in a god.

Use and dunk in the bin. As many as you need to get the job done. No need to get out a bucket. Or to rinse your cloth repeatedly in said bucket if one wipe doesn’t suffice. Nor to rinse it out when you’re done and before you put it in the laundry basket. You wouldn’t want it stinking that up, would you?

Yuck. I gross out even thinking about cleaning gory stuff up with a cloth.

Yes, I know I could use household gloves. But putting them on adds even more friction to old-fashioned methods of cleaning. Which I’m not fond of to begin with.

So, a huge thank you goes to Clarence and Irvin Scott, two brothers from Philadelphia, who invented them all the way back in 1879.

And what-do-you-know: the brothers created them as a sanitary alternative to cloth towels in healthcare.

I guess being grossed out by using cloth for certain jobs isn’t so out-of-this-world.

Like 3M’s yellow stickies, the paper towel was a bit of a mishap.

The Scott Paper Company had produced rolls of thick paper sheets. Sheets too thick to be used as toilet paper. Knowing a teacher who sought to prevent the spread of germs, Arthur Scott — the head of the Scott Paper Company at the time — had the imaginative idea to repurpose them.

I just love it when a non-plan comes together.