DIY -- hankies redux

Some years ago I wrote about what happened when I bought cotton hankies instead of paper. 

Well, it's 8 years later and that first batch of hankies is wearing out. In the meantime, I have bought three, count 'em, three boxes of paper hankies because they are good for some things you don't want to do with your cloth ones. You can get 10 boxes at Costco for $25, x 9 years, is over $200. Because all the tissue makers hiked their prices toward the end of the pandemic.

I am replacing the original hankies at a price of $100. They will last me 9 more years. I am making out like the proverbial bandit.

Plus I'm not killing trees, I'm not adding to the landfills, and we all do laundry anyway.

But the real bonus was this. About one year ago, I had some terrible bronchitis or the mother of all asthma breakouts, I don't know which. I would have used ten times as much paper tissues as I used to do before I bought the cloth ones. I would have filled my trash about half with paper hankies and half with everything else I trash in the course of a week. I would have had so much lint in the air, it would have meant even more paper hankies to wipe my nose. I would have been one sad sad puppy.

Instead, I had to wash all my hankies about once a week, and the heavy use probably wore them out sooner, but I still made out like a bandit by not having to spend those $200 in one year instead of nine.

And whatever it was is tailing off like any other cold.

So if $100 sounds like too much of an investment for you, do the math again. We can all use an extra $100 in our pockets.