From Rags to Rags

Remember the olden days, when the things you cleaned with were called “rags?”

L-R, a shop towel, a microfiber one and a bar mop.

When I was growing up, the term covered store bought dish towels and wash cloths, as well as worn out ones and scraps of old clothes and linens used for cleaning.

Today, even used cloth scraps are no longer “rags.” Rectangles made for cleaning are “towels” if they’re durable and “wipes” if you’re supposed to throw them away. And if you’re buying them from a wholesale vendor or specialty shop, they’re “wipers.”

(If you want to get technical, it looks like the peddlers at U.S. Wipers break them down into "rags," "cloths" and "wipers." If I was really that interested in what to call them, I'd probably ask those guys to explain the difference.)

They’re still rags to me, and the array of what’s available is dizzying. At your average discount store, you can find paper towels, extra heavy shop paper towels, thin red cotton shop towels, wet paper towels for wiping babies, bathrooms, and furniture, decorative dish rags and towels, cotton cleaning towels in loopy terry cloth or tighter “bar mop” weaves, special synthetic “microfiber” towels billed as car buffing towels, window cleaning towels, magic dust-grabbing towels.

The wholesale specialty towel market is even more vast. There is a whole universe of “disposable wipers” that come plain or saturated with your cleaner of choice and are increasingly popular for infection control in medical and other large institutional settings. There are also lots and lots of different old-fashioned cloth rags for purists and cleaners with time and facilities for washing them. And that microfiber is the current darling that marketers say allow you to cut back on your use of cleaning chemicals and leave every kind of cleaning surface shiny and spotless.

I haven‘t done comprehensive research, and I dismissed disposable and pre-treated cloths out of hand because of the cost and waste, but I have enough experience to recommend the best basic tools for your wiping needs.

My experience, the best material for rags, especially if you have to pick only one is cotton.

Huck towels: The best, all purpose cleaning rag, in my opinion is the surgical huck towel. These are sturdy, cotton rags with a tight, smooth weave and finished edges, If you can get over the ick factor, you can buy used ones that have been cleaned after a tour of duty in the OR. Huck towels stand up to much hot-water washing and can be soaked in vinegar or bleach water without falling apart. They’re  absorbent, fast drying and low lint, and they’re better than paper towels, newspapers and even microfiber for streak-free glass.The blue ones are less expensive and easy to find, though I picked white ones for JustClean.

Bar mops: As good, or almost as good, are the tight woven cotton towels usually billed as “bar mops.” They’re very similar in texture and performance, though they often come in sizes a little larger than I’d like, and they seem to get loose and linty faster than huck towels. The upside is, they’re a lot easier to find, and I think all local mom-and-pop cleaning supply retailers have some kind or another. Weatherford Office Supply is the one reliable source that immediately comes to mind. One word of warning, a lot of stores, especially discounters, sell terry cloth bar mops. That loose, loopy weave is not suitable for cleaning and tends to leave lint and streaks everywhere.

Shop towels: Do not, I repeat, do NOT, try to clean with the bright red shop towels you find at the local discount store. Those things bleed everywhere and they will turn your mop heads and anything else you try to wash with them pink. But there exists an undyed variety, and white shop towels are  well worth checking out. They’re cheap and small with a similar texture to heftier rags. They’re  especially good if you find yourself trying to clean too much with one rag because it’s big and absorbent enough to stand up to more than one room’s worth of wiping. I bought a box of these to use for really icky jobs that would leave rags too gross to reuse. They do the job and they’re cheap enough to throw out when need be. But they also stand up to long disinfecting soaks, so I haven’t actually had to toss any yet. I’ve  only been using them for a couple months, so I can’t tell you how durable they’re going to turn out to be.

The gray rag in the middle is a kind of fancy microfiber one.

Microfiber: I also have some microfiber towels that I use because I have them, though I haven’t found anything so spectacular about them to make them a must-have. The first time I encountered the mighty microfiber towel was working for a fellow who said they were miracle window-wipers that guaranteed streak-free glass. They did a good job, but I am pretty sure it was more do to the newfangled alcohol-based window cleaner we used than the type of rag we were wiping it off with. I got the same results with huck towels and that type of window cleaner on a subsequent job. Microfiber cloths are really good for dry dusting and fine for dusting damp and wet. I just recently discovered that they’re great for that last dry wipe of shower and bath fixtures, the one that gets the last little bit of soap scum and prevents ugly water spots on tile and Fiberglas type surfaces.  I’m open to finding out different, but my experience so far, microfiber’s really only superior for grabbing dust and shining tile, and cotton rags can do just as good a job. [UPDATE: Now some serious biz types are telling me that I've been doing it wrong and should give microfiber another whirl to see how vastly superior it is to cotton. Here's a blog item that lays it out.  If it's really that much better at keeping chemicals, dust and dirt out of the air, I'd be foolish not to make that my rag of choice. I guess I'll have to do a post all about microfiber after I read up some more and try using them as directed.]

Rag rags: Of course scraps of worn-out linens and clothes also make fine cleaning towels. Stained and torn dish clothes, wash cloths and hand towels are the easiest types to repurpose for cleaning. Old T-shirts are usually a little thin, but are similar to shop rags and even easier to throw away when too soiled to wash. Those are the only things I usually use for rags, though if you keep an eye on your unusable clothing discards, you’re likely to find other items that will make good cleaning rags. If you clicked on the link at the start of this section, you see that rag vendors will even sell you pieces of old clothes and towels for use as cleaning rags. The main drawback to cutting up unwearable clothing is the edges. Unfinished edges will unravel and often leave strings behind when you clean and in the wash. Long fibers can cause your rags to get bunched and tangled in your washer or dryer.