Use Old Dish Towels To Create Budget-Friendly Fridge Liners

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Have you ever noticed that fridge grossness just kinda sneaks up on you? It's like one day, the crisper drawer's all pretty and filled with perky vegetables. By the next day, yucky produce slime is sludging up your refrigerator's drawers. As it turns out, the fix for this is simple: drawer liners. And while a number of different types exist, it is perhaps an old dish towel that makes the most sense as a solution for this issue. 

If you put a barrier between the fridge and mess-makers, like errant crumbs and dying veggies, it'll be easier to keep the fridge clean and tidy, including the drawers. A paper towel liner, something that some home organizers use for this purpose, soaks up the moisture and catches the mess. However, it has drawbacks. Reusing a paper towel leads to bacterial buildup and the possibility of cross-contamination — paper towels should be thrown away regularly. Unfortunately, this generates waste. 

A cloth dish towel creates the same kind of barrier between the drawer and the mess. The benefit, though, is that it cuts down on the likelihood of cross-contamination and reduces paper waste since you can just throw it in the washing machine to get rid of the germs. That's why the kitchen linen is a better choice for this. 

Many kitchen towels are safe enough to wrap your food in and to use as liners  — something to think about if you have multiple towels you'd like to upcycle. Some of your would-be kitchen linens are thick and absorbent enough to catch a majority of the dripping liquids caused by spilled containers and aging vegetables. Even if a little bit of that mess seeps through the cloth, you'll have less to clean up than you would have if you hadn't used this cleaning hack for your fridge.

Additionally, their built-in flexibility makes most kitchen towels pliable enough to fit into the drawer without modification. When you don't have time to cut them down to fit the drawer exactly, they'll still serve their purpose. You can always trim them to fit later.

Finally, you can use any old kitchen towel for this. However, if you have several to choose from in your pile of towels, remember that some options are better than others. Generally speaking, bar towels, like Utopia Cotton Bar Mops, soak up more liquid by design. (They're made to clean up drink messes in bars and restaurants.) If you regularly deal with spills in your fridge drawers, this type of towel will naturally soak up more mess from the get-go, making it a great kitchen cleaning hack.