Saving the planet, one napkin at a time

I work in the nursery at church. We have about 10-15 little toddlers every week, and every week we serve a small snack to these little ones. The routine goes...play, clean up, lesson, color, snack, singing time. During coloring, an adult or two starts putting together snack stuff, which means, counting the kids and getting cups with water and paper napkins for all of them. Several months ago, we upgraded to those "disposable" yet re-usable sippy cups because we had a large group of kids come in brand new who still were a bit unskilled with a cup and liked to dip their goldfish in them...messy! Plus we figured that money would be saved by not having to buy lots of dixi cups, and it's better for the environment. Now us teachers take turns bringing the cups home and throwing them in the dishwasher and bringing them back. Well, I was noticing the huge stack of paper towels we were still going though...we put them out to put the snack on in front of the kids...so I thought it was time for a second upgrade. I just used leftover fabric from other projects or peices I'd picked up in a bag from D.I. that had something much cooler in with it...they aren't all the same size...some aren't square...but the fabrics are super cute and it will be much more fun on the table then boring white paper towels. I also have a little fabric tote that I'd made for a scripture tote, but ended up a little too small...it's perfect for carrying the napkins in, and can just be thrown in the wash with them (so we can throw the dirty ones in there, and not have to worry about not having something clean to put them in to bring them back.) I think it's briliant, if I do say so myself :)