How Much is Inside A Roll of Paper Towels?

How much is inside a roll of paper towels?

Paper towels take the place of traditional dishcloths. The are a convenient way to wipe spills from countertops without having to soil your spotless washlinens. 

Throughout my adult life, I've developed a distaste for paper towels, they seem like a waste of natural resources, and ever since that problem in the co-ed locker room, I don't feel like I can trust them to absorb water without disintegrating into transparent fragments.

Recently, however, I started drinking a lot of Gatorade. I've become much more conscious of my need to keep my organs saturated while watching sports on television. With this increased consumption of Gatorade comes an increased problem with spills.

Within two weeks of the WNBA season opener, I was running out of clean dishrags. Frustrated, I noticed that Bounty paper towels were advertising that their new towels were the "Best Ever!". Maybe it was time to give paper towels another try.

Before plunging into the stereotypical consumer consumption lifestyle, I knew I would have to test how well these paper towels worked on Gatorade.

Could a roll of paper towels absorb the huge spills I'm capable of creating? On Sunday night, we decided to find out.

I spilled a 16-ounce cup onto the laundry room floor.

 Mike pointed out that I had instinctively rocked back on my heels to avoid splash-back.

Melanie saw the mess I had made.

Only after she had rubbed my face in it did I get a chance to explain what the plan was:  To create accurate simu-spills with Gatorade, and to wipe them up with paper towels.

We wanted to see how much spill one whole roll of Bounty towels could take care of.

We broke open the roll and started wiping up the spill. The Bounty Big Roll ( Rollo Grande) had 90 sheets, with a $2.35 price tag.

It took nine towels to clean up the first spill.

Next it was Melanie's turn to get into the action.

She spilled another 16-ounce cup onto the kitchen floor.

The towels were decorated with autumn leaves, which was advertised as the "Designer's touch", and they weighed 3.1 grams each. 

The towels soaked up the red liquid with blinding efficiency, soaking up almost ten times their weight in liquid.

It took nine paper towels to clean up the second spill.

The towels gave the Gatorade a husky aftertaste. It reminded me of the good old days, doing towel-shots of Goldschlager at the university.

Next it was Mike's turn to spill some Gatorade, which he did in spectacular pratt-fall style!

The favorite sports-drink of stuntmen is an older recipe called "whiskey". 

Just moments after that spill was wiped up, Melanie dumped another cup in the same spot.

No problem! We still had plenty of paper towels.

When Melanie's spill was soaked up, I simulated a drooling spill.

Sometimes the "designer's touch" isn't enough to get me excited about cleaning up a mess.

For the sixth spill, Mike poured the Gatorade into his pants pocket.

Mike's pocket was a terrible place to store that Gatorade, most of it ended up on the kitchen floor, where Melanie helped clean it up.

I guess Mike didn't appreciate Melanie's help, and didn't keep that a secret.

I could see Melanie getting more and more upset at Mike, and when he began making unwanted comments about her reproductive system, she lost her temper!

She threw her 16 ounces of Gatorade in his face!

After we wiped Mike, the walls, the floor, the curtains, the ceiling and my camera off, there were only a few paper towels left on the roll.

We carefully spilled three more ounces from shot glasses.

It reminded me of the good old days, doing puddle-shots of Goldschlager at the university.

With the final paper towels, we wiped the floor clean one last time. 

The eight spills had totaled 115 ounces, almost an entire gallon, and all of that Gatorade had been soaked up into our roll of Bounty!

My archaic beliefs about paper towels had been shattered! Paper towels were awesome, and no one had to spend all night washing dishrags!  Viva paper towels!

A 10-gallon cooler-full of Gatorade would require 11¼ rolls of Paper Towels, minus the Gatorade soaked into the coach's clothing.

Update!

The Gatorade-soaked roll of paper towels successfully competed against Ursula Disl of Germany, to take Gold in the 2003 Biathlon World Championships.