Zokin, (雑巾）means "cleaning rags" in Japanese. They are basically cloth towels to clean any hard surface around a house. Old hand towels and T-shirts shouldn't be thrown away! Please reuse them and make zokins, why waste paper towels to clean hard surfaces? You can use them to wipe clean your tabletop, countertop, furniture, hardwood floor etc, then hand or machine wash and use them again and again. I recommend sewing them by hand -- since hand sewn stitches have less tension than machine sewn stitches do, the stitches won't break so easily.
Japanese children use zokin for cleaning the classroom at school. I remember my mom made several zokins for me when I enter the elementary school. They were folded hand towel, hand sewn around the corners and the middle.
These are some zokins that I made last weekend.
I will post "how to make a zokin" instruction next week!
