I blamed the spray. I blamed the water. For about twenty years it was the cloth.

Six things a two-sided microfibre cloth gets right that a drawer of old tea towels and a roll of paper towel got wrong, written down by a customer, not a manufacturer.

The bathroom mirror was the one that finally got to me. I would clean it properly, stand back, and there they would be — those faint cloudy arcs, exactly where my hand had been. Every single time.

So I changed sprays. Then I tried vinegar, because my mother swore by it. Then newspaper, because the internet swore by that. Then I bought a more expensive spray, which is the point at which you know you have stopped thinking.

It was never the spray. Here is what it actually was, and it took a packet of grey microfibre cloths from Cute Home, a small Melbourne outfit, for me to work it out. Six things they get right.

Cleaning glass is really two jobs. First you lift the dirt, which needs a cloth that soaks up water and holds it. Then you dry the glass, which needs a cloth that is not already full of water. Those are opposite requirements, and if you do both with the same cloth — which is what everybody does — the second half of the job is just spreading a thin film of dirty water around with something already damp. That film dries. That is your streak. It was never the spray.

These have two different faces. One side is a deep plush pile that holds water and lifts. The other is a tighter, flatter weave that buffs dry. You wipe with one, flip it, and finish with the other.

"Twenty years of streaky mirrors and it was never the cleaner I was using."

That is the whole method and it takes about four seconds longer than what you are doing now. Wet the plush side, work across the glass, then turn the cloth over and go back across with the dry face. What you get is a line where the cloth has been that is properly clear rather than nearly clear. The first time I did the car windows I stopped halfway and just looked at the difference, which is not a thing I expected to be doing on a Sunday.

"The line where the cloth had been was so obvious I made my husband come and look."

A tea towel on a wet bench does not really absorb — it smears, and then you are wringing it out over the sink after one go. These are thick and they take a genuinely surprising amount of water before they feel wet at all. One cloth does a whole benchtop, both sides of the sink, and the splashback, and I am still not wringing it out. It weighs twenty grams dry and I would not like to guess what it weighs full.

"I did the entire kitchen with one cloth without rinsing it once. That has never happened."

Nothing sprayed on. Warm water on the plush side and that is it, on glass, on the stovetop, on the stainless kettle and the fridge door where the handprints go. I had a shelf under the sink with six bottles on it and most of them have gone, not because I have become virtuous about chemicals but because I stopped reaching for them and they were in the way.

"Stainless steel appliances with just water and no marks left behind. I did not believe that either."

The tea towel I used to use on the windows left tiny fibres behind, so you would finish, catch the light, and find a scattering of little grey specks stuck to the glass. Then you would wipe those off with the same tea towel, which of course put down fresh ones. These are woven tight enough that they leave nothing at all. On mirrors and windows that is the difference between finished and nearly finished.

"No lint on the mirrors. I had just accepted that as part of cleaning a mirror."

They come in packs and I would get more than three. Mine ended up one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, one in the car, and then I needed one for the laundry and had run out. They wash with the towels, come out fine, and they have not gone thin or gone smelly, which is where every cloth I have owned eventually ends up.

"Bought three, immediately bought six more. One for every room."

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Two honest notes before the price

Do not put fabric softener anywhere near them. This is the thing nobody tells you and it is why most people decide microfibre does not work — softener coats the fibres and the cloth stops absorbing almost overnight. Wash them with the towels, no softener, and they carry on doing what they did in week one. Mine have been through the machine a dozen times.

And they are cloths, not scourers. They wipe, absorb and polish, and they are very good at that. They will not shift burnt-on grease off a roasting dish and I would not expect them to. Different job, different tool.

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The two-sided cloth, against what is in your kitchen drawer

Which in our house was old tea towels and a roll of paper towel. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.

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About the price

I will be straightforward, because this is the bit I would have argued with. Three cloths are $49.95, down from $60. That is around sixteen dollars a cloth and I am well aware how that sounds. Six are $69.95 and nine are $89.95, so the bigger packs bring it down to about ten.

What made the sum work for me was the paper towel. We were going through a roll a fortnight, which is not far off two hundred dollars a year, and it all went in the bin. These have replaced it entirely and they are still in the drawer. That is the whole argument, and if you do not use much paper towel it may not be your argument.

If you have ever cleaned a mirror properly and stood back to find the same faint arcs where your hand went, it was never the spray.

— Nancy

About the writer. Nancy Brooks lives in Melbourne, VIC. She writes occasionally about the small things she has actually kept using. She is not affiliated with Cute Home beyond being a customer.

This page is an advertisement for Cute Home. Nancy's letter is shared with her permission. Cute Home · An Australian start-up from Melbourne · Free Australia-wide delivery · 30-day money back guarantee.