If there is one thing that your baby is guaranteed to do (aside from loving you) it is emit bodily fluids. Whether we are talking pee, spit-up, drool, actual vomit, or all of these at once, the baby will be making a mess.

You’ll need to cope with these fluids somehow. If you want to minimize your expenditure on paper towels, and don't feel like buying a heck of a lot of actual spit-up rags or burp cloths, here are some other options for wiping, sopping, and dabbing.

Dish cloths. Dish cloths are great because once baby grows out of the fluids stage, you’ll still have them for use in your kitchen. Buy a dozen- they work wonderfully.

Face cloths and hand towels. Along with the dish cloths, you can use small terry towels. Again, the added bonus is that once baby outgrows the fluids stage, they are still useful in your household.

Cloth diapers. If you already have cloth diapers this is ideal. To prevent using them up too fast, we sort our laundry by its yuckiness level- so a cloth diaper that has a bit of drool and spit-up in it goes in the "baby laundry" while an otherwise identical cloth diaper soaked in urine goes in the "diaper laundry."

Onesies. Sure, you put them on the baby as clothing. But if you got dozens of them as gifts, why not use some as rags, too? They are convenient, soft, absorbent, and in many babies' wardrobes they are really plentiful. Cute tee shirt yesterday, wiping up drool today, toss it in the laundry and it’s a cute tee shirt again tomorrow.

Receiving blankets. Big messes require big rags. Don’t discount blankets - for drool, try to use them a couple of times (perhaps four messes, one for each corner) to minimize your laundry load.

Leftover paper napkins from restaurants. I don’t know about you, but I have a bunch of these in a drawer that I never remember to use. Recently I started putting them in the diaper bag for on-the-go fluids removal. So handy! I’m not usually a paper products kind of girl, but I figured if I already have these stored up in my house, might as well put them to good use. - Leigh G.