What do y'all use for rags in your shop?

Strangely enough I just made a Sam’s run yesterday.
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I cheat, we get boxes of blue shop towels and I usually have a bunch in the truck. So they get raided quite frequently. As well as duct tape, masking tape, spray paint and anything else that's on the truck or that I can check out from the tool crib for a few days.
 
Steal them from work. Lol
Hah, I amassed a decent collection of my own shop rags from doing just that. Eventually, they started to run out, in spite of me augmenting them with my old Ts, shirts, and boxer shorts. Then I discovered my farm supply store sells compressed bales of them for a few quid and I'll never run out of them again.
One bloke I knew would collect old roller towels (the type used in cabinets, not the towels on a wooden roll) and put the roll through a bandsaw, so that it opened up into a pile of roughly square handy rags, but they got progressively smaller the closer you got to the centre. Given that he was picking them up for peanuts, it wasn't a problem.
 
Do you have any hotels nearby? They routinely discard terry cloth that is worn or stained. I would expect they'd be willing to give it to you.
 
T's.... socks..... mix of white and blue towels ..... If I see the towels on a good sale.. I'll buy several....
 
Wal-mart Wash clothes. 3-4 bucks for 24 or so for them when on sale in the bins in the walkway separating bed linens from women's fine clothing.

And I can sneak some of them into her washing machine.

Black for checking oil.
Grey wiping tools
white glass cleaning
Red Carb cleaner Brake cleaner and other nasty's
Green Snot rag
Blue metal polishing
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Old thread but the feed popped it up...
True cloth rags are more or less banned in my shop; they get used once, twice and get too greasy/dirty to reuse and too contaminated for the domestic washing machine. They accumulate in piles and become a spontaneous combustion risk (don't believe in spontaneous combustion? Me neither until my buddy's son set the house on fire with a pile of linseed oil-soaked rags!). My go-to is brown kraft-paper rolls, at $1 or so a roll. Use it and toss it. There are a few commercial shop rags and worn-out towels for drying hands and the like.
 
I was using old sheets ripped into small usable pieces. No more though. I now have an overhead rack which holds a big roll of paper towel and a big roll of Chux.
 
As outlined earlier, I use domestic waste - sheets, shirts, towels, etcetera. All ripped into useful sizes. The course of a rag through the garage - starts as a clean rag, then gets used for wiping progressively dirtier things. Old dusters are kept for polishing tanks and paintwork, absorbent cloths used for washing, linen or cotton for general purpose wipes. If it's been used for wiping anything gritty, gets chucked on tray on the floor in the corner. If it's been used for wiping anything oily, gets chucked on a different tray near the tool storage. Once it's been used for cleaning a drive chain or wiping out a bowl where I've been cleaning parts in petrol or kerosene, goes in the trash bin. Hierarchy and social progression among rags.
 
I hate buying paper towels, so then, brown napkins from McDonalds'. That's easy since I'm an everyday customer. Bag day at the thrift store for washed cotton.
 
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