Unpopular take: shop rags beat paper towels and my Tuesday proved it

Everyone in the shop gives me grief for keeping a stack of old cut-up t-shirts instead of buying paper towels, but Tuesday I dropped a whole cup of chain degreaser across the service bench and those rags soaked it up in one pass without a single drip hitting the floor. We go through maybe $40 of paper towels a month here and my rag bin costs nothing, which matters when the shop budget is already thin. What really got me was when the new kid used a paper towel on a greasy bottom bracket and just smeared it around, then grabbed a rag and it came clean in 10 seconds. Call me cheap, but if a cotton rag from Goodwill does the job better, why are we still buying 12 packs of towels? Has anyone else switched over, or am I the only one fighting this fight?