Spills, sneezes, and other stuff that needs cleaning up. We test and rate the best in towels and tissues.

Let other journalists travel the world in search of scoops. My story is in the kitchen and the living room—and in the toilet. In researching this piece, I turned my apartment into a paper torture facility as I compared the wiping power of 10 brands of paper towels, six lines of facial tissues, and 11 types of toilet paper. Not all my experiments were successful, and as I mop up the spills I can only hope that my landlady doesn't read Slate.

Thanks to late-stage capitalism, the supermarket shelves sag with scores of brands in the three main paper categories. This is not as daunting as it sounds, because the market is now dominated by four companies: giant Procter & Gamble (Bounty, Charmin, and Puffs), and three other products of merger mania Kimberly-Clark (Scott, Kleenex, and Viva), Georgia-Pacific (Coronet, Sparkle, Angel Soft, and MD), and Fort James (Brawny, Quilted Northern, and Green Forest). In picking the 37 contestants for this survey I strove to find representatives of the three price points—premium, middle-of-the-road, and generic—and to give recycled and novelty products an equal opportunity to impress.

All paper—facial tissues, writing paper, newsprint—is created equal. What makes "sanitary wiping paper" (to use the wonderful cadences of marketing-speak) stretchy and absorbent is a process called "creping": A metal blade removes the paper as it dries from the steel cylinder on which it was formed, lowering the paper's density. The premium wiping papers are also embossed, which creates pockets to hold more "moisture." (Kimberly-Clark's Web site boasts that "On the East Coast only, Kleenex Cottonelle has been given a unique, patented, gentle texture that is designed to give consumers a clean, fresh feeling." Apparently, we hardy westerners don't deserve such luxury.)

Paper towels contain more fibrous pulp. This increases their strength, and the manufacturers usually give them more pronounced embossing for greater soaking power. Whereas little girls and babies appear on toilet paper wrappers, paper towel packages depict beefy, brawny guys, indicating their toughness. In this category the contestants were:

Premium
Bounty Rinse & Reuse
Versatile Viva
Kleenex Viva Job Squad

Middle-of-the-Road
Scott Towels
Brawny Pick-a-Size Big Roll
Kleenex Viva

Recycled
Seventh Generation
Second Nature Plus
Envision Preference
Natural Value

To see if the towels really could provide the implied strength and security, I tested the ability of a single sheet to hold the moisture produced when a damp tea bag was left on it for two minutes. Unfortunately for me and my security deposit, none of my towels succeeded. I didn't have any of the blue liquid ad agencies use in commercials to indicate absorbency, so I gauged the soaking power of individual sheets with tap water. Absorbency varied little as I poured a quarter-cup of water onto towel after towel. Not a single one could hold all the fluid, but even the cheapest towel stayed solid as it was wrung out and used to wipe up the excess from the counter.

These tests convinced me that while paper towels can't perform miracles, even the lowliest example of the species can soak up liquid and dry your hands. If you're faced with a big, messy job, it might be worth spending the extra money for a premium product such as Bounty Rinse & Reuse or Kleenex Viva Job Squad but, under normal circumstances, a budget recycled product such as the ones on offer from Natural Value or Second Nature offer good value and provide the desired durability.

I drew the line at catching a cold for this story and instead subjected six brands of facial tissues to a "spray test." The contestants were: