I use them almost every day, for drier foods like cookies, cake, bread, muffins, crackers and cheese, etc.

When I go eat at Barbie's place.

Penny, the palm leaf/ sugar cane ones I use if I have to use paper plates (it’s really seldom, but I just have enough real plates for 12) go into the compost bin. Huh. Now I am thinking about Sleeping Beauty (you know they just had the 12 gold plates) Never mind, my mind has been wandering all day.

I travel with paper plates and a few plastic chargers for them when we go on trips/vacations. They make great picnic companions, and we use them as cutting boards, as well. They're lightweight and handy - like others above they're useful for covering splatters when microwaving. Don't take "plates" too seriously!! I have Villeroy & Boch, Gien, Mikasa, Lenox, Johnson Brothers, Fiestaware, Denby and (gasp) Corelle but I'm not taking them camping or to Europe with me.

Never! In fact, the small plates left over from the funeral service where I organized finger foods (2016) are still sitting in my cabinet. I should put them in the pile for the thrift store.

PS, same for the paper napkins...

Only for cat food. :)

Up until about a month ago I would have said never but lately I have been using them for sandwiches for lunch or dinner. When I was growing up we never used paper or plastic even when picnicking but Iam getting old and don't want to do one thing I don't have to do. So much easier to just toss the plates.

Rarely. Possibly for a picnic, but otherwise - nope.

Funny, we were just talking about that last night. We use them occasionally for things like wraps or sandwiches, but not often.

Never at home. We used them in the past, for camping, but my camping days are over. Nor do I use plastic cutlery at home.

I didn't read all of the replies, but we use paper plates for food that isn't messy or in need of a solid plate. Dishes are my least favorite chore :-)

I keep some on hand to grab if we take a picnic when we go hiking or such. Otherwise, no. When the grandkids were small, they loved to have their lunch in their ‘fort’ we built here and I fixed their lunches on paper plates.

I use fancy paper plates for holidays and I do like using small paper plates when I am just making a sandwich or a Scotch plate. Most of the time I will use the same paper plate for a few days, I just brush the crumbs off. I never use them for wet food.

School for paint, icing, sprinkles, etc. For home, covering microwave splatters for leftovers.

every day when i eat (or sometimes to chop something if the cutting board is in the dish water). I too, am too old and often too sick and cut corners everywhere I can. I do usually put them on a regular plate for support.

Recently, when i made soup, i got tired of doing dishes and it crossed my mind that I needed paper bowls... ha! I know they make Styrofoam type bowls, but i wouldn't heat up soup in those (in mw).

Didn't use them normally while raising the kids. Only when we had friends over on the weekend and grilled hamburgers and hotdogs. We had an indoor grill, so we could do that all thru-out the year.

Never, not even for cat food. They have clean dishes every day.

Almost always! This started 13 years ago when we were in the process of moving. I had packed up all the dishes and we were using paper plates. Now we rarely use a regular plate and it doesn't bother me in the least.

Never use paper, but do occasionally use styrofoam which are washed and reused many times. Two that are used, and reused for possibly months before being replaced, sit in a handy place in a kitchen cabinet. Any snack that we take to eat out of the kitchen goes on them.

^^^We do the same thing as Igmd, exactly! When we use the styrofoam plates, we use a stack of three and just put the bottom two right back in the stack and rinse the top one to use again. Only use them for snacks in the living room when we are watching TV. I have a stack of paper plates that I bought for a purpose but almost never use them anymore when I realized they didn't work for the purpose...HAHA!

I don't use Styrofoam because I heard that material takes longer to decompose and may be thus harmful to the environment. I could be wrong. I know I use too much plastic which is also in the long term harmful.

Only for crafty projects.

Only to bring cookies or some other baked goods to people.

Never paper, but I do have the Costco white plastic dishes for when I cook for a holiday or BBQ.

My dishwasher wasn;t working recently, for about three weeks so I used paper plates. I also use paper plates and disposable cups in the weeks between thanksgiving and Christmas, when I"m so busy with holiday preparations. also for feeding the cats (I have two).

Elizabeth should use paper plates for cat food, which is perfectly compostable. Foam materials are usually made of Styrofoam and will reside in the landfill for a very, very long time.

A better idea, of course, would be to use a real plate, washed off in the sink and set aside until the next meal.

I bought my first package of paper plates last year for the glue, paints, beads, glitter, and other accoutrements of girlhood crafts. Don't use them for food, though my mother was a big paper plate user. Why, I don't know.

Paper? plates?

I usually use them when serving appetizers when entertaining. Also tend to use them for the young kids for holiday meals. They look better than my melamine plates and the kids like the holiday themes.

Never. I have plenty of dishware and a good dishwasher.

for pizza night when kids were young and had friends over... now, hardly ever.

do use for large family gatherings... paper not foam or plastic.

for those of you that use them for the microwave, here's what we use:

cover

there are other choices as well.

Just wondering why so many cats here eat off paper plates. My dog eats out of her dog bowl which gets rinsed well daily and occasionally washed. When I had cats they ate from small shallow pet bowls. Why paper?

Never foam -- not earth friendly. Like H B, we have a stack of paper plates near the M/W to invert over soup bowls. Grab enough to weight them down, then discard any that are soiled. I have eaten from paper at children's birthday parties. We don't eat from them at home. Our dogs had heavy dishes for food and water that I washed now and then.

I remember a friend's roommate eating her lunch off a piece of waxed paper that she'd spread on the kitchen counter. She was quite vain about her hands and nails and avoided washing dishes. She would also the handle of a utensil under hot running water rather than actually *wash* it.

The State of Hawaii is banning plastic straws and non-biodegradable food containers for take-out or leftovers.

watchme I use paper for the cats because I seldom use many dishes during a week and do not want to have to wash dishes every day. Also I used to have a cat that would push the wet food off the real plates to eat off the floor. He is long gone now but when I started using paper when I was in a hurry the food did not go on the floor. For the outside cat and the ferals I feed in the winter the raccoons would take off with the bowls I used to use. A large paper plate is easier to find than a dish that might be partially hidden in leaves or a bush.

I never use paper plates and I hate eating off of them when I am somewhere that they use them. I have lots of dishes....and mostly I use old restaurant ware. I love them. My daughter said I have personal relationships with my dishes...and that is probably true.

I prefer not to, but I keep a stash for emergencies.

Never heard of feeding the cats from paper plates. Even during lengthy power outages they got their kibble in a bowl. (Better than me!)

Edit, even when they get canned food, or human food, the cats never have been served on paper or disposable plates.

Never at home, I hate creating unnecessary waste to fill up the landfill -- I remember what used to be a lovely valley near my home that is gone now, filled with garbage. We do use them at work for our potlucks, though, not much choice there.

Occasionally when prepping. Tonight I used 2 cheap paper plates to ready the salmon for cooking and I'll also use them for making hamburger patties. On occasion I will use one for a sandwich at lunch if the dishwasher is running already. We sometimes use heavy plastic ones for casual large barbecues in the summer.

Mom uses small ones for her canned cat food. She's blind and doesn't do a good job washing dishes anymore. When she runs out of paper plates and uses her dishes, I always have to sneak in and re wash everything. Thankfully, she doesn't cook either. She lives at a lovely senior facility and has all her meals in the dining room, except for occasional room service if she isn't feeling well.

Once in a while, not often. Husband drives me crazy when he puts a handful of goldfish crackers on a paper plate (or two, "because they're floppy"), eats his snack then throws the plate away. It's still useful!

Never used to, it since my accident, when we have large groups and Dh has to do a lot of the prep and cleanup, we use these from Costco: most people think they’re China until they pick them up apologies to those who may be offended by this, but they look so nice and don’t fold under a big dinner. Plus you can cut meat on them

Here is the pic that showed in my original post.

Why a disposable plate for cat food? The wet ( canned ) food is smelly and even worse are the leftovers which stick to the plate and smell horrendous. That crap needs to go in the trash. I am not washing that!

We were feeding the outside neighborhood cats on regular dishes that we would bring in to be washed, put the dish in the sink covered with water until I got around to using soap and hot water. Well one of my cats loves to get in the sink and play in the water and he got an infection, probably from the dish that the outside cat had used. $441 later at the vet, we figured out how our "house" cat got the infection. Now we only use paper plates to feed outdoor critters.

I don't use paper plates. In Europe even the fast food restaurants (Burger King, only one I've been in) used china. They view paper & plastic as wasteful, I agree.

As I was having a snack today I realized I do eat off of paper more frequently than I thought. Just not paper plates. I tend to take a half sheet of paper towel to eat off of if I am just eating some cheese and crackers or a sandwich or the like.

Why wouldn't you just use regular plates if you are going to go through the trouble of wash a Styrofoam plate...?? I like to have paper plates at the house. We use both paper and regular plates. I like using paper plates for prep, cutting etc too.

We never use them for eating but I keep a stack of the cheapest ones I can find to use when making a double boiler for melting chocolate. Alton Brown taught me this so it must be good to do.

cmarlin-

what is that tip for paper plates and melting chocolate, please?

There aren't any in the house, so I know I don't use them. Why don't you melt the chocolate in a Pyrex custard cup in the microwave?

I use them to feed the feral cats and also occasionally for us. I used them for a solid week when the old dishwasher broke and I was waiting for a new one.

My spoiled cat is eating off these babies I got from the dollar store.