A friend of mine cleans houses for a living. She carries a stack of coffee filters in her supply caddy, right next to the microfiber cloths and the squeegee. I thought she was joking the first time I saw it.

She was not joking. She handed me a coffee filter, sprayed the bathroom mirror, and told me to try it. I have not used paper towels on glass since.

Why coffee filters work better than anything else

Coffee filters are lint-free by design. Paper towels shed tiny fibers that catch the light and look like streaks. Microfiber is great but picks up lint from the wash. Newspaper works — our grandmothers knew that — but the ink can transfer onto white window frames.

Coffee filters are made of tightly pressed paper fibers that do not shed. They are also slightly absorbent without disintegrating when wet. And they cost about two cents each.

How to do it

1. Spray your glass cleaner onto the window or mirror. Do not drench it — a light mist is enough.
2. Take a flat-bottom coffee filter — the basket style, not the cone kind. The flat ones give you more surface area.
3. Wipe in one direction. I go top to bottom on windows, left to right on mirrors. Pick a direction and stick with it.
4. If the filter gets too wet, grab a fresh one. They are cheap. Do not try to wring it out and reuse — you will just spread dirty water around.
5. For the final pass, use a dry filter to buff any remaining haze.

One thing I messed up at first

I used too much cleaner. The filter got saturated instantly and just pushed liquid around instead of picking it up. Less is more. Two or three spritzes per window pane is plenty.

Also: do this on a cloudy day or when the sun is not hitting the window directly. Cleaner dries too fast in direct sunlight and leaves residue before you can wipe it off. My friend the house cleaner told me this after watching me fight a sun-blasted sliding door for ten minutes.

This works on more than windows

I use coffee filters on my phone screen, my laptop screen, and the bathroom mirror. They are also excellent for wiping down stainless steel after cleaning — no lint, no streaks. My fridge handles have never looked better.

The one thing they are not great for: heavy grease or caked-on grime. For that you still want a real cleaning cloth. But for the final polish? Coffee filter every time.