I have 4 young children, which is to say that we deal with a lot of spills. You know how it goes: you place a towel/rag over the spill, let it soak in, run it to the sink (watching out for drips), wring out, repeat several times until all liquid is soaked up. I bought this thing. There was a spill. I placed a sheet of these things over the spill, and all liquid immediately soaked in (like IMMEDIATELY). When we moved it to gather up more water, no traces of liquid was left behind/smeared. We were all tripping out and utterly fascinated. It took only one go for this little rag to soak up everything cleanly. Needless to say, we are big fans and highly recommend!