I bought some bike specific wipes on chain love once as a filler... but i reckon you could go to costco and get some of those kirkland baby wipes and they'd do just fine. They're nice because they're sturdier and gentler than paper towels. You could use a shop rag but then you're washing greasy rags in your washer and that's no bueno either.

that chain-l stuff is a bit messy at first but once it settles down it's pretty clean. You can wipe down the OUTSIDE of the chain all you want if you like a nice silver chain - the lube you need to keep is inside the links. Those lubes that you just drop on the links seem to spend more time flinging on to my wheel than staying on the chain.