07/01/2020

Repurposing Old Clothes

My solution, when I no longer want or need a garment, is to donate it to a local charity like The Salvation Army. In fact, A Cleaner World accepts donations at our Triad locations for The Salvation Army through our Donate Goods, Do Good project. As I was researching for last week’s blog post on Fast Fashion, I sadly discovered that many organizations that sell used clothing are unable to sell every item. Sometimes they can ship items overseas to other countries that have a need, but sometimes those garments end up in landfills.

Last year, my father-in-law passed. He had specific taste when it came to clothing; I called it his uniform. Everyday he wore jeans and a button up khaki work shirt – long sleeve in the winter and short sleeve in the summer. My mom had this terrific idea of turning a couple of those shirts into pillows for Matt and Gray; two fewer shirts in the landfill.

Here are a Few Things Our Family has Recently Done to Upcycle Our Old Clothes:

1. A friend of mine made Gray a blanket out of his t-shirt collection and gave it to him this past Christmas.
2. Recently, Gray and I took a few dingy white t-shirts and did a tie-dye experiment. Now we both have a couple like-new t-shirts.
3. I use old socks for dusting furniture.
4. We use old bath towels in Macy’s kennel, for drying her off after a bath, and for cleaning.
5. My mom took a couple old kitchen towels and made them into a bag to hold all our plastic grocery bags.

If we have done these six things without even trying, imagine what we could do if we just gave it a little thought! I did a quick Google search and discovered all kinds of ideas. Here’s a link to a Good Housekeeping article that gave me some other terrific ideas. If you have favorite clothing or fabric upcycling projects or ideas, share them with us on our Facebook page. We would love to hear from you.