Towel Re-Purpose #1

It's been a busy week this week with all the folding and appreciating my clothes that's been going on.  I just took a book out of the library on how to create a capsule wardrobe so we'll see how that goes in the coming months.

But to today.  I've begun re-purposing the towels from last week starting with some lovely new dishcloths.

I've made two versions.  The bottom one is just a square of towel that has been bound like a quilt.  The top one is based on an idea I came across on one of those 'best ofs' 'top ten ways to' lists on Pintrest but it originally came from Fairview Farm blog.  It's one square of towel and one square of quilting cotton sewn together around the edge (left raw) then straight line quilted into a Tic-Tac-Toe board.

I've only made 4 and am testing them out to decide which I like best before I make any more.  The bound one washed better as it didn't shed bits all over the rest of the laundry but it took longer to make so we'll see.

Next I'll try some reusable Swiffer mop covers and I'm wondering about dying a couple of towels to cover the weird stains and making some light weight bathmats, or using them as wadding for pot holders.  I bet you're waiting with baited breath for that one!

Have a great weekend
Kirstin

Garage Miscellany

Last week I cleared out the garage.  I put all of my gardening equipment in a big plastic deck seat/box, relegated outdoor toys to tubs outside the backdoor and stowed away the fold-able deckchairs in the cold room.  There was an alarmingly large collection of never used cleaning products (mainly speciality stuff that had been left by the previous owners) that went to the dump and quite a lot of odds and ends of timber which was donated to the next door neighbours, I hope they find it more useful than I did.

All that left was bikes.  Gary has reclaimed Jacob's bike because he never uses it and today we donated mine and Rose's old one to Recycle Cycles, a community project in downtown Kitchener.

I now have a weirdly empty garage.

While I was clearing out I discovered that we had managed to collect a whole load of car window cleaning implements:

• 4 snow brushes (1 broken)
• 3 squeegees (that spelling looks really weird)
• 5 ice scrapers

We only have one car.

Again I ask ask how does all this stuff creep up on you, I know we used to have 2 cars but still that's an implement to clean each window on each car.

In order to put a picture into this post I am now going to share a quilting innovation...

Can you guess what these are for?  All will be revealed on Friday, or whenever I get my quilt sandwich finished.

Finishing up the Closets

I thought of writing 3 more posts about finishing off the closet clear out, but the idea of that is so dull its making me reach for a bottle of something strong so I'm just going to write a list of everything.

• 7 Jackets (1 bought in 2010 with the labels still attached)
• 1 summer dress worn once in 2012
• 1 strange wrap style sleeveless top, don't know what I was thinking
• 1 unfinished silver top made from old t-shirt, unfinished because looks terrible
• 1 boys hoodie with only 1 sleeve, unfinished mending/conversion job
• 2 age 10 girls dresses, given to us and never worn
• 1 feather trimmed cape, Rose's not mine
• 1 iron that stopped working 3 years ago
• 1 box that its replacement came in
• 1 pop up gazebo that's still in the shipping company packing from our emigration
• 3 backpacks
• 2 lunch bags
• 2 sneaker bags
• 8 matching blue kids size coat hangers
• 5 matching white kids size coat hangers
• 1 fancy girls coat hanger
• 13 assorted plastic coat hangers with age/size printed on
• 1 light bulb changing pole with fittings

Lessons learned this week

• Buy less clothes in sales that don't really fit properly because they are a bargain
• Insist that coat hangers are removed from clothes before they leave the store

So much unwanted plastic seems to slip into the house unnoticed these days, especially with the kids, and coat hangers are the worst.  You know the ones I mean, the flimsy ones with age/size on coloured plastic bits stuck on them.  The problem is that they really don't last very long or look nice in the closet/wardrobe but you can't take them anywhere for reuse.  There must be acres of landfill filled with those alone.

If anyone out there has any coat hanger solutions, knows anywhere they can be taken or wants to start a campaign for only producing coat hangers from recycled materials please let me know.