I hate to dispose of things that may still have some use. For example, I have a box of wooden ice cream bar sticks, because I can’t see throwing such nice wooden sticks away. I keep finding new uses for them all the time.
My father, 90 years old, had a yellow cotton shirt that had holes in both elbows. I cut it up into small pieces and have been using it as swabs for removing moisture in flutes. So, far my dad’s old shirt has travelled to 10 states in the USA and five foreign countries, and I still have 100 pieces left.
I am interested in novel ways you have used old things that otherwise may have been discarded.
I made a bag for my music stand out of the leg of an old pair of jeans when I was a teenager…it had been cut off to make a pair of cutoff shorts. Threaded a long piece of rawhide shoelace to make a drawstring and sewed it up. I still use it today!
I also use old socks and T-shirts for dustcloths, old baby washcloths as kitchen rags, and oatmeal cans for storing small toys.
Someday I want to make a corkboard out of the collection of wine corks hubby and I have amassed over the years.
Robin
Our daughter Genia (“Jenny”), then 12, won a ribbon at the county fair with doll clothes she made from discarded socks. They were remarkable, very stylish and creative, with well coordinated hats, vests, skirts, etc. She came up with the idea herself and made them without anyone knowing what she was doing until she brought them out and showed us.
That happened right after The Great Sock Hunt. The girls had reported that there were no socks at all and they didn’t have socks to wear to school. Arleen then ordered them to spend the entire next Saturday searching the house for socks. At the end of the day, the six of them had found 104 pairs of socks. That made the contents of the Orphan Sock Drawer available for repurposing, so Genia converted them to a doll wardrobe. She also creates out of bits of discarded clothing, amazingly cute outfits for the dog.
Come to think of it, Lalitha can entertain herself for a long time with nothing but a handful of pebbles. She came home from India skilled at playing jacks using pebbles. Instead of bouncing a rubber ball, she tosses one pebble up in the air and picks up “onesies,” “twosies,” or whatever number she’s on while the pebble’s in the air, the object being to toss the pebble, pick up the correct number from the ground and then catch the pebble she tossed before it hits the ground.
Best wishes,
Jerry