How to Recycle Ruined Clothes
Rather than throw away ruined clothes, recycle it for other purposes and prevent it from piling up in a landfill. Whether your old clothing is slightly soiled or completely ruined, there are both useful and crafty ways to recycle the clothes for a new purpose. Cut apart undamaged and unstained areas of T-shirts, sweaters, work clothes and denim, and reuse the cut pieces to make wearable items or items for the household.
Things You'll Need
- Fabric scissors
- Sewing machine (optional)
- Picture frames (optional)
- Sewing needle and thread (optional)
- Fabric adhesive (optional)
- Pillow form (optional)
Instructions
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Recycle badly soiled or damaged clothing to use as cleaning clothes. Cut old cotton T-shirts into 5-inch squares to use for dusting and polishing furniture. Roll up soft cotton sweaters and use them for washing the car. You can use soft fabrics like cotton, denim or twill for cleaning various surfaces in the home.
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Cut children's clothing into various-sized squares and sew them together to form a memory quilt. Children's clothing has prints and logos that will bring back memories when preserved in a quilt. Use unstained and undamaged areas of the clothing to make the swatches. Alternatively, you can make quilts from any soft textiles to use in any room.
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Cut logos and designs from concert T-shirts and mount them into a frame to decorate a room.
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Cut 3 to 4-inch squares from an old pair of jeans and use the squares as patches for repairing other denim clothing and embellishing accessories and purses. Hand-stitch the patches to the clothing or, as a no-sew method, attach them with fabric adhesive.
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Give old work shirts, blouses and flannel shirts to children to use as art smocks.
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Sew accessories using pieces of old clothes. Cut the back pockets from a pair of jeans and make a purse, or cut squares of old T-shirts and piece them together to make a fashion scarf.
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Save old clothes in a box and use them for adding padding to mailing packages.
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Cut apart the bodies of old sweaters and T-shirts and sew them together to make a pillow. Sew two squares of the fabric together in any shape you desire, then stuff them with polyester stuffing. Alternatively, sew a pillowcase with two sweater pieces cut to the size of a pillow form, which you can purchase in a craft store. Pillow forms come in a variety of sizes, and are available in both square and rectangular shapes.
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Tips & Warnings
Look into textile recycling programs in your town. Some municipalities collect old clothing and send usable items to charitable organizations. Municipalities use recycled clothing for making polishing cloths, paper and blanket filler.
Place old clothing, as well as shoes, jewelry and accessories, in a dress-up trunk for kids.
References
- Photo Credit Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com/Getty Images
