Day 3: Re-use, Reclaim, Re-purpose...and Thereby Reduce Your Waste!

So everyone knows that recycling is a good way to reduce your waste.

But what about things like old sweaters and ripped jeans? They don't really go into either the green bin, blue or grey box.

I'm a pack rat, any of you who have ever been to my house know that I just save everything! When I went home to visit my parents over the holidays, I found 5 wool-type sweaters that I wore to death in high school and no less than 4 pairs of jeans that had seen better days. While I could have easily cut them up into rags or tossed them, my mom and I brained-stormed and came up with some fun projects! (if you really can't think of anything, donate appropriate items to Value Village or The Salvation Army - one man's trash is another's treasure!).

Using one pair of jeans and some random scraps left from various sewing projects over the years, I made these functional oven mitts for my house-mate  - it only took a few hours and I was able to produce something that remotely resembled oven-mitts and would fulfill their purpose of taking hot things out of the oven!

I added fun little patches to the mitts to distract the eye from my terrible sewing skills!

The rest of the jeans will become a patchwork quilt.

With the 5 wool-type sweaters, my mom and I mix and matched parts of them to make 3 functional, funky sweaters that fit me and look good!

So the photo quality is not so great, but enough to give you the idea! We took two sweaters, a blue and a red one, both of which were too small. The blue one was also pretty worn out. So with a bit of cutting and zig-zagging we made a few nice new sweaters - the one above is my favorite! (note the fun elbow patches!)

I feel like these projects exemplify several good ideas that I can incorporate into my lifestyle (which I will probably elaborate on in future posts since I have 362 days left to go!). Reusing and re-purposing goods to divert them from landfills, making gifts instead of buying them and seriously contemplating what I actually need, not just what I want!

I'm sure there are many similar great project ideas using re-purposed materials, so my challenge to you and myself is: before you chuck something away, try and imagine a new and useful future for it! You'll be amazed at the ideas you might come up with!