Reuse Those Old Duds, Darlin'

I love giving my clothes, and whatever else I no longer need, to people who can use them.  However, there comes a time when an item, no matter how lovely, cute or useful it once was, must die.  I consider myself to be the place where old baby clothes come to die.  If I receive a hand-me-down item of baby clothing with stains on it, I will treat and wash it once, if the stain does not come out, it is retired to my fabric pile and made useful.  I will not throw an item out if I can come up with a use for it, but I will not pass stained or ripped stuff on. 

I feel guilty buying fabric to make things when so many things have fabric that I can use long after the original garment will no longer work.  A stain on the shoulder of a t-shirt means it really can not be worn out of the house, but the rest of the fabric is fine and can be used.  Think back a hundred years.  When a garment was no longer good for it's original use, the fabric was repurposed and if nothing else it was put in the rag bag or might be made into a quilt.  This is my version of the same.

In no particular order, here are things I have done or heard of being done with various items that have outlived their original use. In some cases a serger or sewing machine make these projects easier or things last longer, but in other cases a pair of scissors is all you need.

Towels When they raggedy or worn thin in spots you can -

Cut them down and use them for dirtier jobs, bleach jobs, etc.

Cut down, serge on the sides and use as wash cloths, diaper wipes, face wipes. These are good to have in a bag in the car for cleaning messy faces. I keep a bottle of water in the car, get one at a time wet as I need them and scrub away. They get the job done and don't leave stickiness or a funky smell in their wake.

Use a big bath towel that has gotten raggedy on the edges to make a pillow case for your throw pillows. I am planning to do this so that I can easily cover the pillows when a child is sick and spending time on the couch. That way the pillow case is absorbent and washable and maybe it will save your nice couch pillows from the possible yuck.

We also have simply cut off the strings and retired towels to the rag drawer for catching spills in the kitchen and wiping dirty paws and feet. 

Wedding Dresses and Other Fancy, Never Going To Wear Again, Duds

I know, in some cases a daughter or daughter-in-law may want to wear a wedding dress. Then again, in many cases the size is not going to work and can not be made to work and sometimes a dress is...errrr....not timeless.  Here are some other ways to save the sentimental items.

Use the material from a wedding dress to make a baptism gown, first communion gown, or ring pillow. These items can then be passed around for generations and be heirlooms.

Use some material to make a fancy cover for a wedding album.

Beads could be restrung and given as a gift to a young girl when she reaches a certain age. Even if they are not pricey, they hold sentimental value.

Lace can be saved to be used on a future wedding dress.

Lining material can be made into a playsilk, or play skirt for a little girl, or as a slip or liner for another dress.

Or, you could follow my mother's upcycling technique and let your dog sleep on your wedding dress.  Ahem.  :)

T-shirts

Cut into 2 inch wide strips, braid three of these strips together, as you get close to the end of one strip, you sew another on to the end (adding length) and continue braiding until you have a long coil of braid. Once you have lots of braid coiled up (you can use lots of color shirts and add on as tees wear out) you stitch them together in a circle, heart, oval, square, whatever and you have a throw rug.  Some people do this with their white undershirts and sorta tie dye the braid before sewing.  Pretty cool.

Make fitted diapers out of them - yes really, there are tutorials online here www.naturalviolet.blogspot.com/2009/04/recycled-t-shirt-diaper.html  and here you can just use the t-shirt as a diaper, not cutting needed, cool!  www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL7ZF3jlVgc

Use a serger to make them into face cloths, diaper wipes, etc.

Of course, soft tees make great dust cloths.

A little creative cutting and ribbon makes a super cute dress for a little girl look online for t-shirt made into dress tutorials.  Ohhh, I can't find the tutorial!  This one is complex, but great!  www.indietutes.blogspot.com/2007/06/adult-tee-to-childs-dress-recon.html  What I did was more like this pillow case tutorial, I just cut the sleeves off an old shirt of mine.  www.everythingsewing.net/pillowcase_dress_how_to.htm

Denim

Cut offs, really, you knew that already, right?  I have serged, rolled and put a few quick stitches in to make for nicer denim shorts.  Not the most stylish things, but my boys really do not care.

Make a pair of jeans into a skirt using an online tutorial.  www.savvyseams.com/clothing/jeanskirt.php

What about when the tear is in the crotch (hard to repair) and what about the fabric you cut off below that nasty knee tear? AHA!

Save these scraps and unuseable denim pants. Cut the good fabric on them into 6" or 8" squares, you can incorporate any fancy trim or pockets for a funky look. Sew them together with flannel squares on the back. Leave the edges raw so they fray and you have a great picnic quilt.  I got this idea from the amazing Deb of Diapers by Deb at http://www.madebymama.com/.  Here is a tutorial I found  www.patchwork-and-quilting.com/rag-quilt.html  I am working on one of these this winter and will post pictures when I finish it. 

You can also save the long bits that are left over after you cut the squares off the legs and give them the same treatment we gave the t-shirts. That's right, make a braided rug. However, sewing these bad boys is not for the faint of heart!  www.craftown.com/instruction/rugs.htm


What about the butt part? Make a cute purse. You could even make the straps by braiding denim strips together. Suggested by Liz.  I would leave the lining out, but I guess that does make it nicer.  www.threadbanger.com/post/2642/how-to-turn-old-jeans-into-a-sweet-new-purse

Children's pants

Dress pants with tattered knees get the cut off treatment, serged, rolled and stitched to make dressy shorts.

Sweat pants with tattered knees get the cut off treatment.

The legs of those sweats are cut open to lay flat, anything hard (elastic or a seam) is cut off.  Then, I cut the fabric into appropriate lengths to use as diaper liners.  The fabric is thick enough to keep diaper rash cream away from your diapers!  After a use or two I don't feel bad throwing these away (the rash cream never completely washes out and WILL affect the absorbency of your diapers, so DO NOT wash liners with diapers!)

Other odds and ends

When flannel shirts are past their prime they are often soft. If that is the case, I will cut them into handkerchiefs for the kids. These are not necessarily pretty, but they get the job done and don't rub little faces raw. Also, flannel scraps are used to make the back of the denim quilt above!

I replaced the fabric on my dining room chairs and used the old fabric to make dish cloths. The fabric is really nubby and does a GREAT job of scrubbing.

Just about any material can be made into a diaper. If you have thought about switching to cloth diapers, but cringed at the cost, consider making your own from worn out clothing you already have or can find at thrift stores. I would reccomend using hemp, microfiber or at least flannel for the absorbent inner parts, but that would still make for a really cheap, just as effective diaper and leave you only purchasing the PUL covers.  You could also go to the thrift store, buy old wool sweaters and make those into covers!

A friend recently used parts of old favorite pants to make a cute skirt. The waist was a waistband from a comfy pair of pants and she used legs from pants to create panels. Enough panels sewn together and sewn to the waist band and voila, a cute, free and comfy skirt! I would totally do this with pants that I no longer can wear, if I still love the pattern.

I know not all of these ideas would be appealing to everyone, but I hope this will make you think twice before you throw away an item of clothing that looks like it is beyond redemption.

"I could never homeschool" (The How)

"Better you than me!" or "I can hardly stand having my kids around on the weekends."  and "What about socialization?"  Nearly every time I tell a non-homeschooler that I homeschool my children, I get some kind of comment along those lines.  For the most part, these people are either truly impressed or they think I am nuts (if they knew me better, they would be certain I am nuts, but that happened way before I had children.)  They also wonder how and why I do it. 

Let me start with the less important part, how do I do it?  I think this question is addressing two separate issues.  First, what does homeschooling look like in my home and, second, how do I get everything done around the house and school the kids?  Well, the pictures here show what homeschooling looks like in our house.  We build things together. 

 We do experiments using simple things. In the picture to the right, my husband is showing the children how having a wider base lowers your center of balance, thus making it harder to be pushed over.  It's simple physics.  Wow, the boys really needed a haircut!

We take our lessons outside whenever we can.  Here we were practicing our skip counting by skipping.........while we counted.  For the record, writing all those numbers in sidewalk chalk was a great work out for my glutes and abs.  Who knew?
 

We do a little bit of the sit and work stuff too.

We also do a lot of this.  Yes, my oldest is reading to his two sisters.  Do you see how one sister is just adoring her big brother and baby sister?  They bring dogs into schools for kids to read to.  How much better is it to read to an adoring sibling?  Do you see the love?  We do a LOT of loving.  Hugging, playing, snuggling, wrestling, laughing and lots of loving.  All with our favorite people in the world.  That is what homeschooling looks like in my family.

Now, what about all the housework?  Well, I am no great housekeeper.  I will admit, I would rather spend time playing and learning with my kids than scrubbing floors.  However, cleaning does need to happen because it is no fun to play when you end up covered in cheerios and other less tasty things.  Also, it is comforting to have a house that people can pop into and you will not be embarrassed.  I don't quite have that, yet.  If you pop into my house, you will likely find a pile of clean laundry waiting to be folded, a few dishes waiting to be washed and dirty floors.  The door to the office is closed because it is downright frightening (hopefully we will fix that this weekend, FINALLY!) The downstairs bathroom shows signs of vandalism and is not always sparkling.  The vandalism thing is a long potty training story and I don't want to tell it right now.  Just making sure you understand, my home would cause Martha Stewart to have a conniption fit.

We teach our children to help out around the house and we will soon institute a chore chart.  I do think it is important for people to take care of their homes.  There is no reason why one of us should do all the cleaning for 7 people.  Children need to be taught how to care for their home, clothes, vehicles and selves.  We call it being a good steward of the blessings God has given us.  I have a weekly group meeting at our house and that has been a great way to make sure the weekly chores get done consistently.  My scientist husband calls it a "forcing function."  I like that.

Oh, I also don't sign up every child for every activity under the sun.  I am a homeschooler, not an out-of-the-house-all-day-schooler.  I should warn you, it will only take one comment or question about socialization to open a can of worms.  Fear not, we are not Socialists ;)  We attend church, have a small group that meets at our house for bible study, go to the Y for Homeschool PE and are part of a homeschool co-op type thing.  Oh, and there are two homeschool families in our neighborhood with children around the same age as mine.  So, lots of chances to accumulate lots of different friends.  Yes, almost all of them homeschool.  If you think that means they are all the same you don't know homeschoolers! 

That is the hows of homeschooling.  Next up, the whys.  I have some 'splainin' to do.

Clothing Management part 2

Another issue to attack in a large family is how to handle hand-me-downs. I am blessed to have a basement in my home which has one area devoted to storage. I no longer loan out clothes because too many times the clothes were returned full of holes and stains, or were not returned at all. Yes, I am hoarding children's clothes, sorta. Here is the process I go through with each child, about twice a year.

First, I catch up on laundry (if you have many children you are laughing hard, we will wait while you go pee.....*whistling*..... Oh, good you're back.) Then, I go up to the clothing room with a plastic storage box and two trash bags. I like an opaque box with handles that lock the lid in place, about 72 qt seems to work well. The transparent boxes get brittle and break easily and without locking handles the lid pops off. Since I do not store coats, shoes or cloth diapers in the box with the other clothes, this size works fine.

I start with the littlest child and pull everything out of all their drawers and the closet. As I pull each item out, I assess the quality of the item. I check to see what size it is, whether it is true to size (change the label if necessary), is the elastic in good shape (if you tug on it and hear a dry ripping noise, it is useless), do the snaps still snap, are all the buttons there, are there any tears, stains or worn areas and did I actually like using this clothing item? Those things that I want to save for the next kiddo get folded neatly and placed in one pile. Things that are worn beyond use go in one bag (the cast-off bag) and things that are still good, but I no longer want, go in a second bag (the blessing bag.)

Once I have culled the items that are not going to be saved for one reason or another, I look at how much of each item I have left. I match tops to bottoms to make appropriate outfits. I make note of anything that really needs replacing. For instance, this year, I noticed that every pair of khaki shorts my 3 year old wore was noticeably stained. I watch end of season and clearance sales in stores and online for those things that we need to replace. I also check to see if I have too much of any item.

Once I determine how much of each item I really need to have around, I put the extras in the blessing bag. All of the clothes I am keeping are folded neatly and placed in the storage bin. If the bin is not already labeled, I make 3 labels out of scratch paper for it. Each label states gender and size.So, this year as I am packing up Isaac's clothes, I will make three labels that say "Boy 3t." One is taped on the top of the box, one on the side and one on the end. That way, if the box is stacked I can see what is in it, no matter which way the stacks are facing.

The blessing bag is a wonderful thing. I often have too many bits of clothing that I don't like or can not use. I bag them up neatly and label the bag with size and gender the clothing works for. Then, if there is a crisis in our area, say a house fire or someone finds themselves parenting unexpectedly, I can check my bag piles and bless them with decent clothes in the appropriate size. I never put stained, torn or way out of date clothes in this bag. A child who has been through a trauma does not need to be given ugly clothes.

So, what about that cast-off bag. This is the bag of garbage, right? If you are the kind of person who does not know how to fix a button, rip, etc. or if you know how, but you know you will never get around to it, yes, throw this bag in the garbage. So many people ask me how I do it all. The answer is, I don't do it all. I am crafty, frugal and creative with some things, but with other things, I cut myself some slack. God has yet to give me real superpowers, until then, there will be things I can not do. The same holds true for you. I give you permission to cut yourself some slack and toss that bag in the garbage. I promise I will not think less of you for knowing your own abilities and limitations. If you are of a mind to use that bag of cast-off clothing, check in later and I will give you some of my ideas for these items. :)

That is it. When I next have a child who needs that size of clothing, I can wander into the basement, bring up the appropriate box and it will contain appropriate clothing for that size. No extras, no surprises when the clothes are the wrong size, torn, stained or mismatched. A little work now saves work and money later.

Clothing management pt 1

Our growing family has found that the traditional American way of handling a family's clothes does not work. When there are seven people living in a four bedroom home, sharing bedrooms is a fact of life. I have no problem with this. I think sharing bedrooms is a good thing, but it does lead to a few problems. One of those problems is clothing. I can trust my 9, 7, and 5-year-old not to play in their dressers, but the 3 year old is a whole different story. It is just far too fun to pull all the clothes out of a dresser and roll around on them while you are supposed to be napping. As long as you are quiet, mommy will not even know what you are doing until the mess is made. Oh and if you have access to THREE dressers, ahhh, bliss. Except, what mother wants to spend the end of every single nap time cleaning up such a humongous mess? Yes, I can discipline for this behavior, but it tends to be one that lasts about a year and then is outgrown. Not so awful, unless you have many kids and face the possibility of returning to that one year of life over and over and over and over again. (I feel a little hysterical just typing that sentence!) One of my general mommyhood rules of thumb is - "Sometimes you need to change the behavior, sometimes you need to change the circumstances." This is a perfect example of changing the circumstances.

I read the Duggars book and thought Michelle had a fantastic idea. The Duggars have a family closet right off the laundry room. Clothing is folded and or hung and taken straight to the family closet. Wow, no more taking one basket of clothes to one room and one to another, accidentally putting clothes in the wrong room, or not having access to a room that holds a sleeping toddler! Yes, great idea...except...I don't have any rooms near the laundry room that would work for that purpose. Thus, we adapted the idea to suit our situation.

My husband took shelves from our master bedroom closet and hung them in the laundry room (a room that is a tiny bit bigger than a half bath.) That means, I have the original set of shelves, just over the washer and now a set of shelves across from it. Yes, I have to be very careful how I stand up, so as to avoid bashing my head or bottom into a shelf. I have adapted and have not had a bonk on either end in over a year. The shelves across from the washer hold a bin for every child in the family and one for socks. As I pull clothes out of the dryer, I sort them straight into these bins. Adult clothes, sheets, towels and the like go into a basket at my feet. Each child is responsible for folding their clothes each day. Some days that means a lot of folding, some days just a little. I have found this VERY helpful in discouraging my 7-year-old's tendency to wear 3-4 outfits a day! The younger the child is, the more help they get from either a parent or an older sibling. So far, this system has been a big help. Renovating my laundry room this way cost us about $14, the cost of 5 bins and a couple molly bolts (two of the support beams for the shelves lined up nicely with studs in the wall, but the middle one did not) and 2 hours of measuring, hanging, fuming, muttering about the confusion of being taught two systems of measurement and rehanging the shelves.

The next part of our laundry renovation was literally life changing for us. In our home, Mommy, Daddy and baby share the master bedroom. The boys have one room and the girls have another. The fourth room is the clothing room. This is a good sized room, about 10'x12'. There is enough space for 5 dressers, a futon and a three bin hamper. This room is also our guest room. It is not spacious, but it works. When clothes are folded, no matter what time, day or night, they can be put away immediately. No more laundry diving, digging through piles and piles of clean clothes in search of that one pink sock. No more sneaking into a sleeping toddlers room and oh so quietly opening the drawers. Less chance of a busy one year old pulling down stack of neatly folded laundry that is sitting on the couch waiting to be put away. When we need to pack for a trip, we put everyone to bed and then haul the suitcases into the Clothing Room. It is so easy to accomplish the task! When it is time to sort outgrown clothes and make a shopping list, I spend a couple hours in one fairly tidy room sorting things. YAY!!!!

Okay, for those of you who have actually set foot in my home recently, yes, I admit, sometimes the system fails and there are still piles of laundry to fold. I am, most assuredly, not perfect. However, when we follow the system, life is easier.