11 Creative Ways to Reuse Old Clothes

Make a tote bag
Take an old tank top and sew the bottom of the tank top closed. That’s it. For extra sturdiness you can cut out a rectangular piece of cardboard and place it at the bottom of the tank if you plan to carry heavier items. Ratty tatty tank top is now your brand new tote bag!

Make Cleaning Cloths
Take your old t-shirts, tops, and socks and turn them into cleaning cloths. Socks make great dusters, and old t-shirts are perfect for wiping down tough surfaces and for cleaning wooden furniture. Just cut them up into medium size pieces. You will save on having to buy sponges or overpriced fancy labeled cleaning cloths.

Frame It
Sometimes when we love an article of clothing so much we literally wear it to death. Why not resurrect those pieces by framing it. Your old school 70’s rocker tees, your baby’s first outfit, or even old scarves. If you’re not into the whole framing your favorite dress, use the fabric of your old clothes to make a picture frame. You can buy a frame from the store, cut pieces of fabric from your old clothes, and line it over the picture frame.

What They Say: “Green fashion is about being conscious of our connection between something we buy, the environment from which it came, and the people involved in the manufacturing process,” said Fashioning Change Founder and CEO Adriana Herrera.  “This Spring we’re happy to help bring awareness to the simple things that can be done to green personal style.”

What We Say: We love the idea of being green, but sometimes the option isn’t as readily available as we would like. Here are some great tips, courtesy of Fashioning Change, that can help make it a little easier.

1. Buy Organic Cotton: Buying organic cotton prevents you from purchasing regular cotton, which uses tons of insecticides and pesticides in production.

2. Go Local: It takes lots of natural resources to produce and ship clothes all around the world. If you buy from local designers, you not only help reduce energy and fuel use, but you also support your local economy.

3. Lower the Temperature On Your Washer and Dryer: By doing this you’ll be reducing a garment’s climate change impact by 50%. By lowering the temp on an iron, you will reduce this even further.

4. Buy Ethical Clothing: Lots of the fashion industry’s workers are impoverished and working under unfair and unsafe conditions, so look for fair-trade labels and other ethical clothing/accessories.

5. Donate: Don’t throw out your old clothes, but bring them to a Goodwill or other donation spot and help those in need while preventing unneeded waste.

Walls: Don’t put off painting the little one’s room. Pick a color already! It’s best to complete painting at least a month before the baby moves into the room. Water-based, low VOC paints should be used (see our previous post on environmentally-friendly painting) and note that pregnant women should not do the painting, low VOC or no.

Floors: Unless the flooring currently in the room is an older carpet, it’s best to leave whatever floor is already in the room and clean it well. If you are planning to put new flooring in, consider natural linoleum or sustainable woods, such as bamboo.

Furniture: Choose real woods, sustainable harvested hardwoods, preferably natural or painted with water-based low VOC paints. When purchasing furniture made of sustainably-grown woods, look for the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) seal, which assures you the wood was harvested from sustainably managed forests.

Bedding: The closest thing to baby, next to Mom and Pops, the crib bedding should be as pure as possible. Choose organic, untreated pure cotton or wool fabrics.

Toys: There’s a reason why wooden toys are making a big-time comeback, not only are they fun, but they’re also durable and beautiful. Natural cloth toys are another good choice. Stay away from plastic. Sooner than you think, your child will be inundated with more plastic toys than you can imagine, despite your best efforts. Start them off right, while you still have the ability to control it.

Finally, once you’ve created the green baby nursery of your dreams, be sure to keep it that way by using non-toxic cleaners.

Suddenly Frugal by Necessity, Not by Choice via Green Baby Guide – Green Baby Guide’s “Thrifty Green Thursday” post encourages others to set up an emergency fund after the Guide’s fund comes in handy.

Make a Cheap Mosaic Wall Installationvia Dollar Store Crafts – Let’s say you started a scrapbooking hobby, bought a ton of groovy paper, then realized it was just way too much pressure to keep the scrapbook up…whatcha gonna do with all that paper?Sounds like a mosaic wall installation just waiting to happen…

Weekly DIY Roundup: More Skirts! via Threadbanger – Ready to get adventurous?Recycle sweatshirts, t-shirts, and other fabrics into your greenest skirt of the season!

Set up Your Kitchen Garden and Save via Green Baby Guide – We recently posted on setting up a kitchen garden, and now Green Baby Guide is giving their great advice on the same. We hope everyone gets on this bandwagon! Good for your health, your budget, and your soul. Garden-grown food…it’s what’s cookin!

Best Dollar Store Crafts of the Week via Threadbanger – Heather shares her crafts made from items recycled from the dollar store. Dishtowels transform into shorts; a soda bottle becomes an iPod holder. Ingenious recycling opportunities!

How to Eco Chic Your Investments via Spig.com – Stocks couldn’t go any lower. Right? Please say, “Right.” Well, since this is the time to buy, take a few minutes to learn why green mutual funds might be your best bet.

Best of Green via TreeHugger – TreeHugger unveils their first annual Best of Green awards.

DIY Flower Projects via Threadbanger – We love this roundup of flower projects. It gets us in the mood for spring! Some projects require a bit of talent (crocheting, for example) while others can be done by the talentless among us (like yours truly!). Origami flowers, anyone?

Best Natural and Organic Soaps (and Why They’re Better Than Body Wash) via Sprig – If you’re ready to switch up your soap, be sure and read this guide first. Sprig offers up advice on the soaps with the best ingredients for a bargain, the purest bars for sensitive skin, the most amazing scents to start your day off right.

The buzz on backyard beekeeping via Supereco.com – With all the talk of bees going the way of the dinosaurs, it might not be a bad idea for those of us who like gardening, to expand our adventures into beekeeping. Read more about it and get valuable resources to see if you’re ready to get in on the buzz.

Build a Slouchy Spring Bag via ThreadBanger – Got some material or a scarf lying around and a desire for a new spring bag? Check out this post from ThreadBanger and make your own! No sewing (or talent) required!

10 Most Dangerous Foods via Sprig – Some foods pose as healthy, causing victims to be taken by surprise. The abundance of farmed fish, for example…who thought fish could be bad for you? Read Sprig’s top 10 list of the foods that might pose a risk to your health (especially if you’re pregnant) and get informed.

Organize Your Recycling Center via Ecologue.com – Location, presentation, separation and transportation. These are the backbones to your organized recycling solution. Learn how to keep your recycling in ship shape!

5 green budget tricks for parents via SuperEco – The pressure is on for all those green mommas — but doing it on a budget can be tricky. Or is it??? Get some great tips on how to be a budget-savvy parent from SuperEco.

Image courtesy of Mother Nature Network

Greenopia Launches Green Car Ratings Guide via Greenopia – With their Green Car Guide, Greenopia has gotten down to nitty-gritty, looking at the most efficient vehicles that meet a minimum criteria and selecting the best of the best (the good news is that they come in all kinds of price points and styles). Take a look.

Fair Beauty: The beauty brands supporting fair trade via Green My Style – While green beauty is proud about its organic and natural credentials, Green My Style provides some beauty brands doing their bit under fair trade principles, squarely and fairly.

Food Waste Reduction Challenge via Crunchy Chicken – $100 billion worth of edible food is discarded every year in the U.S. It’s a tremendous waste of resources and one that we are all guilty in contributing to. In an effort to waste less and save more, Crunchy Chicken started the Food Waste Reduction Challenge.

Top 100 Personal Finance Blog Rankings via Wise Bread – Wise Bread is a blog close to our hearts, focusing on “living large on a small budget.” This post is great for those out there focusing on budgets and finances. Find the best finance websites with Wise Breads new Top 100 Personal Finance Blog Rankings.

Homemade Yogurt via Life Less Plastic – In detailing her New Year’s Resolutions, our Life Less Plastic heroine pledges to eat healthier. One of her first missions? Make homemade yogurt. She gives a great recipe that saves the budget and contributes to self-sufficiency and good health. I’m going to try the recipe out! You should too…

Is Your Drinking Water Safe? via Eco Chick – The chicks at Eco-Chick espouse the rights of all Americans to have clean, accessible drinking water. Some food for thought (or water for drink…) about how clean our water really is.

How to Make a Paper Heart Valentine via Green Baby Guide – An eco-friendly DIY creation just in time for the holidays! Don’t waste your money on a card. If you’ve got paper and scissors, you’ve got a valentine waiting to happen.

10 Most Dangerous Foods via Sprig – You may think some of these aren’t so expensive, but the cost comes to your health. Not a good trade…

E-Fuel 100 Makes Fuel from Leftover Beer via Green Diary – Hopefully you don’t have enough leftover beer, but the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company does…and they’re using it to make ethanol. Wine, eat your heart out!

This week marks a new presidential administration for our fair country, and it is an administration that environmentalists are welcoming and pinning high expectations to. In a nod to our new administration, we’ve gathered some of the best eco buzz from the week, revolving around the new administration.

In Historic Inaugural Address, Obama Pledges to Take on Global Warming, via The Daily Green: In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama stated, “Each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.”

Schwarzenegger Petitions Obama to Terminate EPA Emissions Ruling, via Greenbiz.com: With President Barack Obama barely a day in office, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger lost no time in writing the nation’s new chief executive to ask that he direct the EPA to favorably reconsider the Golden State’s request for a Clean Air Act waiver.

An Environmental Agenda for Obama’s First 100 Days, via About.com: Presidents are often judged on what they accomplish, or fail to accomplish, during their first 100 days in office, and Barack Obama will be no exception. As soon as Obama raises his right hand a noon today and takes the oath of office to become America’s 44th president, the clock will start ticking on his first 100 days.

Ruminations on the Obama era, with a side of spicy peanut sauce, via Grist.org: As a nation, there is an important aspect we still refuse to grapple with in its totality: food. We work in the daily grind each day, mostly in order to put food on our tables and nourish our families. Yet in our national discourse, the closest anyone gets to talking about food is either in considering the minutia of the farm bill or decrying the latest food-borne illness outbreak that is often brought about by that very minutia.

Anonymous Hold Put On Confirmation Of EPA Chief, Environmental Quality Chair, via Huffington Post: The confirmation of Obama’s choices for EPA administrator, former New Jersey environmental chief Lisa P. Jackson, and White House Council on Environmental Quality chairwoman, Nancy H. Sutley, were delayed because an anonymous senator has put a hold on their nominations.