Congratulations on using your clothing to the limits! What you do next depends on the state of those clothes. A few options ranked from best to worst as best as i can figure:
Sell Them
Some places will pay you for your previously worn clothing. Take some well-lit, high quality photos, with a clean background. Here’s a website that lists several selling options: https://studentloanhero.com/featured/sell-clothes-online-make-serious-cash/. Some secondhand stores will pay you for them as well.
Give Them Away
Preferably to someone close by who will actually use it for something. Ask your similarly sized friends if they want to do clothing swap. Just bring the stuff you don’t normally wear- they might really enjoy it. If you are giving very worn out or unusual garments to charity, check on their policy for items they don’t put on the shelf. Some places will toss them in the landfill if they don’t think they can sell them. You can receive a tax break if you record the value of your donations and report it to the IRS with your annual tax forms.
Repurpose Them
Repurposing can be your chance for creativity too! For instance, add more rips to a garment for a pirate, rock star, or zombie costume. Paint, tie dye, or naturally bleach garments for a whole new look and a second chance. Turn shirts into tote bags with a few cuts, T-shirts can become tank tops, ties can become a skirt, button down shirts can become dresses for little girls, Pants can become shorts, just burn, hem, or keep cutting the edge, unless you want dangling threads tickling your legs. You can also use old outfits as rags. Just remember that different materials work better for different things. Denim doesn’t clean windows well, for example. You might want to cut or rip the items to a more manageable size before using them. Don’t fill your houses with too many old rags. Small strips of natural fibers can serve as a firestarter for a tenderbox. Char cloth instructions here: https://www.twineagles.org/char-cloth.html. Cut it into strips and crochet it into a rug. Instructions here: https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/how-to-make-rag-rugs-979195. Turn old T-shirts into a quilt as explained here: https://www.instructables.com/id/T-shirt-Quilts/. Cut the design out of the middle and sew it as a patch onto things like your backpack or jacket. Pay someone else to cut it out and sew as a patch onto things. A few cool ideas here: https://www.lifehack.org/453113/27-creative-ways-to-reuse-old-clothing
Recycle Them
As Kathryn Kellog said, “Recycling is not a charity, it’s a business and it relies on having a market to sell the products. So, just because we can recycle it doesn’t mean it will be recycled. This is why it’s better to reduce, reuse and THEN recycle.” An underdeveloped cloth recycling industry exists. J.Crew, Madewell, Rag and Bone, and FRAME, for instance, take back their worn out jeans for a discount on new jeans. Some stores, including many of the outdoorsy ones and a few fancier ones, have clothing recycling bins in the front. Some more special items require more special recycling like The Bra Recyclers and Soles 4 Shoes.
Compost Them
1. Check the material. Read the label. All natural materials like cotton, wool, silk, cashmere, bamboo, jute, hemp, or linen, can be composted. If you have no label and are unsure of the material, you can do a flame test. Use something non-flammable like tongs or scissors to hold the garment over something non-flammable (i would do it on my concrete porch) and light a small piece. If it burns into small easily crumbleable ashes, it should be compostable. If it melts into something hard, don’t compost it. Be careful and smart- i refuse all fire related liability!
2. Consider what it holds. If it has stains from engine oil or commercial paint or has been dry cleaned a few times, don’t compost it.
3. Remove the non-compostable parts like buttons and zippers. You can donate those to crafters.
4. Shred it into strips thinner than your palm is wide.
5. Put in your composting spot or straight up bury it. Compostthis.co.uk recommends mixing in other compost items to keep the mix under 25% cloth so your decomposer allies won’t choke.
Use Them as a Patch
I keep a small stack of expended clothes (mostly pants) that i use to patch other clothes. I don’t recommend patching formal or business attire. Sometimes though, a pair of jeans or a ripped backpack can return to the daily grind with a patch cut to size, a needle, and a thread.
Some of these steps might seem like extra work because they are not commonly done. Please do them anyway. Making clothing takes earth’s resources, so we should try to stretch that use to sustainable levels. I see no good benefit to clothing rotting very slowly and producing greenhouse gas in landfills. The average USAmerican trashes 70 pounds of clothes a year. With the right attitude, repurposing or “reincarnating” your old clothing can be fun. I tried to give a sample of some ideas, but there are more out there- this is the internet after all. Options will vary depending on your place of residence. Your creativity can do a lot.
Link:
Several good and specific ideas by Kathryn Kellog
Disclaimer: Other people’s websites might be worse (or better) than mine. They might have false, rude, inappropriate, or otherwise disagreeable content on them. They might have taken down their website since i last viewed it in 2020. None of those issues are my problem.
Comments