T-shirt bags and more

We have lots of t-shirts around here. This last summer I donated a large stack to Salvation Army and still our closets seem to be overflowing with T-shirts. Weeks after I donated many of my T-shirts I ran across this website.

Now maybe you have seen this idea before. But to me the idea of turning my old t-shirts into shopping bags was genius. I was wanting a cheap way to have more cloth bags. And this was it. Luckily for me we still had tons of t-shirts around to try it out. It was so easy. I made a bunch for my brother for Christmas. My mom was so impressed she has been asking me to make her some. Unfortunately I have been working on other things.

The one thing about making these bags is that I had a ton of sleeves left over. I didn't just want to toss them out. So my original thought was to sew them together into squares to use for family cloth. If you haven't heard of this idea it is when you use cloth wipes rather than toilet paper. Well I decided it would take too much energy to actually sew them. Instead I cut of any seams and just used them as is. No sewing. They work great. I keep a basket beside my toilet for the clean wipes and an old ice cream bucket with water and BacOut on the floor with the lid on. I then throw them in the diaper wash every two days. Now I understand that for many family cloth sounds extreme. When I first heard of it I thought it was alittle crazy. But I cloth diaper my children. Why won't I consider using cloth wipes myself? And by using my t-shirt sleeves it didn't cost my anything to make myself wipes.

The other thing I am doing with the t-shirt sleeves is separate them into colored and white. The color I am using for family cloth wipes. The white I'm going to use for handkerchiefs. I haven't bought tissues for months. But that doesn't mean we don't use tissues. Rather we have just used toilet paper for tissues. As the cold season hit us I started realizing how wasteful this was. Luckily we did have a handful of large handkerchiefs that my husband used a bandannas for tennis. Now he has two or three he really like and let me have the rest to use for the kids noses. Unfortunately when both boys and myself where fighting head colds the few handkerchiefs we had just didn't seem enough. So my idea is that the white sleeves will be perfect once (or twice) use handkerchiefs and there are enough of them that even if I wash every other day I should have enough. Of course we haven't really had runny noses to test this. So we'll see.

I'm sure there are lots of other ideas for old t-shirts. These are just what I'm doing right now.