Use Your Old Stuff– Don’t Toss It!

Sometimes, being environmentally friendly means buying more responsibly made products. Other times, it means doing what you can with what you already have. After all, when you find interesting ways to reuse old, crappy things around the house to give them new life, you are doing the best possible thing to reduce waste. Sure, buying recycled products is great. However, it still creates a lot of waste and uses up a lot of energy. When looked at through this lens, it is clear that reusing your old stuff is much more intelligent, and much better for the environment.

However, just because it’s a good thing to do, that doesn’t mean you know how to use all your old stuff to make new, useful stuff. A lot of us just aren’t the “crafty” type, myself included. I look at a bunch of old socks, and I see maybe something I can clean a rifle with or that I can use as stuffing in a quilt. Others, however, see a doll. If you are like me, and you have a hard time conceptualizing what an old sock could possibly be turned into, then you need to get your hands on a book or two that goes over what kind of possibilities there are out there.

One book like that is Sock and Glove by Miyako Kanamori. This is a really great text that shows you how to do tons of different things with old socks and gloves that are past their usefulness. Don’t like dolls? Then there are a lot of other things in the book that you can make, and all of them come with very simple instructions so you can get moving right away. After all, who doesn’t have a few socks that are on their way out? Instead of just dumping them in the garbage, you can now easily come up with some amazing craft ideas to put them to use. As long as you make sure you wash them first, you should have a bunch of cool little pieces laying all over your house.

jareds | My Bio & Articles

Jared Skye is an environmental scientist and author of sustainability and self-sufficiency themed media.