We’ve already talked about baby clothes in general but CD, who writes the Canadian Doomer blog, has sent over such an excellent reuse idea for worn out baby sleepers/romper suits that I thought it was worth featuring these in particular:

I just posted this on my blog, and one of my readers thought your site might be interested. They’d have be super-frugal and have a real sense of the absurd.

I had recently read about someone making no-sew cloth menstrual pads by folding cut-up facecloths and placing them inside a longer folded
facecloth. Well, I’m not about to cut up my facecloths for that. However, with two small children, I have a LOT of baby sleepers that are becoming too raggedy to wear, but are still soft and amazingly absorbent.

So I cut off legs, leaving snaps attached. Then I cut off arms. I cut the body of the sleepers up so that I had various sizes of cloth without bulky seams. It’s quite an easy matter to fold a piece of the fabric into half or thirds and tuck it inside an “arm” (gravity-held) or “leg” (snap-on style) tube. I also made one that was essentially the entire upper body of a thin sleeper, making a “belt-style” for overnight, which I safety-pinned to my underwear.

Great reuse since it really will help reduce wastage in the future.

Any other suggestions for reusing or recycling them? Particularly ideas taking advantage of their super-softness — and also often their cute patterns?

Over on the “suggest an item” page, the bookstorebabe said:

Broken umbrellas were done a few years back, but most of the suggestions were reuses for the umbrella fabric.

How about specifically the metal frame, as is or taken apart? Any clever ideas, anyone?

Over on the old umbrella page, Pamela mentioned a lovely idea:

I saw broken umbrella frames used by a theatre troupe, they knotted streamers to the frame, and they blew in the wind, they held it like a rain umbrella, but it was fanciful and lovely and attracted attention. This was a walking troupe, on the street, attracting people to their performance.

While most of us probably wouldn’t want to become street performers with our old umbrellas, I wonder if a frame with streamers placed in the garden would act like a portable scarecrow…?

Nude umbrella frames remind me of swifts, for balling yarn from skeins – but I suspect they might have too many sharp bits/catches for nice yarn. Anyone used/modified one for that?

Any other reusing or recycling ideas? What about ideas that use it in parts rather than whole?

(Photo by LilGoldWmn)

Jeri left a question on the Suggest an Item page:

I work at a beauty salon and we just got new aprons so I collected all the old black ones and all the old polyester smocks that they were going to throw away. They were just putting them in the trash so I rescued them now what can I do with them?

Alison Bailey Smith has already suggested: “Donate to a local art project or gallery or museum that has ‘have a go days’.” which is a great idea. In the UK, you could also offer them to your local scrap store – they’ll probably be able to use them or pass them on.

The smocks they have at the hairdressers I go to always remind me of bat wings or witches’ cloaks so a couple of them could be also upcycled into a fancy dress costume. But Alison’s idea is much better if you’ve got a lot. ;)

Any other suggestions?

From one coffee-related post to another. We’ve had an email from Rose about “K-cups”:

I love drinking the various flavors of Keurig coffee, but hate wasting the cups since they can’t be recycled I need suggestions on what to do. Kids crafts would be great since I have 2 little ones.

I hadn’t heard of “K cups” or “Keurig coffee” before but Wikipedia tells me they’re a bit like a Nespresso machine – single use pods of coffee. As with the Nespresso ones, there are a few how-tos out there on refilling the cups to reuse them again.

As far as I can see (someone please correct me if I’m wrong), the bottom of the cup is pierced during the coffee making process so that might get in the way of some reuses. From pictures on Google (btw, don’t Google Image search “k cup” unless you like pictures of boobies), I think they’re about 4-5cm in diameter and about the same tall.

I’ve got a bit of a one track mind at the moment so can’t think of anything else other than using them for growing seedlings.

Anyone else got any better suggestions? Especially kid-craft ones as Rose requested?

I had one of those “it’s amazing how things mount up” moments the other day when I opened our tea & coffee cupboard and was confronted with this:

They’re all empty, flattened out version of these:

John likes his coffee.

To be fair, he does prefer quality rather than quantity and these represents many many months of coffee consumption but still, it’s a lot of plastic.

Some details of the bags. They’ve got a zip lock closing at the top – but also a “breathing” pore so aren’t actually water or air tight. They’ve got a gusset bottom (as you can see from the second picture). They’re about 20cm/8ins square. They smell very strongly of coffee. They’re very, very red.

One idea I had was to make a shopping bag along the lines of this one (which uses cat food pouches). Or using the same patchwork principle to make a storage box for all John’s coffee paraphernalia.

(I’m also going to contact the coffee company to see if they have any recycling advice.)

Any other suggestions for reusing or upcycling them?