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Showing posts with label repurpose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label repurpose. Show all posts

Monday, February 16, 2009

Design on a Dime.


What do you do when challenged to come up with table centerpieces for a sports award banquet attended by 280 guests with a $5.00 budget? Oh, and you have seven days to accomplish your mission?

If you are wondering why things have been so quiet around here the past two weeks, my Monday post at The Green Phone Booth might give a clue.


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at 4:35 PM 0 comments
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Thursday, September 18, 2008

Thrifty Green Thursday

Draft Stopper.

With winter quickly approaching I shudder in remembrance of the icy drafts coming from beneath my doors. A lot of resources and money are wasted due to the extra heat needed to combat these drafts and the extra money you have to spend to fuel the furnace. People have been using door snakes for years. Maybe you even have one. I find them annoying because you always have to put them back in there place. I am lazy, I know. A quick and easy fix to this problem is using a twin draft stopper. Now, you could pay $19.99 and order the twin draft guard, but that would not be very thrifty. And these are so simple to make!

The materials:


All it took was a pair of my daughter's recently purged jeans and two foam pipe wraps from the hardware store. These come in different diameters and are dirt cheap. 1/2 inch should be sufficient to cover most gaps.

  • Cut your foam tubes to 1 1/2 to 2 inches shorter than the width of the door you are covering.
  • Cut your jeans in half and trim to slightly longer than the tubes. I got lucky, these were already nearly the length I needed.

  • Turn inside out and sew bottom hem shut.
  • Slip tubes inside pant leg and slide under the door so that one tube is on each side of door.

  • Pull fabric taught so tubes are snug against the door.
  • Pin along edge of tube on cut side and sew a straight seam along pins.
  • Trim excess fabric off.

  • Turn right side out, insert tubes and fold over open end to be flush with tubes.
  • Pin hem and sew edge, leaving the end open.

  • Reinsert tubes and slide under door with open end towards door frame.
  • Make sure door can open and close freely.
  • Never bend down to put the door snake back in its place again!

The finished product will move with the door. There is no need to constantly be putting it back in its place. Just slide it on and forget about it. I like to leave one end open so the tubes can be removed and the cover washed when needed. You could certainly add Velcro or sew it shut if preferred. These work great for drafty windows, too!


The side by side comparison says it all. Save your money and your sanity with a simple twin draft stopper.
at 12:36 PM 6 comments
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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Thrifty Green Thursday

Need a bag? No problem.

My daughter entered 7th grade this year and has to start changing for PE class. In need of way to transport sweaty gym socks without stinking up her entire back pack and reduce the mountain of clothes recently purged from her closet we decided to combine the two.






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She picked a purple skirt that no longer fits from the purge pile. It is everything she loves - purple, sparkly, and has bells that jingle. I made her rip the seams to separate the two halves and inner and outer linings. Then she released the elastic from the waistband and removed the ties holding the jingle bells. We only needed fabric from half the skirt to make the bag. I think the other half will be turned into an apron for her. She's a good kitchen helper.


  • First we sewed in the drawstring, which came from another purple skirt, and attached the bell ties - purely for decoration.
  • Then we stitched the two halves together. Inner and outer lining.
  • Turned it inside out and sewed the inner lining closed.
  • Turned it right side out and closed the bottom of the outer lining.
  • Used some scrap pieces to fashion straps.
  • Attached the straps and inserted stinky gym socks. Done!


From last year's skirt to this year's must have accessory. Sew easy!

Another simple reusable bag you can make from cast off clothing is the camisole tote. They are both great ways to spend an afternoon teaching your child a life skill. There are so many lessons to be learned here. Problem solving, frugality, wasting less, consuming less, self sufficiency. Plus, she just likes that fact that no one else will have a bag like hers. Priceless.
at 11:21 AM 10 comments
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Thursday, September 4, 2008

Thrifty Green Thursday

Paper binder.

Earlier this week, in my Back to Eww! School post, I ranted about the mindset people have that causes them to needlessly spend money on items they already own; resulting in an abundance of leftover school supplies from previous years. I am totally a type A person who likes everything neat and tidy and in its specific place. If you have ever seen Monk, yeah that's me. So all this clutter chaos caused by Ew's incessant school shopping has me a bit miffed.

I am looking into ways to responsibly rid myself of this surplus and have received some good suggestions from you all. However, half used beat up notebooks are not something my church can send to needy children. We have a lot of these. In an effort to reduce the sheer volume of stuff we possess and feel less guilty about trash through repurposing I made a paper binder.

The materials:

Various leftover notebooks with usable paper and a vinyl binder I was feeling guilty about throwing away. *Which is why it had not quite made it to the trash yet.* I clipped all the spiral bindings off the notebooks and sorted the fresh from used paper. Why not just tear the pages out? Because I am Mr. Monk and like clean edges. If I had tore them out I would have had to go back and trim all the frayed edges off. I know, I may have a problem. Then I removed the three ring spine from the binder and separated the pieces.


Reattaching the spine was not all that hard since the rivets were still attached. I just used a hole punch and pushed the rivets through. I cut the top cover piece slightly larger than the size of the paper so it would not hang over the bottom when clipped in place. I also covered the top piece and back with pages from an old calendar that was also destined for the trash.


After punching holes in the top cover it was as simple as assembling.


Done! A pile of old notebooks, past calendar, and a trashed binder reduced to one. Streamlined just the way I like it. The used pages from the notebooks will be cut into scrap paper, the covers composted, and the binding reserved for a future craft project. The only trash I have now is the vinyl binder cover and I may just find a use for that, too.


Every cloud has a silver lining.
at 9:08 AM 8 comments
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Monday, August 25, 2008

Paper, Plastic, or Cami?

Two weeks into my closet diet and already I have begun to amass quite a pile of shed clothing. Today while sifting through the pile, I was sorting the camisoles into sell/donate and cleaning cloth categories when Eureka!

Have you ever noticed that a camisole looks a lot like a tote bag? The handles are already built in. Which is good for me, because I am very much a beginner sewer.

The materials:
One paint splattered camisole and the drawstring from one pair of paint splattered pants were all I needed to make a super easy tote bag. Well, and thread of course! I started by pinning the drawstring that I removed from the pants to the underside of the elastic on the shelf bra inside the camisole.
Finding the center of the back side as the starting point, I worked my way around to the front. Half on the right and half on the left. The elastic will be folded over the drawstring and sewn shut. Prior to doing this I sewed a button hole for the drawstring to be pulled through.

This is what it looked like after being sewn shut. I also stitched a line on the back center through the drawstring to hold it in place. I hate it when the string gets off center and either sucks inside or gets pulled out completely! This will assure that does not happen.

Next step is to turn the camisole inside out and pin the bottom hems together.
Sew the bottom shut. Turn right side out and your done!



This was so easy and has lots of uses.
  1. Farmer's Market
  2. Produce Bag
  3. Child's overnight sack
  4. Gym bag
  5. Dirty laundry from camp
  6. Shoe bag for suitcase
  7. Clothespin carrier
  8. Lingerie bag for washing
  9. Wet clothes from the beach
  10. Garbage bag for the car
  11. Picking morels in spring
  12. Picking apples in the fall
  13. Store winter hats/gloves by the door

Get creative and find ways to repurpose your castaways. What have you turned yours into? I have a whole pile awaiting transformation. I would love to hear your ideas!
at 1:06 PM 5 comments
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