Anyone who knows me personally knows that i’m a little bit of a nut about recycling and reusing things. I hate waste. I hate throwing useful things away. I would much rather drive ages out of my way to dispose of something in the best possible way, or find some way to reuse it, or someone who will reuse it, than throw it in the trash. I hate trash. HATE>
To me, scrubbing sponges are just trash. Gross trash. I hate sponges, they gross me out, they’re synthetic and they only get used a few times before being thrown in the trash. I also hate fabric scrap waste. I end up with so so many fabric scraps, serger scraps, cut offs – and i also hate throwing them in the bin (sidebar: i’d really really like to get a massive compost bin at some point so i can include all my natural fibre scraps in it, ah the dream!).
So a few years ago i made the decision to take my fabric scraps and try to find a useful way to reuse them. This was one of my projects! I took my serger scraps, joined them to make balls of “yarn” and knitted very basic square washcloths. Over a period of about three years i’ve made many more, and now we have a nice little stock pile of reusable wash cloths for the kitchen. They are imperfect. I like that. Some of them are made of a mix of different fabrics, which actually works quite well for scrubbing. When they get dirty they go in the wash with the tea towels, and the cycle continues. So far i’ve only had one die, and that was because we used it to scrub our airconditioning unit and it literally fell apart. I think thats fair enough hehehe.
I’m really happy with this project. It makes me proud to have found a way to use up these “useless” pieces of fabric, and i’m thrilled that we haven’t bought a sponge in three years.
