a new lease on life

[yukonsally]

I'm curious.

In your decluttering, what have you found to repurpose?

I tend to save buttons and small scraps of cloth for minor repairs. One scrap was nearly the exact size Spouse needed for something in a vehicle--the exact size. And the button attached to it fit the hole in a pair of my pants I fixed. (I have also given away many buttons, as my collection was beyond my needs.)

I tried to give away a little gauzy bag, those little ones that hold a single piece of jewelry. No takers. Then I realized--it'll hold my ear buds in my pack so I can get rid of the plastic tie that tends to get sticky as it ages.

No shoe laces for (secondhand) dance shoes? Here's some fancy ribbon I saved because... it's pretty? I don't even know where it came from.

That's to speak nothing of all the knitting with scraps I do (blankets, fingerless gloves, flowers, spare tire cozies, you know, useful stuff). I needed a string for my coffee scoop--well, here's some nice pink sock yarn to make a loop!

It's a fine line between keeping things that could be useful and keeping everything. But some things have ceased to be clutter and have become useful. The way things in my house should be.

Comments

[adair]

I often save things I think I will repurpose, and then don't. However, B does a Lot of kit-bashing in his model-making and now N size train scenery development. He can repurpose Many Things, especially if it is number 6 poly-styrene, which can glue to other things well. I always show him small bits and pieces, including a lot of packaging, before I put it in the recycle bag. The handles of G.U.M. soft-picks become traffic signs, and who knows what else. Parts of old VHS tapes, at least the casing, go into many vehicles; Apple electronics always have packaging that can be used by a fertile imagination.If you have a model-maker around they will always find uses for odd bits of things.

[fred_mouse]

I repurpose a lot of small cardboard items by giving them to a friend who teaches lower primary, and is responsible for 'technology', which is mostly about making a design and then creating it out of found cardboard. I also handed a *lot* of single socks on to a pre-primary class a long time back for them to make hand puppets out of. Robust cereal boxes were cut up to make magazine boxes, although they weren't as good as the ones I later got given, so they have since been thrown out.

I use the containers that Chinese takeaway meals come in for many many things around the house, because they are all of a size, relatively small, see through, and stack well.

And we do a lot of things with clothing that is too damaged to mend. Youngest made a tote bag with the top of a pair of jeans, a friend has a peg bag for their washing line made out of the bottom of a leg of a pair of jeans, we make present wrapping bags out of pretty fabric, so that we don't have to use paper.