Tag Archives: reuse

Donate Old Clothes and Other Reusable Goods – Green Step by Step

So you don’t have a use for those old clothes or other stuff around the house, but they’re in good enough condition that someone else could use them, send them off to your favorite charity.

This is especially true for clothing. Clothes that are still in excellent condition can be resold. But charities may also take clothes that aren’t in such good shape and turn them into cleaning rags. You can do that around the house too, just be sure that they really have reached the end of their life span as clothing.

You may also be able to find people in your area who enjoy doing crafts and need old clothes to make rugs and such.

Another option would be to hold a garage sale and sell the stuff yourself.

Non-clothing goods can be more difficult, especially if you’re talking electronic goods. Look around for a good electronics recycling program.

Don’t forget to consider reused items when shopping for yourself. Thrift stores can have amazing deals on really wonderful clothing. So much more affordable than going to department or specialty stores.

My Daughter’s Save the Earth Poster

This poster was my daughter’s idea, from start to finish. She gets in these creative moods and gets going. And she loves using materials she finds around the house sometimes, not just fresh paper.

save the earth

For those who can’t read it, it reads “Save the Earth. Save water.”

She’s pretty much obsessed with saving water. That we’ve moved from an area with strict water restrictions to one with none at all drives her nuts.

It’s drawn on some padding from our move. It was put between plates to protect them. We’re saving it for the most part as we anticipate within the next year or two moving back to the San Diego area, depending on when my husband gets transferred, so it would be a waste to throw it out.

Nice thing is, this piece could still be used that way if my daughter gets bored with it.

Some’s also going to my mom, who needs it to pad out a car seat that’s not well enough padded. Yes mom, we remember!

It’s good to remember that trash to you can be art supplies to children. They don’t need much to be creative.

A Great Solution to Outgrown Kids’ Sport Equipment

I came across this post on Free Range Parenting about a website that helps parents to swap outgrown sports equipment. Not only is the website a really great idea, but some of the comments on the Free Range Kids post have some great tips about doing this in your own area.

It’s just a southern California site, not nationwide, but that makes sense. Kind of hard to do this long distance without losing a lot of money to shipping costs.

I really liked the comments about doing this through schools, though. I could even see it as a fundraiser if parents were willing to donate equipment. Keep the prices low and the school could probably make some pretty nice money without selling wrapping paper.

And as another person noted, Craigslist and Freecycle in your local area are good choices too.

So often kids outgrow things before they’re really worn out. It’s also a nice way to let your kids try out a sport they don’t know if they’re going to like with a smaller investment in the necessary equipment.

Glad to be Reusing Moving Supplies

Getting ready for this move is rather time consuming. I’m managing bits of time for regular work, but it’s tough. Especially since we had a scheduled, 8 hour power outage yesterday for some sort of work the power company has been doing in our area.

We still haven’t found the house we’ll be moving into, but I’m doing a bit of packing every day so it won’t be such a chore when the time comes. There are always things you don’t need to have out all the time.

The nice thing is that we have a lot of boxes to reuse. Many are from a previous move of ours, and in between were loaned to one of my sisters for her move. It’s nice that they’re still in good enough shape to be used for this. We also have a few boxes that my mother had from other things.

Packing materials will mostly be old newspapers, which I have my mother and my inlaws saving up for us. Why buy bubble wrap and such when we can get the newspaper for free?

This whole process will no doubt also be a reminder of how much stuff we have that is only rarely used. Most of it I really don’t mind, especially the various antique dishes from my great aunt and grandmother.

It should be interesting to see how little we can spend on moving supplies.

Make Green Easter Baskets for Your Kids

It’s just a couple of weeks to Easter, and I’m thinking already on what I want to put in my kids’ Easter baskets. It’s a holiday they have a lot of fun with, and I like to keep up the excitement without overdoing the spending.

With that in mind, I thought I would offer some tips on keeping Easter a bit greener for the kids.

1. Buy Easter baskets that can be reused.

Our kids’ Easter baskets get reused every year. We didn’t get the cheapie ones from the store. We found nicer ones that will hold up for many years. The kids love them.

You can find good baskets at thrift stores or any store in your area that sells baskets. It’s been a few years, but I think ours came from Cost Plus.

You can also consider using a bucket as a basket. This is great for kids who are still young enough to really enjoy playing in the sand.

2. Reuse other supplies from year to year.

Sure, you don’t like all that ugly plastic stuff you may have bought for Easter in years past, but if you have it there is no further harm in using it. Just don’t go buying new plastic eggs or plastic Easter grass.

Build up your supply as needed with more environmentally friendly Easter basket supplies.

3. Real grass in the Easter basket.

Two ways you can do this. The first would be to take lawn clippings the day before and use them in the baskets. It should be simple enough to time mowing the lawn so that you would have the clippings ready when you need them.

Another would be to line the basket with foil, add dirt and grass seeds, then grow the grass in the basket. Best to get started now if that’s what you want to do, as it will take a couple weeks to get things growing tall enough.

4. Skip the egg dying kits.

Nothing wrong with dyeing Easter eggs, but the little kits are relatively wasteful, especially if you have what you need to dye the eggs already at home.

I like to dye the eggs with food coloring and vinegar in a colander. We did this last year, and it turned out really beautiful.

You can also use natural food colorings. You can start with the raw eggs and boil them with the dye agents and some vinegar, using:

  • Carrots or turmeric for yellow,
  • Red cabbage leaves or blueberries for blue,
  • Beets or cranberries for pink,
  • Yellow onion skins for orange,
  • Red wine or purple grape juice for purples.

5. Think about what you put into the basket.

Go easy on the candy and think more about what the kids will use. As it’s spring, seeds and small garden tools can be fun. Books can also be a good gift.