What to do with rags?

lindadykes

The word "rags" conjured up memories of my childhood, when if a special occasion was coming up my mum would put "rags" in my hair the night before so that my hair would be in ringlets the next morning.

Basically she would take an old sheet and tear it into 1" wide strips at least twice the length of my hair. She would then position the halfway point of the rag at the roots of my hair and have me hold one of the loose ends. my hair was wound round the rag evenly towards the other end of the rag and then my mam would take my end and wrap it round the outside of the hair knotting the two ends together at the bottom.

I would sleep in these overnight and in the morning mam would carefully remove them to reveal a set of ringlets. They were really uncomfortable, but I used to bear with them thinking excitedly to how my hair would look in the morning!

Pennylane

I've been making rag rugs for years and they are a great way to spend winter evenings. You could start by making something small (since you are talking about small baby clothes) like a chair or stool cover.

My fave rag rugs I have made from old items made from fleece fabric. Sweatshirts, jackets, blankets etc. I have a huge pile ready to cut up which I've been collecting all summer from friends, jumbles & car boots.

foxgloves

I always have a 'rag bag' on the go. Years ago, I can remember shopping with a much more affluent friend and we seemed to spend ages in Halfords looking for the right sort of cotton cloths to buy for polishing her car. I didn't even know you could buy rolls of soft cloth especially for this purpose as I'd always used cut up tee shirts, etc, after they were too raggy even to be a gardening teeshirt. In our house, they get used for drying soggy moggies, window cleaning, polishing wooden furniture, car cleaning, clearing up spills, when painting & decorating & for all manner of other mucky jobs. We even used them when we dug our wildlife pond, as we'd bought a proper pond liner but didn't want to spend extra money on the fabric sheet to put between that & the soil. We ended up using a double layer of rags from the rag bag and an old blanket. It seems to have worked fine.

lovintheblues

Hi everyone.

Having a big sort out and have a bag full of stuff that is no good for car boot/ebay/charity shop...

Talking about clothing mainly, you know socks with holes in, knickers with no life left in the elastic...:eek:

I don't want to put them in the bin to end up in land fill, but don't want them in my house either. Do most people just send it to the charity shop and let them take care of it?

Thanks.

Molly41

The charity shops bin or send that sort of stuff for rags. It actually costs them in time as they have to sort it, transport it for it to end up in landfill. So its best if you get rid of that sort of thing yourself. If you take it to a recycling centre they have a rags container which your stuff could go in.

stef240377

If you take it in to a charity shop and explain to the manager/ess what it is and that there is no life left in it and only suitable for rags they keep it to one side and once a week a truck comes and takes the stuff off to be made into pet bedding or pillow stuffings (this is a certainty for SCOPE as i used to volunteer). The charity then gets paid a set amount per tonne for the rags.

zippychick

Hi Lovintheblues:hello:

There are quite a few ideas in this thread which should inspire you for things you could do with the rags yourself.

I'll add your thread to that one later to keep all the ideas together

Oh another one - rag rugs

Zip

BitterAndTwisted

There's a company which pays you about 40 pence a kilo for recycling, so if there's a fair bit it might be worth your while contacting them as they collect and pay you on the spot.

The company was mentioned in a thread on the relationships forum: the "Fed Up With Clutter" one, I think.

Found it:

http://ecexport.com/?page=collect

lovintheblues

Thanks for all the suggestions so far! Off to do some investigating...

babyshoes

Having just browsed the 'stuff you didn't think would sell' thread in the Debt Free Wanabee board, I would be tempted to put them on ebay!!!