Pinching Your Pennies

They just pile up, don’t they?
Too ugly and thread bare to be bath towels anymore.
But I’m trying to be a little “greener” every day. So I’m trying to look at things in new ways before I throw them away.
The first, and most obvious way to reuse these would be as cleaning rags.
~wrap around a broom head for a makeshift dust mop
~wrap around the broom head to wipe away cobwebs at the ceiling
~keep them in the trunk of your car for trips to the car wash
~cut into smaller pieces to use for general cleaning around the house
~if you’re a pet owner, cut into smaller pieces and keep near the door to wipe muddy paws

But, at this point I have enough rags to last the rest of my natural life.
So I went looking for other ways to repurpose these old towels.
Some of the ideas I found were:
~donate them to animal shelters
~layer cut pieces between fine china to prevent scratching

And my personal favorite…MAKE SOMETHING NEW!
You can make potholders, bath mats, baby bibs. The possibilities are endless.
I read about a project on a blog a few months ago that stuck with me.
I made a dish mat!
I always seem to have one or two items that can’t go in the dishwasher. I don’t want to have a dish drainer. The don’t ever seem to drain completely and get all murky. Plus I just don’t want another thing sitting out on my counter all the time. I usually just put a dish towel on the counter and place the hand washed things there to dry.
But why not have something a little prettier?
I cut the white (Well, it WAS white, in it’s first life.) one into 6 fourteen inch squares. Then I found a cotton article of clothing that was destined for the donation bin and cut 12 fourteen inch squares from that.
For each dish mat, place 2 pieces of the cotton fabric right sides together with one of the towel pieces on top of that. Pin it all together…