Frugal Friday: Recycle Your Graphic Ts Into Cleaning Rags

We made it to Friday!

*rejoices*

But before the weekend can commence here at Vegan in VA, it’s time for Frugal Friday.

On Frugal Fridays I’ll share free or low-cost community events and activities as well as money-saving local resources, lifestyle tips, and more. Basically, if it helps you save money, I’ll be talking about it.

I’m an admitted cheapskate, always on the look-out for the best deals and ways to stretch a dollar. I love feeling like I’ve gotten the most for my money and I don’t hesitate to try new things if it means helping my budget.

Which brings me to today’s Frugal Friday tip: recycle your old t-shirts into cleaning rags.

If you’re like me, your home has an abundance of t-shirts and only a few of them ever actually get worn. I try to go through my clothes a few times a year to pull out things that I don’t like, that don’t fit, or that I simply don’t wear, but there were all these shirts that kept getting put back in the drawer even though I hadn’t worn them in ages.

Same with my husband’s clothes.

We had all these old shirts, some of which were in terrible shape, that we couldn’t bear to part with because they held some sort of sentimental significance for us. My Grandpa’s old work shirt, a favorite band’s tour shirt from 15 years ago, you get the idea. The stories behind them were endless and the pile was beginning to seem pretty endless, too, so I decided something had to give.

step 1: gather your supplies
(in this case, old t-shirts & fabric scissors)

So, I grabbed the scissors. Specifically, the fabric scissors, which are always sharper than I remember and, of course, I ended up cutting myself . . . but that’s another story.

Anyway, I grabbed the scissors and went to town. I cut out the main part of each shirt and set it aside. (Eventually I'll turn them all into a quilt.) Then, I hacked up the rest of the shirt. I cut off the sleeves and cut up the body, creating strips of fabric in different sizes.

step 2: cut up the t-shirts
(remember to leave the image intact)

I folded them all up while I watched TV (because I’m a multitasker like that) and then tossed them in a basket in the kitchen.

now your graphic t-shirts are conveniently quilt-sized . . .

. . . and you have all these handy new cleaning rags–
in a variety of sizes!

Done-zo.

That’s it. Really.

And now I have a ton of rags I can use to clean the house so I don’t have to use paper towels which, let’s face it, are super wasteful. Plus, if I use a rag for something so gnarly that it needs to be thrown away afterward, it’s no big deal because I know that, sooner or later, I’ll have new t-shirts to cut up.

My favorite things about my recycled rags are that they solved my paper towel dilemma, and helped me clear up some dresser space, all for $0 since I already had the fabric scissors.

If you don’t have fabric scissors, you can pick up a nice pair for less than $10 at any sewing or fabric store. You can even use a regular pair of scissors if your shirts aren’t too thick. Either way, BE CAREFUL. Nothing ruins recycle excitement like trying not to bleed all over everything because you cut yourself with scissors. (This is a serious problem for me, in case you couldn’t tell.)

So, that’s my tip for this week. Try it out yourself and let me know how it goes!