Healthy Living

RECYCLING SHEETS AND TOWELS

If your linen closet is bursting at the seams with an odd assortment of old sheets and towels that are too old and faded to use but too sturdy to throw out, consider these ideas for extending their usefulness:

• Donate them to your local Humane Society or animal rescue operation, where they can be used to bathe and bed the animals.
  
  
• Church and school youth groups can always use old towels for their fund-raising car washes.
  
  
• Old sheets and beach towels make excellent tarps for covering furniture while you are painting.
  
  
• Use old sheets as tarps during landscape cleanup and leaf removal. They are lighter weight and easier to haul around.
  
  
• Lay thinner bed sheets under landscaping mulch to extend the life of your mulch and further reduce weeding. The fabric is breathable enough to prevent mold or disease but strong enough to keep weeds at bay.
  
  
• Let children make backyard tents the old-fashioned way: by clipping them to a clothesline and using rocks to hold down the ends.
  
  
• Cut up white sheets for ghost costumes, or make Halloween decorations for next to nothing. Simply cut a white sheet to desired sizes, wrap a rubber band around a lightweight bouncy ball or Styrofoam “head” on the inside, then attach a short length of string or rope to the top by sewing or safety-pinning. If desired, draw scary faces with black marker on the heads. Hang the ghosts from tree branches in the yard for a great eerie effect.
  
  
• Keep old sheets and towels in the trunk of your vehicle, where they can come in handy for a number of things: cleaning up wet dogs or kids, protecting car seats, providing an impromptu picnic blanket, setting up an SOS flag in the event of car trouble, and even helping provide wheel traction if you get stuck in an icy driveway.
  
  
• If you host a garage sale, hang old sheets against the walls of your garage to hide the things that are not for sale. It will help avoid countless questions and save time and aggravation on everybody’s part.
  
  
• Old sheets or dish towels can be cut up to make excellent curtains for playhouses, whether they are of fancy construction or spontaneous homemade versions created out of large appliance boxes.
  
  
• Dishtowels and hand towels can be made into serviceable bibs simply by sewing a short length of ribbon on the corners.