Stop! Don’t throw out those ratty old bath towels!

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…

Stitch around 3 sides and most of the 4th, leaving an opening for turning. 
Clip the corners, turn it right side out, tuck in the edges of the opening and then topstitch all the way around.
I also sewed a big X across the whole thing to keep the layers in place.
And … voila! A pretty dish drying mat.
It cost me nothing but about 10 minutes to make each one.
And this is all I have to throw away now…
I can live with that.
What do you do with ratty old bath towels?

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