More reused old sock-ish things…

I try not to generate much trash – I’m not aiming to fit a year’s worth in a mason jar – but I get itchy if there’s more than one small bag per week. Having a dog who generously marked in the house the first month challenged the trash quota, the paper towel quota, and my patience for all three. (I mostly use rags instead of paper towels, but I just can’t get past putting bodily fluids in the washing machine.) Add in my current desire to purge, and I was feeling trashy about having too much going into the landfill. (I think it’s a landfill…? I haven’t learned where it goes here yet.)

So I cut out the butt sides of blown out underwear to use as wood staining rags, unraveled that pair of socks, and put to very good use a few pairs of old tights, so what remained was just a fist-sized wad of flaccid waistbands and trimmings.

The tights were a mix of cotton, cotton blend, and synthetic.

I cut them into loops thick and thin, used the thick for hair scrunchies, and the thin were snipped again to become plant ties.

They’re working well with the plants (but they aren’t necessarily biodegradable though one pair was mostly cotton, so they’re not perfect) and I’m hoping they’ll hold up well enough to be re-used – the mostly cotton ones are stretching out a bit but can easily be re-tied.

(I’m still cursing the former owners who used plastic zip ties on their tomato plants that were still left for us to tear out the following April – another example of their assholerly/cluelessness/dumbshitness that we had to clean up – and I’m still finding the occasional bits of plastic in the dirt two years later.)

And I need to do another sweep of the tights and stockings drawer to see if any can become squash slings now…