Anyone who knows me personally knows that I’m passionate about recycling and reusing things. I hate waste and throwing useful items away. I would much rather go out of my way to dispose of something properly, find a way to reuse it, or give it to someone who will, than throw it in the trash. I strongly dislike trash.
To me, scrubbing sponges are just gross trash. I dislike them because they are synthetic, get used only a few times, and then get thrown away. I also hate fabric scrap waste. I accumulate many fabric scraps, serger scraps, and cut-offs, and I dislike binning them. (Side note: I’d really like to get a large compost bin someday to include all my natural fibre scraps—ah, the dream!). So, a few years ago, I decided to take my fabric scraps and find a useful way to reuse them. This project was one result! I took my serger scraps, joined them to make balls of ‘yarn,’ and knitted very basic square washcloths. Over about three years, I’ve made many more, and now we have a nice stockpile of reusable kitchen wash cloths. They are imperfect, which I like. Some are made from a mix of fabrics, which works well for scrubbing. When dirty, they go in the wash with the tea towels, and the cycle continues. So far, only one has died because we used it to scrub our air conditioning unit and it literally fell apart—I think that’s fair enough, hehehe. I’m really happy with this project. It makes me proud to have found a way to use up these ‘useless’ fabric pieces, and I’m thrilled that we haven’t bought a sponge in three years.