Recycled Tees into Baby Washcloths: Quick & Easy!

If it weren’t for nesting, I’m pretty sure none of our closets would EVER get cleaned.  The linen closet itself was…well…atrocious is probably not too strong a word.  These last few weeks, I’ve been attacking tasks with a vengeance–with baby #3 arriving six weeks early, we pretty much figured that with baby #4, 34 weeks was our Zero Hour.  The last six weeks have felt like Last Minute Land, and jobs I’ve been putting off (and off, and off…) were suddenly getting done.  (I guess I should thank this baby later for taking her time, huh?)

One was going through some of our older things and weeding out the ones that were outgrown or “scuzzy,” as my mother says: stained or worn or just dingy, not nice enough to donate.  I still can’t bring myself to throw out a snapsuit that has spots down the front but lots of wear left, though, or an undershirt of my husband’s that has a small rip at the neckline but is otherwise in good shape.  As I did wash and was folding, I’d pull the things that didn’t make the back-in-the-drawer cut and toss them all in a bag.  Originally, I was going to donate them, but then I thought: (1) if they’re too icky for my family, what makes me think they’re nice enough for the thrift store? and (2) maybe I can recycle these, instead?

Most of them were super, super soft, so it occurred to me that I could make some insanely easy and quick baby washcloths out of them using my serger.  We do cloth diapers for our babies over here, and go through about a zillion of those tiny little washcloths every week, so having more on hand is always a good thing.  Considering where most of them are destined to be used, a few stains are SO not going to matter, and not cutting around the spots made it easy to get good-sized washcloths from almost all of the ruined garments.

I chopped each tee or onesie or knit top into the most squares I could make from them, and holding two layers together as one, simply serged the edges.  Done, and done.  Absorbent, soft, easy, and free.  I was almost sad to see the pile run out, and even more sad that so many of these things were white–the floral and green are totally my faves.  Is it wrong that now I’m looking muuuuch more closely for stains when I fold the wash??