Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Day 128 of our Green Year: Uses for Old Jeans

Today, I ripped one of my jeans and decided the time had come to retire them. Now, since we are in Our Green Year, the decision was made to not only retire them, but reuse them in a new manner. Thankfully, jeans are incredibly versatile, and can be used in a wide variety of ways. So, this one pair of jeans will be turned into one, or more, of the following by Layla and her trust sewing machine.

  1. You can make pot holders out of denim jeans because denim is actually quite good of keeping the heat off your hands. Try this instead of buying new pot holders from the grocery store.
  2. Take the legs of blue jeans, cut them in half and sew the bottom of them, and you have some great hanging sleeves to store anything you may need to, including cleaning rags and socks.
  3. Use parts of the old jeans, to patch up another pair of jeans so that you don't have to buy new jeans for awhile if more jeans rip.
  4. Use them on a scarecrow. You may think this is not exactly going green with them, but if you have birds wrecking your garden, you are not producing as much, which means you have to buy more.
  5. I love coffee, but sometimes it can get cold too quickly. As a result, creating coffee cozies out of old jeans may be the solution I am looking for so that I don't have to microwave my coffee, or drink it quickly to keep it from getting cold on me.
  6. Layla and I enjoy gardening but it can be hell on the knees. So, we think knee pads made from jeans may be the exact solution we are looking for.
There are plenty of cool ideas for what you can use old jeans for, and these are just a portion, the ones we want to do ourselves. In the end, if you have no more uses for what is left over of your jeans, then all you have do to is cut the jeans up into little pieces and toss them in the compost bin because, yes, jeans are able to compost too!