Rack It Up - Recycle for Your Jewelry

Repurposed Cabinet Door

My friend, Alice, makes some wonderful wall-mounted racks for hanging jewelry by repurposing cabinet doors and shutters.  She adds assorted knobs and drawer pulls from her large collection, which has the most interesting shapes, sizes, and colors.

In the upper photo, she painted and distressed an old cabinet door and below, she used a shutter.  Her customers have used these for ties, belts, and kitchen towels, also.

Repurposed Shutter

Fringe Benefits: Free Napkins From Shirts

You can recycle your worn-out flannel shirts to make excellent cloth napkins.  They're comfy, absorbent, and free!  Here's how to do it.

1. Cut napkin-sized squares from the front and back panels of the shirt.  12" square is what I use, in order to get 4 napkins from one shirt.  This makes a smallish napkin (cocktail-sized), but it still works fine for daily meals.  If you want them bigger, like 16" square, you'll probably only get one or two from the back panel of a shirt.

2. Once you've cut your squares, fringe the edges.  To do this, pull parallel threads off an edge until there's about 1/4" to 1/2" of fringe created by the loose ends of the threads going the other direction.

These napkins wash like a dream.  Sometimes an extra thread or two will try to liberate itself from an edge after washing.  In that case, just peel it off and throw it away (or compost it if it's a natural fiber).

Repurposed Furniture

This bench was made by my good friend, Steve, who built it for our patio out of recycled wood.  As you can see, he used cedar fence boards, posts, and other odds and ends.  I think this is a great example of the success you can have with a little imagination and some old stuff.  Steve builds all kinds of furniture for his wife's shop, Just Looking, in Texas.

Here are some more examples:

Outdoor bench made from recycled cedar fence materials.

Side table made from old sewing machine cabinet.

Standing cabinets made from old kitchen wall cabinets.

Child's bench made from twin bed headboard and footboard.

Hutch cabinet made with old window shutters.

Coffee table made from recycled weathered wood.