decluttering my wardrobe // what to do with "textile waste" and worn out clothes
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
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"YOU are not meant to FIT IN your clothes, YOUR CLOTHES are meant TO FIT YOU" 🙌
100% I DON'T SERVE THE CLOTHES, THE SHOULD SERVE ME.. **me over exaggerating that phrase when someone tells me I getting fat** 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
An idea for worn out clothes could be to use the fabric to wrap/pad the wire coat hangers to make them kinder to the good clothes you’re hanging on them. Also helps stop things sliding off.
I love how you keep things for sentimentality. I feel like I see so much zero waste content push minimalism and it’s very nice to see something different
In a nutshell: ways to use unwearable clothes (feel free to add):
- stuffing pillows
- using as cleaning wipes
- making handkerchieves
- making face wipes
- Keeping fabric scraps for mending
- patchworks
- Making a rug
- Clothing for dolls
- copy the pattern from well-fitting clothes
Refashion them into a different clothing item, I had a dress that I no longer wanted, my 8 year old daughter loves the colour and the fabric, so I cut the top half of and turned it into a skirt. I have also cut sleeves on dresses and shirts that have gotten to short and made them short sleeved, and the easiest is turning pants, especially jeans, into shorts 🩳😊. I have very basic sewing skills and an entry level second sewing machine but I can definitely get a lot more wear out of the clothes we own.
Make shopping bags. Use 2 layers if the material is worn. Make an ottoman style footstool; there are lots of free, simple patterns out there. Denim is good for this, or use 2 layers for strength. Fill with scraps/worn clothes cut into small pieces.
Depending on the state of them, make them painting or yard work clothes too. My boyfriend has given me old button down shirts I have made into pillows and eventually want to make into a quilt too. I've also heard that animal shelters or vet clinics will take socks to cover surgery sites or for itty bitty puppies and kittens
You can use old bed sheet and clothes to make dog rope toys. Super easy take some strands and braid it together, add a knot or two at each end
Sew gift bags to use instead of wrapping paper
My dad is a shoemaker so he works with leather and special textiles and he always talks about worn out textile as "tired", but not over. I loved this idea because we always reused our old clothes and textiles (sheets,...) to make something else (mostly for cleaning purposes, my parents NEVER had to buy cleaning wipes). I know it's not always the prettiest or nicest thing to use so if you don't want an old cleaning wipe then yeah, use it for stuffing, braid long pieces of textile to make bags,... It's so much fun to think of all the ways it can be made into something new! :)
I have a knitted cardigan/jacket that my grandma knitted for herself, used a lot, my Mother have also used it a lot and I have too. It is close to 70 years old, and I'm now giving it a little TLC, to make it last Even longer ❤️ love heirloom pieces!
One way to reuse items is to turn them into work aprons and drop cloths for craft projects that might make a mess (like painting.)
Leena Norms has lots of fun sustainable close thoughts. Excited to see how you both manage your different styles!
“What am I doing, I’m ALMOST 30!!” 🤣🤣
I once made eyeglass sleeve cases out of denim sleeves or pant legs once. It was pretty easy if you can hand sew a basic stitch. It's a good option. You can also cut out a pocket and seam if you have broken jeans and sew them together to make a little purse. 💖
For the stained pits top: a black textile marker to cover it up. It will look like hemmed edges
For that cotton top at the end, a quick fix would be to use some soft t-shirt fabric like bias tape and sew it on the arm holes. I think black would look just fine with that top. If you think it looks odd, I'd suggest changing the shirt collar to black. Good luck!
I laughed out loud at you trying on that XS skirt 😂 thank you, just thank you for normalizing not fitting into things and not taking yourself too seriously ❤
I mixed citric acid, baking soda and vinegar to remove old stains from one of my favorite white t-shirt and then I put it out to make the Sun its thing and it works✨
I love your note about getting the hangers that work best for your clothes instead of what's trendy, for me a huge game changer was getting hangers that are actually the width of my shoulders, which meant children's hangers lol. They are plastic, but I also bought them all secondhand from moms who's kids had grown out of using them, and now I can see what my clothes will actually look like on me when they're on the hangers, and they're not getting warped anymore because the shoulders match up correctly.
Omgosh this is right on time. I've been putting off decluttering my clothes for like a month now because idk what to do with the more worn out stuff.
3:18 I think we all have the chair/poof/whatever it is you use situation
Love this video! I appreciate that you don't limit yourself in terms of how many clothes you own, just making sure you're being as sustainable as possible and only keeping things that matter to you and fit well.
There is a textile recycling facility near me and I bring whatever I cannot reuse to that place. I feel really fortunate! Great video ❤❤❤
You might be able to save the stripped shirt by sewing on a new lining, maybe black?
I use broken old clothes like t-shirts for cleaning out the oil from my frying pan so the fat doesn't end up in the pipes. Afterwards they go in the trash and get turned into energy, which isn't the best but saving pipes from not collecting big fat clumps is worth it I think.
I love folding items I put in my drawers in the style Marie Kondo demonstrated, because it allows me to see everything I keep in that drawer at a glance. (Some items can't be folded in that way, but for the ones that can, it has been a game changer.) It's easier to remind myself of things I already own, as well as remind myself that...dang, I've got quite a few items. It can keep me from buying items I find secondhand that I already own something similar of.
Love how you talked about the balance of not throwing something away if it doesn't fit our body our taste in this exact moment, because our bodies and tastes in clothing change over time, whether it be over years or even within a single month. And yet we should also be aware of items of clothing that just need to go. No sentimental value, no future in our own wardrobe except a maybe-possible-future day when we will magically fit. My body has changed a lot in the 10 years since high school, and some things I gave away in high school I know I would've worn if I still had them today. But other things I've held on to for years that finally I've had to admit will never fit me again, and just give away. A few borderline fit/don't-fit items I've decided to hold on to for now, some have sentimental value, some are good quality and I'm willing to chance suddenly being just a bit slimmer...but yeah. I appreciated the nuance you spoke about here. :-)
Now, I want to go through my wardrobe just to remind myself of what I've got, and so I can get excited about what I already own again. (With cooler weather coming in as well, I'm excited to stop wearing some of my summer items and start wearing sweaters again!)
Have a great week! Cheers.
i loved the "what am i doing i am almost 30!" had me in tears cause saaaame xD i am almost 32 but still
For the shirt with the armpits problem, you could sew patches or panels on the sides in a darker colour. Make it look like it's on purpose lol
I always think I can be the person who wears light colours. And I never will be. I did let it go this summer. It is good to admit things like that to your self
Love the idea of stuffing cushions with old clothes as they deflate
Re: letting go of clothing that doesn’t fit you anymore. I agree, there is a balance. If keeping hold of something has a negative impact on one’s mental well-being (e.g. stress from ‘why can’t I lose/gain weight so it will fit again’) then it’s just not worth it. That being said, it can also be expensive/jobbigt with a fluctuating weight to buy a whole new wardrobe each time one’s weight changes. So, it can be tough to balance sometimes. I find if an item no longer fits me well, as time passes, I naturally gravitate away from it, and I usually end up donating it anyway. But things like ‘period jeans’ (which fit a little looser round the stomach) etc. I just like to have.
I did myself a favor back in 2019 after I had to start wearing custom made leg braces (AFO for left and KAFO for right) and repurposed all but like three pairs of pants that couldn't be worn under the braces instead of having to buy insanely expensive special socks under the braces to protect my skin from the hard plastic/acrylic/fiberglass material that the braces are made of. As a result I found out a few things- I only like one kind of material (about 95% cotton/5% lycra), the pants are all by the same company and they haven't changed the pattern of these pants (leggings) ever. However, they wear in the same area every time and as a result, I know exactly how to reinforce that seam. I haven't bought new leggings since 2021 when I had to go to new york because my grandmother wasn't doing well health wise and was on her way out cognitively (cancer/dementia) and I didn't have enough pants (only had 5 pairs before the trip and purchased 5 additional pairs to get me through the trip).
I know the pain of the jeans splitting and breaking in the exact same place as you! Literally yesterday I came to the conclusion that one pair is beyond saving, deceived I’m going to keep them and use them to patch up other jeans that break to hopefully extend their lifespan 🤞
thank you for the tips, you're doing such a great job with these kind of videos! a little tip from me to everyone, if you can, don't put your knitted sweaters or sweater vests on hangers since that really puts a strain on it. instead lay it out and store it on a shelf etc, that way it'll last much longer.
I was finally tackling my laundry basket (grad school is kicking my ass), I took a picture of my closets and the bed where I was folding everything and the chairdrobe (worn but not dirty clothes) and was like, "I need a walk in closet." I love my clothes. I love fashion and I love finding new ways to wear my things. Although I also run into, "If I don't see it, then it doesn't exist" which is bad. Honestly, if one side of my closet was more racks instead of shelves, I think it would be okay. I love options, especially when I am not feeling great about my body, I have many to choose from. This was fun to watch and makes me want to go through things again and rediscover what I have!
I would recommend you to take the clothes you like to get them copied befor they get totaly broke, Garments worp and the fabric get drestroied as it would impact the next pattern you make out of the garment. If you have someone who knows how to do it, it is ”easy” to copy a garment without cutting it and then make your own garment from it.
I know this video is old but I’m a new subscribed and love the content! ♥️
Another fun idea that has just crossed my mind is something that my mom and grandmother always did: they saved cotton or similar cloth from worn out clothes and used them to make the jar cover for homemade jams and marmelade. Cute idea if you want to try! ✌🏻
I use my and my partners old cotton T-shirts as fabric to do embroidery projects with that I use to decorate my house and as presents for friends and family 😅 I know it’s niche 😅 sorry!
I do too
I would of loved to had some my nans clothing she had wonderful taste but my aunties and uncles in sadness gave them away as they couldn't bare to see them which i totally understand and everything she owned from cups to decoration. I often find myself always on the hunt for similar clothes she wore in photos i have. They were only like supermarket clothes nothing expensive or grand but they were hers and she wore them so beautifully or even to have one her necklaces.
All my worn out t-shirts and leggings get a second round as sleepwear. I could not care less what I look like when I'm sleeping - I just want to be comfortable. 🤷♀️
When they literally fall apart, I cut them into rags for shoe polish or working around my house ♻️
Also, thanks for all your great tips and advice 👏
Hi! For the halterneck stain I recommend the Dr. Beckmann stain spray Deo&Sweat. It saved many of my white t-shirts. 😇🥰
Thank you for the many tips on what to do with discarded clothes other than donating them! Will defeniteley use most of those suggestions. =)
i cut up a lot of my old clothes and stuff and crochet with it!!
You are right that the cheap shit clothes should be treated as things with value because so many resources and so much energy went into making them. People worked on them with their sweat and tears.
I think it's such a cool idea if u had a lot of friends to host a clothe swappinh day or something where everyone would bring in clothes that they don't need anymore 😁 AND it's free (have yet to do this though 😂)
This is so motivational right now for me! Thank you!
Hi from Sicily.Thanx for talking about a problem i have:decluttering worn out chothes
I got faded sheets from the thrift store, ripped them into strips and made hook rugs
I literally just decluttered my wardrobe 😄 would definitely recommend since the end result is always so satisfying!
I had a white shirt once that had yellowed for the same reason as yours. I died it a dark gray color and pow.
So lovely to see someone enjoying their wardrobe. I especially loved all your hounds tooth coats. I want one now! 😆
Baking soda and peroxide for the yellow stains! Always works for me!! These are two of my few cleaning products I keep in my home the others are just vinegar and Castile soap.
Regarding the striped top... maybe you can sew some black half circles (or other shap) on the spots? It will also prevent stains in the future. Good luck😊
For armpit stains, I make a paste of baking soda and dishsoap, scrub on the stain with a toothbrush and let set 10-15 minutes before washing like regular. Works every time.
Nooo! The iconic bike shorts :( For the stains, baking soda helps sometimes or 50/50 vinegar/water mix.
baking soda and vinegar and soak it in a sink for a while for the stripe shirt. i also scrubbed and used dawn soap and it lifted some bad old yellowy stains
Omg thank you for doing this, it’s the kick I needed. I’ve been avoiding going through my wordrobe (my NY resolution) literally all year now. 😂
This is on my early winter list of things to get done. I have already packed up all my clothes to move to our winter cabin, can’t wait to sort & organize and find old treasures! Thanks for the inspiration and ideas🥰
Wow you have such a fun and unique wardrobe. Thanks for sharing!
Clotheshorse podcast recently did a series of instagram posts on stain removal tips, maybe there's something in there that would help with that shirt? Love your style!
I think it's so beautiful and true what you say at the end ❤
Alsoo, I love your determination of what you say at 17:12 haha, rewatched it 3 times 😅
Alsoo, I think a compilation video of several repair processes would be really cool and inspiring!
Alsooo (last one I promise haha), can I just say that I am so down for a closet tour?? 😍
Vinegar and baking soda are all very well (separately bc they neutralise each other if mixed!) but sometimes I think they can just set the stain instead. I've had luck with hydrogen peroxide or hydrogen peroxide based stain remover! It usually comes in plastic but if it saves an item I think it's worth it, and it works really really well for organic stains (like stains from organic material, not organic in the eco meaning but like. Carbon based. Like blood and grass and such). I pretreat things by washing with dish soap and then hydrogen peroxide, that often does a lot! Otherwise, maybe you could just cut the armhole bigger? Or is the big armhole sideboob tank top too reminiscent of the tumblr music festival aesthetic 😂
Yea I was also thinking to cut it if it’s already a raw hem. Or, if she wanted to get crafty or take it to a seamstress, they could add a wide strip of black bias binding to the armholes- it would cover the stain and give the top a refreshed look 👍👍
"Also, this is a size extra small, what am I doing, I am almost THIRTY!"
*yeets skirt *
😂😂
I need to do a closet reorganization and swop out my summer clothes with winter ones. I know that I need to get the zipper on one of my jackets fixed, it's been broken since the beginning of December last year 😱. I think that everyone should learn basic sewing skills, sewing on a button and hemming a garment should be common knowledge for everyone. It would save people so much money and so many resources if you could easily fix garments.
I would over dye with a golden dye that black and white striped tank top, so that the underarm stains blend into the backgrorund as it were.
That's a clever idea!
There are quite alot of your clothes I'd happily take...especially since right now, I am abroad for 3 months and I seriously underpacked 😂. I had a hard time balancing the current weather there with the seasonal change. I had to buy a few more tops and regret not bringing more.
i have a white blouse like that too! i love oversized fits so i stole my dads. Turns out he wore it on my parents wedding plus it actually belonged to my grandpa before. I love when my clothes have history😊
So fabulous to see all your clothes and hearing stories about them :)
Hi! I’ve had a similar problem with that type of stains. The thing that has worked the best for me is making a paste with percarbonate and some detergent in scales (I usually just use a grater with my solid detergent), and mixed with some hot water so the percarbonate activates and to get a paste consistenty and then apply it to the stains and leave there for ten minutes. After that just wash it normally and let it dry. I hope it will help you :)
you can easily dye the top since its cotton only :)
Re: striped top: I might try to cut the armholes bigger and re-hem them to cut out the yellow bit if the top would still work with bigger armholes.
About the shirt stain on the skull stripe armless one... have you tried baking soda and citronjuice or lay it out wet exposed to the sun... worked for me with tomatoe stains
You can make japanese gift wrapping cloths from a square shaped piece of fabric that is still in good condition - cut shirts, skirts, pyjamas etc. into squares so you can use the nice patterns and colours again.
Cherry dress! ❤ Oh, and this black dots skirt is also very nice :)
ive just found your channel and i love your videos so much!
Thank you. Enjoyed this video so much!
I need to do this again. Bit feels so good
24:12 If I'm not too late and the top is still in one piece, why not take some black cotton fabric and do a contrast trim around the armholes? It'd hide the stain under additional fabric in a way that looks like an intentional design choice.
Intresting you use wire. I totally gey the the no plastic but i remeber in the 90s there was a huge thing to get rid wire hangers as bad for cloths. For the top have you tried violets mineral bleach? Although there is a chance the black comes out so remove patches first 😊
Trousers and Jeans that wear out at the thigh can be made into skirts if youre handy with a needle. 👍
If the last top is 100% cotton why don't you dye it? Maybe with onion peels. curcuma or black tea. I don't think the stains would still be visible then
Thoughts on a wedding dress? Obviously, I'm keeping it for sentimental reasons, but is there some purpose to use it for other than taking up space in the closet with the excuse that a potential future daughter might want to use it?
Could you break the dress down into separate pieces? A top, a corset if it has one, a skirt (or a new dress if you have a long train or excess fabric), and then a reusable petticoat? You can always thrift a used dress to attempt a trial run. I don't have exp. with this method, but this is what I would try in your predicament if you didn't want to store it away for future use.
Depends on the dress, but I just have it dyed blue (professionally) so it is now my fancy dress (yes, the one, don’t have anything else). But there are also charities sewing dresses for stillborn babies using old wedding dresses.
A video on things to do with horribly old/unwearable and unfixable shoes would be great
Stains of any type: buy yourself a bar of Felz Naptha soap. I think i spelled that right. Anyway, wet it, rub it on the stain. Toss it in the laundry basket, then, wash as usual. I can't think of any stains it hasnt worked on, including grease stains.
such a great video thank you!
Ure clothes are really really cool!
With the stripey vest-top, I wonder if you had some black material, if you could sew a thin band around the arm holes (over the current hem)? As a sort of defined seam-edge thingy (I have no idea of what the proper word for that is!) to cover the stain?
What in the carrie Bradshaw 😂😂😂😂
Just had a thought, maybe old clothes could be cut up and used to wrap the wire coat hangers? 🤔
For the tank top with the little yellowing around the armpits - what if you sewed some scrap fabric around the armhole to make a sort of black (or any color) contrast border? It could be fairly thin since the yellowing doesn't go down too deep. I've tried this with tank tops but am still trying to find a creative way to manage yellowing in white sleeved tops :/ I feel like my natural deodorant causes more yellowing than I experienced when I used to use "normal" deodorant so I imagine this issue won't be going away anytime soon
On the fast fashion crochet, if it looks like crochet at a glance but more like knitting when you look at the stitches, it could be a machine knit and it sometimes gets called crochet.
Love your Star Wars movie poster ❣️
I take all my textiles to fleamarkets if they can still be used and the ones that cant I take to textile collection 👀🤔
I make quilts with intricate patterns with work out clothes
Have you tried folding your clothes in a way they stand up in your drawers? It's the one thing I've kept up with from Marie Kondo. Nothing gets lost in the drawer as you can see every item!
I do sometimes donate borderline unwearable clothing alongside good stuff because a lot of local charity shops have contracts with rag companies and can more easily recycle clothing waste than I can myself, and there are very few 'rag' bins otherwise. I think companies need to take a LOT more responsibility for what happens to the products THEY produce, frankly. White goods, phones, everything. They should at least share the burden of disposal with the consumer, and being insentivised to be far more thoughtful and sustainable rather than pushing things with built in obsolescence and bad quality products that can't be recycled.
Get Bermuda style denim shorts. They're longer legged so thighs don't rub.
Just add black trim to that last halter crop top to hide the stains
Animal shelters also love Old bedsheets and towels.
Can you put the bike shorts under the denim shorts?
I want to hang dry my clothes but I don’t have anything that I can hang them on and I don’t want to buy anything right now 😭 but I see my kids’ black clothes fading already after just a couple months of owning them and it’s making me so sad
I like this dry-cleaners cleaning videos, for example, I figured out how to get sunscreen stains out of my white linen shirts (turns out they're technically RUST stains). This is his recommendation for getting out yellowing from body oils and sweat: ua-cam.com/users/shortsFzcZfq1nN78
I use borax to save stained linen table clothes. Not sure about the sustainability of borax?
For the striped one sun will make yellowish stains go away
it's not vegan, but bile soap works wonderful on yellow stains. The bile breaks down protein. For me, using bile soap is ethically okay, since one needs soooo little of it and the ingredience are considered waste in the meat industry. So no animal was killed to make that bile soap ....