recycling old clothes?

Offer them to a painting contractor. I spend about $100 per year buying rags. White cotton t shirt material makes the best rags. Its absorbent with very little lint and no dyes to bleed into the work. Colored rags are Ok for some things but not others.

I agree with Skittles; post them on freecycle.org. If you've never freecycled anything before, create an account to join your local group, then post the item either through the website or through your e-mail and you'll get e-mail responses from interested parties. You'd be surprised what people will take off your hands.

I gave alot of old t-shirts away to a fellow freecycle member who works with severely disabled kids and she turned the shirts into bibs for the kids.

I've also given them away to local elementary schools (or even middle schools) for kids to wear when doing arts and crafts so they don't get their clothes dirty.

t-shirt sleeves make pretty good scrunchies. I have several, that when wound in my hair for a ponytail look kind of cool and you can't tell what it is. If you have long hair, wear several in different colors. A t-shirt sleeve also makes a great head band to pull your hair out of the way for face-washing.

Trim them to make them fairly squared off, keeping the side seams intact. Sew across the bottom and make a hem across the top and put a draw string in for a bag.

Do the above and instead of making a bag, you have a cosey-type cover for kitchen appliances and cookware so they don't get scratched up in the cabinets.

Sew sleeves closed, sew bottom closed, stuff the shirt full with polyfill, sew the neck closed, and make it into a funky pillow (my mom used to do this with my t's and sweat shirts growing up).

If you crochet or knit you can cut clothes into 1/2 in strips and make rugs and hot pads and such also you can corchet groc bags to recycle them into useful totes or other things, if you type it in online you will find a lot of things to do with all this

We may reuse clothing but recycling was dealt a major blow when we began using mixtures of natural and synthetic fibres.

We can not recycle most mixed-fibre clothing, and until recently it was not even feasible to sort out those fabrics from natural fibres. There are even problems when garments have trim items or thread that are synthetics.

To get back to being able to recycle we would need to have manufacturers involved to ensure that we really have single fibre garments so marked. But manufacturers are not eager to get aboard that project since they are not now working with shoddy (that is what recycled fibre fabric is called). And they can see some distinct advantages as well as disadvantages to mixed fibre fabrics.

I ripped up all the old shirts and made rags to dry your car off...woks great and it is the same thing you buy in the stores..but they charge you sooo much for it.

Give them to someone else so they can make cleaning rags out of them.

You could use them as cloths or if you have a disabled child cut them up and place them in the groin to separate the skin to prevent soreness.

Salvation Army will take any kind of "fabric scraps" including torn clothes.

They shred them and make mattresses for poor people.

you can use it again like making a scarf of something with it.

Or you can recycle it. I'm 10 years old so can you give me 10 points.

Check with your local humane society. Also, post them on freecycle (just as you've described them here). You'll be surprised!