I suspect that most folks’ van/vehicle/transportation situation does not just take them on interesting road trips and vacations. Of course we are no different here. Our van spends most of his days driving me to various jobs, grocery shopping, transport to activities and all sorts of errands. Boring, perhaps, but real and necessary parts of life for us and many others. We respect all the van’s functions around here.
We were having some backlog of old holey clothing laying around and unsure about what to do with it. I found a place that it could be mailed to and recycled for a fee but that felt annoying and expensive. While I try to fix/patch/repurpose old stuff as much as I can, the truth is that most of it ends up in a mending pile that grows at an alarming rate. More truth, it would be extremely time consuming to fix or reimagine some of these crazy rips and tears we get. I know places like Pinterest would have us believe that “everybody” is cheerfully (and creatively) mending like it’s Little House on the Prairie on steroids but I doubt that very much.
I heard through the grapevine that Goodwill recycles clean textiles for free, and it turns out that they do! This is very good news for someone in the mood to purge her house of annoying dusty large piles of stuff. Fabric recycling is only accepted at the Goodwill Outlet stores, of which there are currently 2 in the Greater Pittsburgh area. One is in Heidelberg (south hills) and the other in North Versailles (east suburbs, much closer for me). Here is the link to their full list of stores for your reference: https://www.goodwillswpa.org/goodwill-stores
So off I went with bags of clothes and hope that they would not be coming back home with me. The North Versailles location is easy to find on route 30 east, just a bit after crossing the Westinghouse Bridge. Everything is clearly marked, with a huge sign for Donation Center. I walked in, the worker told me which bin to drop the clothes in (they like them bagged), she asked me if I need a donation receipt, and I left clothing-free. Now we have one less dusty shame pile in our house and that feels good.
What do you do with your old holey clothes? Rags? Have another donation option? Please share unless you have a lot of advice about “upcycling”. Maybe share that on Pinterest instead 😉