Doing My Part-- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

It has been bitterly cold here, and lots of time has been spent in the warm house doing crafts and playing games. I have lots of vintage fabric from my trips to the yard sales and thrift shops and decided to do something with them. I re purposed some old kitchen curtains and made up some napkins from them. I want to do my part in reducing our waste and we go through quite a bit of paper napkins when you add up the total at the end of the week: 5 people x 3 meals x 7 days =105 napkins!! And that doesn't count the messy 2 or 3 napkin meals we have now and then.

When I spotted these curtains at the thrift shop one day, I couldn't resist the pattern and colors, though I knew I'd never use them in my own kitchen. Why do I feel like I am committing blasphemy when I cut the fabric into smaller pieces? Is it only me or do you feel the same way? I guess I feel like it is vintage and once I cut it, that's it, there's no more! I know I am doing something that will make it more useful to me instead of having it sit there collecting dust, but I still feel a little guilty about cutting it up. On the other hand, I made 10 napkins and they look so cool and the pattern with the fruit and farm scenery on it just fits in so well with our style! I plan to make 10 more napkins and I'll still have some fabric left and I'll save that for another project. There are 2 different fabrics here-- one with fruits and flowers and another with a house and barn and flowers. Colors are the same and I didn't realize the fabrics didn't match until I got them home.

The girls were asking why I made the napkins and I went into this whole "Saving the Earth / Going Green" spiel with them. I told them that napkins come from trees and if we use less paper, we save the trees. With less paper, we have less trash and we save the earth from being covered with garbage. Buying napkins cost money and we save money by reusing cloth napkins. By recycling fabric, I am not spending money on buying new fabric and saving old fabric from going into the trash. Everybody wins! And from a personal standpoint, the cloth napkins look so much nicer on the table than the crumply paper ones do!