I wear a whole lot of skirts. I’ll take a nice flowy skirt over a pair of shorts/pants any day, I really would. And currently my favourite skirt is the floor length jean skirt that I made out of a pair of old bell bottom jeans my mom had in her teens.

Recycling old clothing and making them new and usuable is a great way to save some space in the landfills. And having some neat home-made clothing items that you’re particularly proud of makes you feel much better than an emptry wallet does, right?

Here’s the step-by-step DIY I used when making my jean skirt — try it out and let me know how yours turns out!

How to Recycle Jeans Into a Skirt – The Four-Panel Method

If you don’t know what’s in your knickers…

Eco-Boudoir has launched a sustainable fashion film, written and directed by Verity White from the BBC, called Pants Exposed: Know What’s In Your Knickers.

The mission is to change the way we produce and consume textiles for good. For more information please visit: www.morethanprettyknickers.com.

I love Eco-Boudoir’s slogan: “Eco-Boudoir – Making sustainability sexy.”

Oooh, it rhymes!

How about taking an environmental initiative and giving your health and the environment a clean start by greening your exercise routine?

You may not think that a few simple actions can help you lose weight and reduce your carbon footprint at the same time, but if you follow these tips you’ll be well on your way to a green exercise routine:
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When refugee claimants arrive in Canada, they arrive with nothing. They have left behind all their possessions – property, furniture, even clothing. In Canada they are safe, but penniless.

The government gives a small allowance for rent and food, and it provides medical insurance. Otherwise they are on their own. Often they start life here with a room and a mattress, nothing else. Meanwhile, many of us are moving house, or buying new furniture, or cleaning out our linen closets. What do we do with our cast-offs? Too often, our answer is “the garbage”. Every week, good furniture sits on the curb, to be collected, crushed, and taken away.

Since November 2005, two women with one fifteen-seater van started collecting unwanted furniture and delivering it to the newcomers. Since then, they have furnished over 135 refugee family’s homes. The children range from newborn to late teens. The adults are often single mothers. They come from Congo, Rwanda, Colombia, Haiti, and many other countries. Their names come to us from the Catholic Immigration Centre, and the furniture and household goods come from well-wishers, mostly members of local churches. Over time, other volunteers have turned up, offering their time, their vehicles, and their muscle-power. It is a balancing act, because they cannot tell where their next batch of furniture will come from, or who will be available to help move it, or how big the family is that they are going to help.

We give people more than furniture; sometimes, we give them advice, and point them towards agencies that can assist them. Above all, we give them welcome, at what must be the loneliest moment in their lives. They give us back big smiles and warm gratitude. They offer to help us in any way they can. Best of all, over time, we see them find their feet and go to work, to school, to university. Someday we may hope to join them at their citizenship ceremony. It is a huge return for an evening’s work.

Have you got some gently used furniture you’d like to donate to this wonderful cause? You’d be stopping perfectly good furniture from going to landfills and you’d be helping to make sure that everyone has a comfortable place to live, somewhere to sleep, or a somewhere to sit that they can be proud of.

Contact Helping With Furniture right here: info (at) helpingwithfurniture.org
Telephone: 613 – 745 – 1348