What to do with old ratty t shirts

First of all, I need to give a shout out to my Aunt Peggy who I understand has recently tuned in.  Hey Aunt Peggy!

Anyway, I know everyone has had this moment were you are going through your families clothes and weeding out what is good enough to wear, sell, or give away.  Well that is all fine and good, but what do you do with t shirts that are faded, holey, and otherwise ratty.  Not good enough to keep, sell, or give away.  Then there is the ever present guilt now associated with throwing things into the land fill.  Bad, Bad, Bad.  Well, for those of you who suffer from this and want to know what you can do about it, I might have an answer.  Re purpose those t shirts into something else.  Here is what I do:
THIS

Use to be these:

This is what I do while I am watching TV or just vegging on the bed after working in the garden etc.  I can't do this whole pile at once.  It makes my hand a little sore after a bit mainly because I am left handed using right handed scissors.  See what I have to put up with in this right handed world?  Just not fair....anyway, I digress.  First of all you want to lay the t shirt flat and cut off the hem at the bottom.  Use the hems for tomato tie ups if you want to or something to that effect, but they are no longer needed with this shirt.

Then you want to cut the bottom half of the t shirt off.  Some people want to make sure they cut off below the decal, but I don't care if it is there.  It will add a bit of color to my next project so I keep it.

Next you will cut the T shirt into strips coming to withing about a inch of the other side, but alternate sides to leave un-clipped.  If you accidentally cut to far you can always tie it back on so now biggie.

Now you can shred this bad boy all the way to the top and then roll it up into a ball, stretching the material as you do so..  This is how I learned how to do this from another site.  Wish I could remember the site, but here tis.  This does work, but I prefer the lazy method and that is to just cut the hem off and then begin trimming from the bottom to the top around and around until I run out of shirt.  Like this:

Kind like peeling an apple and keeping the peeling whole.  That same idea.  Once rolled up this t shirt material can be used where you would use yarn, just make sure you use a larger size needle.  What can you make from something like this?  Well here is a hot pad I made from an old t shirt of mine

Now I realize my crocheting leaves a lot to be desired.  I am still learning, but this thing is seriously useful.  My plan for the rest of the "yarn" is to make a scatter rug for in my country quiet room.  I will post a pic when it is done.  Might be next year...LOL

On the garden front I am happy to say I picked 3 lbs of blueberries today for my first picking of blueberries. So far so good.  Everything seems to be rocking along.  The list is still long on thing I need to do in the garden or outside in general, and it gets added to daily, but its great.  It rained last night and is cloudy today so the plan for today is to bake bread for next week.  I should be getting to that instead of loitering about here, but I wanted to share my pics.  Hope everyone has a great day.  Stay cool!