My 5-year-old loves cats.  His favorite color is purple.  And he adores all things with fairies and sparkles.

About a year ago I stumbled upon a pair of purple socks that had cats adorned with fairy wings stitched into them.  When my son opened them as a gift, he told me, “Mama, these are the socks of my dreams.”

He loved his new socks.  And as such, they were the first socks he would reach for whenever they were clean.  Given that we do laundry at least twice a week (see HERE), he wore them frequently.

One evening a couple weeks ago, he came up to me in tears.  His favorite socks had a hole in them.  Given that it was a sizable hole that centered on the ball of his foot, it wasn’t a good candidate for darning.  I know my son, and the gathered fabric that would result from a repair would bother him too much to make the socks wearable.

Instead, I suggested that we thank the socks for their fun and use, and put them into our rag pile.  I suggested that he could use them as his own personal cleaning rags.

He sat for a while, contemplating my suggestion.  Then he said, “Mama, I think I should sew these socks into something else.”  When I asked him what he wanted to make, he said, “Do you have any stuffing?  I think they’d make great pillows for my cradle.”

So we gathered a needle and thread.  We pulled out our bag full of stuffing.  Then we sat down and started to sew.

First we worked on repairing the hole.  He threaded the needle, then I got him started by knotting the thread and sewing the first couple of stitches.  He stitched the rest, and then let me know when he was ready to have me tie off his work.

After that, he stuffed both socks, and he sewed them closed in similar fashion.  Less than 30 minutes later, he had two pillows that fit perfectly in his wooden cradle.

He tucked in Violet the Cat for a cozy night’s sleep, proud that he had found another use for his beloved socks.

He was able to find a way to take something meaningful to him that had lost its original usefulness, and repurpose it into something he can continue to utilize and love.

At some point those cat socks may still make it into the rag pile, or we may pass them on as pillows to another young child along with the cradle.  But for now, my son continues to use them, and they still spread joy with their cheerful flying cats.

My son is happy, and proud of his upcycling endeavors.  May we all be so fastidious in finding ways to reuse things around our homes.