Mind you this was done in the privacy of our own home, and not in a manner that would hurt or disturb others who think that they are special.

My wife was initially very hurt/worried/upset at my unbelief. But whatever stage I was at in leaving, I was lucky that she got there about 6 months later. Of course by then I was on to the next stage, and so it went.

I started using my old garment tops as rags to clean with. If I needed to clean something, I'd snip a chunk off and clean it up, then throw it away. Kind of like super duty paper towels. Being six months behind me, she was a little bit annoyed.

Recently she spilled some grape juice, and not wanting to stain a nice kitchen cloth, she looked where I kept my cut garment and a pair of scissors, took it out and said, "I guess I should just use this huh?"

Once again, she has caught up to me in another area. I'm so lucky that she has been following me out. Using garments to clean up spilled grape juice was just another example. At first she couldn't handle me even talking about how bad they looked, now she cleaned with one.

My TBM parents always used their old garments as dust rags. They would always cut out the parts they thought were special...cough, cough and then we could use them.

I thought every Mormon family did this.....LOL!

It was considered smart and thrifty. Of course housewives had to first cut out the symbols and burn them in the fireplace or a soup can in the kitchen sink.

Only the cotton knit garmies work as rags, not the old nylon or rayon variety.

Nobody I knew would ever use them to clean. They'd cut the Mason symbols out and throw them in the garbage. Probably gently place them in the garbage *wink*. As if that is so much more reverent, but I had never seen or heard of anyone cleaning with them.

Perhaps I just wasn't part of the, "Waste not, want not" generation. I wouldn't dare tell anyone in my family that I cleaned with them. They would be so offended.

I was told if you cut the marks out and burned them, then used them to wash and wax your car, you'd never have another accident.

Okay, I made that up, but it sounds plausible doesn't it? :)


Ron

to make patterns. Apparently, if one is making 19th century underwear, garments are some of the best examples around.

I would watch my mother carefully cut-out the symbols and use them for rags as well, always pounding in the point that they’d never touched the ground and were sacred until the symbols were cut-out and burned. She would then use them as every day rags.

I did the family washing and would wash their garments. When no one was looking I would throw them on the floor and rub them in really well and then wash them. I would giggle to myself thinking that my parents were so dumb to think that their precious "garments" were protecting them...LOL

Reading this--isn't it actually HYSTERICAL that we thought we had to cut out the markings.

I held onto garments FOR YEARS because I wasn't quite sure how to go about disposing of the markings. I mean--did I really need to start a fire? What if I burned down the house (I always worried about that)?

As for the rest of you using them as rags, my parents' garments WERE RAGS by the time they threw them out.

My ex's parents saved all their old garments. They had this big storage room in their basement that they saved everything in. The first time I went in there--there were boxes that were labeled things like "______'s bras 1962." No lie. They saved EVERYTHING.

But I did often wish she did it while I was not wearing them.

LDS Church. Everyone I knew used the garment (sans the markings) as rags for decades.