What can I do with all those darn wire coat hangers? My husband gets 14 of them every week .Help!

-- Patty Gamble (fodfarms@slic.com), February 15, 2000

Answers

Patty, my husband's company went to uniforms recently. Since we never have anything dry-cleaned, at first it was wonderful to finally have some hangers. But then they started adding up. Turns out the uniform company takes them back. We just bundle them up and secure with a couple of twist ties to make them easy to handle. My husband takes them to work and hangs them in a special spot near the clean uniform pick up. If your husband's uniform company doesn't do this, ask them if they will. They might not want to deal with loose hangers if they aren't doing it now, but that's no big deal either for the returnees to do it or for someone else to pick up their slack.

In the meantime, make them into giant croquet hoops and put in the garden to hold plastic or floating row covers. Crochet around them with a color-fast yarn to make padded hangers for good clothes. Pull them into circles and use as wreath bases. Bend them into hairpin shapes and stick in the ground to use as hose guides this summer, to pin down drip irrigation hoses, and to pin down tomato cages, row covers and such. Check with dry cleaners, schools, motels, thrift stores, anywhere that people are hanging up clothing or coats, might get rid of at least some of them. If they are the extremely flimsy sort, they work well for wire sculpture. Stiffer ones will work as at least part of the armature for clay and papier mache sculptures. Pull them into shapes, pull old panty hose over them and let the kiddies decorate the "masks". Use pieces to make mobiles. Wire up your car's exhaust system. Pieces make clips for metal fence posts when it isn't worth the effort to go to town for the few you need. Mend woven wire fence with pieces of hangers. Check camping books/sites for ways to turn cans into pots with wire bails or handles. I don't know that I would feel safe sticking a hot dog or marshmallow onto a coat hanger to cook it, but you can make a circle at one end, cover it with foil and make a small griddle.

If you are really desperate to use them up, cut lengths of the wire, flatten on end, drill a hole for threading, then use a grinder to smooth the flattened end and point the other end-a lacing needle. Some will work (sort of) as welding rods, but you have to be up against the wall to try this one. Gerbil

-- Gerbil (ima_gerbil@hotmail.com), February 15, 2000.

Gerbil, you are the only person other than myself and a couple of my coworkers who ever used a coathanger for welding rod, to my knowledge.

We were about three hours off the nearest paved road, doing when our trailer hitch broke. I wish I could say I was the one who had this idea, but it was John McNulty who thought of it; we had no welding rod, but we did have the oxyacetylene rig. Welded it up, and never had to repair it, for a few years at least, when I transferred to another office. Burn the paint off first, for best results. Otherwise, it seems as good as welding rod to me.

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.net), February 15, 2000.

Give 'em back to the laundry.

-- walt (longyear@shentel.net), February 17, 2000.

This is to Gerbil, Don't know how many 'years' ya have under your belt, but I bet it's plenty! (ie: knowlege-not years!) Wish my Daddy were here for the 'information' age, he would have been-astounded! If you ever need to fit two pipes, the same dia, ask me! Dry ice and a torch. Final Answer? Bet you know!

-- Kathy (catfish@bestweb.net), February 17, 2000.

The uniform company wont take them back !Doesn't make sense to me.

-- Patty Gamble (fodfarms@slic.com), February 18, 2000.

Coathangers! They do make good welding rods. We still use them at times for repairing exhaust systems. Seems they're as good as or maybe even a little better than brass rods and CHEAPER! Another use is to throw them in concrete for added strength and stability. Worn out/broken/bent and otherwise junk lawnmower blades are also good in crete. Gets all the junk and sharp thingies out of the way of kids and blundering people like me. If you're not pouring crete and have steel junk, including hangers, bury them around your young trees. Iron makes trees grow much faster in this neck of the woods. Paint needs to be burned off first so the junk will rust away quickly.

-- hoot gibson (hoot@wworld.com), February 23, 2000.