I've got trashbags full of old sheets and t-shirts, and they're so useful for random straining, cleanup, covering tools, degreasing, painting, etc.

Nothing beats a t-shirt for cleaning a bicycle chain, though (and they make perfectly good handkerchiefs too).

For example, this fact plays an important part in Alice Walkers's short story, "Everyday Use"

https://www.lonestar.edu/13778.htm

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These quilts were “pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee “(76), both figures in family history who, unlike the present Dee, took charge in teaching their culture and heritage to their offspring. The quilts themselves are made up of fragments of history, of scraps of dresses, shirts, and uniforms, each of which represents those people who forged the family’s culture, its heritage, and its values. Most importantly, however, these fragments of the past are not simply representations in the sense of art objects; they are not removed from daily life. What is most crucial about these quilts—and what Dee does not understand—is that they are made up of daily life, from materials that were lived in.