Things to do with your ex-COVID mask

COVID-19 is a thing of the past after plaguing us for several years – well that is except for the folks on the COVID trajectory who are still wearing their masks like it was March 2021.

Indeed, some people do wear these masks for reasons that go beyond COVID and to each his own. However, the majority of the population have long since released the shackles of these little masks that were for the most part made of cloth and didn’t do too much good (depending on who you are talking to these days).

Many people have told me they have so many wasted masks lying around their homes, and they wonder what to do with these objects.

One person even said, “It is a sad reminder of the world when we got locked down and lost our freedom.”

I personally have about 25 little designer masks that for me have become a reminder of the places I visited during the last two years of the changing world. From hotel names I visited during the pandemic to countries like South Africa and Colombia and the Czech Republic, to name a few.

The other day I decided to throw all my masks away except for a few. I’m over it and while one friend said we can wear these masks as bras and underwear (jokingly he said). I decided to do some research to determine what is being done with the cloth masks in this world where the environmentally friendly people who hate waste certainly seemed to be on board with wasting a lot of material that the masks were made of – a landfill of COVID masks as a reminder of the demise.

Oh, and yes, as an artist I did create two paintings using COVID masks, but that was it. The reminder by many artists of the lockdown days has been seen however, with all kinds of art pieces using masks showcased in their art.

The New York Times published an article about a woman who made her wedding dress with an abundance of white cloth masks and a company out of Paris called FabBRICK upcycled masks for use in textiles producing furniture, lamps and even wall partitions.

A designer in Korea figured out a way to melt used face masks to create colorful plastic stools using 1500 masks to make a chair.

Other ideas the New York Times article suggested were bow ties for cats, patches for old jeans and even sachets for drawers.

Whatever works – just please no throwing on the ground since in California it was noted around 750 masks were found monthly in the oceans and let’s face it, our aquatic life does not need to wear our dirty masks as an afterthought of the “COVID times.”