I made all my own cloth napkins when I got married. No way was I going to be out $5 a month on paper ones for the rest of my life! And some bargain fabric or a cotton blend flat sheet from a yard sale, thrift or even Walmart can be used to make simple squares(14X14 or 16X16 work well). It's faster on a machine but you don't have one, you can do a simple rolled hem on a square by hand with a dollar store sewing kit in less than 20 minutes while you listen to music or chat with your SO. Of course, the simplest thing ever if you care more about monetary savings than aesthetics, is to cut up your old t-shirts for napkins. You don't need to hem cotton knits since they won't fray.
I also make my own knitted dishcloths from $.50 sale cotton yarn(make 4/$1). My bamboo needles cost $3 with coupon and I learned the simple stitches I needed on Youtube.
I make drying cloths out of 100% cotton t-shirts. Years ago I bought about 30 all cotton t-shirts at a yard sale(for $.10 each) and made a stash of drying cloths that I still have. At least a dozen cloths are in my stash drawer, never used, waiting for the other ones to wear out enough to rotate out.
I made my own cloth and fleece covers for my swiffer and steam mop from an old terry robe, old towels and a thrift store fleece blanket. I figured out my own patterns based on the disposables and some common sense.
Here's my favorite thing though that will probably show you just how committed I am to textile recycling and disposable avoidence: I turn holey athletic socks into cleaning cloths. If you cut open the ruined socks and trim them down to squares or rectangles, then sew several of them together like a pillow case with right sides in, then turn and top stitch, you get a very fluffy and absorbent cloth for clean-ups. I use them every week for cleaning my bathrooms and woodwork. And they look so much better than ratty rags.
I make my own laundry detergent with Borax, Washing Soda and Fels Naptha. It costs me $.01 per load. I do use commercial detergent for whites though since I've found the homemade seems to make whites dingy. Seems to have no effect on the darks though.
I made hankies too about 3 years in to running my own house. I hate linty tissues. And if I had a cold, lotion tissues or not, my nose would be raw and bleeding by the second day from wiping it with a paper product. Hankies completely eliminated that problem. I made mine from an old sheet and the rolled hem option on my serger.
We cloth diapered here too, and I made over half of what I used from t-shirts, flannel and PUL, as well as Mama cloth. I even made cloth nursing pads when my baby shower gift box of disposables ran out.
I cut down and hemmed old stained and torn towels for hand-towels.
I made window quilts for our old bungalow house. Amazing how much warmer the rooms were with that extra layer over the glass.
Next up: insulated drapes for the entire house from sale $4 twin sheets sandwiched over $.65 mylar emergency blankets. They're going to crinkle when moved but should really be a step up from the mini-blinds and much cheaper than any other insulated curtain product I can buy. I can't afford to do all window quilts right now(in my old house I used all recycled materials so they were free to make, don't have enough materials now to do this house)but maybe someday.
One last tip for anyone who wants to recycle fabrics for household use, you MUST run the material through a hot wash with no soap and then in the rinse cycle with 1/2-1 cup of white vinegar. This is because of all the oils and residues left from commercial detergents, softeners and body products on the fabric. If you skip this step, you will not have the absorbancy in your finished product that you want. And of course, when you wash your finished items, go easy on the detergent and skip the softeners. ;)