I’ve noticed how messy the area around our hamster cage can be and so I slid this old cardboard box lid underneath to be used as a catch-all tray:
Not aesthetically pleasing, but functional. Until today, that is. While de-cluttering the basement, I came across an old roll of contact paper and I instantly knew what I could do with it:
Yup, I’m reusing an otherwise non-functional piece of cardboard and some leftover contact paper to make the best-looking pet cage tray in town!
In trying to apply the old adage “reduce, reuse, recycle” to the influx of greeting cards at holidays and birthdays, I came up with a rather simple application of the “reuse” piece– cut the cards into gift tags! Super easy and totally useful, right? I started with these 2 cards:
And turned them into these 3 tags:
A simple hole punch in the corner, and you are all set!
I was recently passing by some crafters at the mall, when these clocks caught my eye:
Here’s a close-up of one of my faves:
I stopped to get a closer look and to congratulate the crafter on a nifty idea. Beth Taylor of Greetings Taylor Made can make a clock with just about any theme and welcomes special orders. Email Beth Taylor at greetingstm@yahoo.com for more info.
We accumulate wire hangers from the dry cleaners. Nowadays we try to bring anything we are getting dry-cleaned in on a wire hanger, so we are re-using them, but we still have a number of excess hangers we don’t use for clothes. I have found a lot of uses for them in the garage — one has been cut and stretched out to make a long hook for grabbing stuff I drop behind the work bench; others were used to make Halloween ghosts out of old strips of cloth; but one thing I use a lot if this wrench hanger:
I just cut a wire hanger at one “shoulder” and about half-way across the straight part on the bottom, then bent the thing into a ring, and bent the two ends into hooks. The big hook lets it hang on a nail on the wall, and the two little hooks at the cut ends let me “lock” it closed.
I don’t know what to call this. Basically I had a bunch of combination wrenches and wanted to keep them organized a little better. So, it is something like a key ring … let’s call it a wrench ring.
This an excerpt of a post from my other blog.
If you’re a hoarder ecologically conscious like me, you feel bad about throwing away CDs that you don’t need and noone wants — AOL junkmail, old driver software for equipment you don’t use or even have any more, freebies from magazines, that sort of thing. One way I get a lot of extra uses out old CDs is to use them paint palettes.
I paint mostly with craft paints and mix a lot when I’m painting miniatures so a small palette is great to have. You could buy something to use as a palette, or use foil, wax paper, or other disposable things. But I think you should use what you have and avoid creating waste that will go to a landfill.
Step 1. Have a CD you were going to throw away
Step 2. Turn it over and use as a palette. Remove dry paint every few painting sessions by peeling or scraping off dry paint. Once in a while a CD will be so heavily coated with paint and glue that I finally tossed it. But I have found that CDs make good terrain bases too, since they will not warp from exposure to dampness or glue.
My daughter also uses CDs in craft projects. This is one incorporates a quarter of a chestnut shell, a synthetic cork with an animal print on it, and a bunch of glass beads.
So I decided today was the day I would organize my medicine cabinet. After purging some expired cough medicine, I decided that I really wanted the Q-tips to stand on end in a little container, instead of on their side in a pile that occasionally rolled around, rolled out, got dirty, etc. Although I figured I would probably just end up picking up some kind of plastic organizer at the next trip to the drugstore, I did take a look around the house first to see if there was something I could use for this purpose. And then I spotted it– the rare empty plastic water bottle in the recycling bin. I held a Q-tip up next to it to see how much of the bottle I needed to cut off, then went to work. I expected the bottle to be sharp around the edges afterwards and was surprised to find that it wasn’t. A minute later, my Q-tips were in their new container and my medicine cabinet instantly looked tidier.
Here’s what the final product looked like:
It’s such a small thing, but I was pleased that I managed to reuse a plastic water bottle AND managed to avoided buying more stuff. I’m off to see whether there is anything else in the recycle bin that I can use to organize the rest of my cabinet!
I had a pair of sweatpants that had gotten a good amount of use of the years that just happened to be the least flattering garment in my wardrobe. They were so unflattering that my husband asked me to stop wearing them. I knew there had to be a way to get another life out of the material and then one day it hit me– rags. We have stopped using paper towels and other disposable cleaning materials, but we regularly have the need to wipe up spills. I would prefer not to dirty an entire rag just to clean-up one splatter of spaghetti sauce from the kitchen floor and so I knew that I had a void to fill– tiny rags!
Here is a picture of the sweatpants after I had started cutting out the fabric out of the leg area:
Step 1: Cut up those ugly sweatpants!
Here is a picture of the rags after I had cut the sweatpant fabric into small squares. I happen to have a serger and so I did a rolled edge all the way around to keep the fabric from fraying. As an alternative, you could fold the edges under and sew them with a regular sewing machine.
Step 2: Finish the edges and you're done!
When we moved into our house about seven years ago, we bought some hanging plants in plastic hanging pots for the outside. They died, and we composted the plants but we were left with several shallow pots we were not going to hang again.
So, we removed the hanger parts and use the pots in our container garden for green beans (which don’t need terribly deep soil anyway).
The wide top helps the pot collect rain water, and these hanging pots have great drainage, as you will know if ever tried keeping a hanging plant properly watered!
Granted, this is basically reusing a pot as a pot, but we think it’s important to remember that you don’t need to buy something new when you have something old that does the job.
In our home office, we used a small paper shredder for years, until the motor on it finally gave out. We were able to bring the motor to a recycling center that takes various electronics but they wouldn’t take the plastic bin that sat under it.
This is pretty similar to the one we had
Our local curbside recycling takes some plastics but we thought it would be even better to reuse the bin. We have a small yard and do most of our gardening in containers, so I immediately thought of using it for a planter.
Here are two eggplants growing in the container.
The little window in the side can give you a peek inside the soil, and last year I planted green beans in it, with one seed right up against the window so my daughter could watch the roots and stem grow out of the seed. She loved that!
I just drilled a few holes in the bottom for drainage and it’s working great. So far it has lasted through two summers. If it cracks or wears out, I’ll recycle it.
We live in Ohio and every winter we need to buy a bucket or two of road salt to keep the driveway navigable. There are tons of ways to reuse those big 5 gallon buckets … as buckets … but one day I got an idea to use one to help organize the clutter of umbrellas and walking sticks by the back door.
I remembered reading that one of man’s many inhumanities toward animals involved using taxidermied elephant’s feet to make umbrella stands and stools. But how about a creulty-free elephant’s foot umbrella stand?
Elephant foot umbrella stand
You’ll need:
Directions
No elephants were harmed in the manufacture of this tasteful furnishing