Organized Living

RE-USE AND RECYCLE COMMON HOUSEHOLD ITEMS

Home recycling is one of the easiest ways to help care for our environment on an ongoing basis. Re-using common household containers and other items in practical, fun ways is another earth-friendly strategy—a practice that will save you money and fuel your imagination, too. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Coffee cans—especially the plastic ones with easy-grip designs—are useful for a myriad of purposes. They hold paint for small jobs or trim work, saving you stooping to reach a full can. They are excellent containers for crayons, markers, and craft items, and can be easily decorated with colored paper for children’s play areas. In the garage and office, they can hold odds and ends to reduce clutter.
• Ditto for empty baby wipe containers.
• If you buy salad greens in clear, sturdy plastic containers with lids, they make excellent containers for fabric scraps, ribbon or other craft materials that you want to see at a glance.
• Baby food jars and yogurt cups are perennial favorites for screws, nails, nuts and bolts, safety pins, and other tiny items that can be organized by size or type.
• Plastic gallon milk jugs are ideal for outdoor holiday luminaries: Cut a wide hole out of the side near the bottom, leaving handle and spout intact, then fill with sand and place a short candle in the sand. The spout will protect the candle flame from snow and rain. Inexpensive and re-usable.
• Scratched or unwanted CD’s (such as free demo’s) can form the base for children’s arts and crafts projects. Use one as a shiny display platform for small sculptures, create a decorated mobile, hang some on the wall in an abstract pattern. Dress them up as silvery coasters or festive theme table decorations. Glue several onto an old table top for a funky new surface. They also make useful deer deterrents in the garden when hung from a stick or hook—the moving, reflective surface can be unnerving to the wary critters.
• Lids from large jars, such as mayonnaise jars, are handy in “junk drawers” for corralling small items like screws, washers, paper clips and rubber bands.
• Drinkable yogurt containers are the perfect shape of snowmen for homemade holiday ornaments. Peel off the label, draw on the face and coal buttons with a black Sharpie marker, and fashion a simple scarf and hat from an old sock or fabric scrap. Thread a wire or hook through the hat—voila! If you feel especially creative, use a hot glue gun to affix tiny twig arms to their sides—though these require more careful storage and handling.
• Cardboard tubes from wrapping paper are useful for storing posters, prints, children’s art work or maps you don’t want to fold. Just wrap the item around the tube and secure with a rubber band.
• Small balsa wood berry baskets or fruit containers from farmer’s markets can be clever gift boxes. Wrap with tissue or clear wrap for a pretty presentation. They also make good containers for floral arrangements. Line with heavy foil and insert floral foam to hold the stems of your arrangement. For a party, you can easily spray the baskets different colors as desired.
• Quart Mason jars from spaghetti sauce are excellent containers for forcing single bulbs of narcissus. Fill the bottom two-thirds of jar with pea gravel or raw cranberries, set the bulb on top of that, and fill jar with water to top of gravel/cranberries. Wrap neck of jar with raffia or pretty ribbon. Place in sunny window and watch it grow, keeping water levels up to root growth. Allow two-three weeks growing time if you want to give it to someone just as it begins to bloom.