If you can't make it better you can laugh at it. ~Erma Bombeck

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Monday, November 10, 2008

7 Things Meme or You can recycle, too.

Brandi over at O.W. IN G.S. tagged me for a 7 Things Meme. Since I did one about my life's trivialities HERE and another eight HERE with its follow-up HERE, I thought I'd do something a little different. Then I saw Debbie Yost's post about FINALLY signing up for recycling services over at the Three Weddings headquarters, and had the bright idea of presenting:

7 THINGS FOR WHICH I FIND USEFUL REPURPOSES

1. Dry Cleaner Bags - These things are much stronger than one might assume. I tie a knot in the end the coat hanger sticks through, pull bag inside out with the knot on the inside, and use them for all sorts of things such as:

-- kitchen trash bags
-- sort dirty clothes - each bag holds exactly one load of laundy as long as I don't stuff them so full I can't easily grab a handful of wadded up bag with which to drag it to the laundry room (OK, so now you know that I wait until nobody in the house has anything left to wear before I do laundry. Sheesh! I always tell on myself!)
-- bag recyclables so the nice men can tell easily which bin to toss stuff into
-- wet clothes bags for the kids that come swim in the summer (I let some of the neighborhood kids use the pool sometimes. It is fun having some laughter in the yard again, plus they are less likely to mess with my Halloween and Christmas decorations if they like me!)
-- rebag potting soil
-- bag grass clippings and other green yard stuff so the nice men can tell which bag to grab when they roll by in the Green pickup truck
-- emergency rain jackets - Just widen the coat hanger hole and pulling it over your head. They squish down so small that you can keep 2 or 3 in a gallon zipper bag under the seat!
-- throw pillow stuffing - If you have enough of them in the casing they don't flatten out and they regain their shape almost immediately so no plumping! Plus, little kids love the soft crinkly sound they make. (Plastic shopping bags work, too, especially if you mix some in with the dry cleaning bags. Cut off the seams, though, or they make sticky lumps.)

2. Frozen Dinner trays, and plastic or Styrofoam take-out containers

-- drawer dividers - These come in so many sizes and shapes that I had fun puzzling them together to make drawer dividers throughout the house. Now I can open almost any drawer and find exactly what I'm looking for. (Just DO NOT open any closet in my house without shielding your head in case of an avalanche!)
-- plant trays - put your plant in one and it not only keeps all the water from running all over your tables, but it also helps keep the plant hydrated because it can soak back up excess water runoff caused by letting the soil dry out too much between waterings. (WHO? ME?? Noooo not meee. I would NEVER be so cruel to poor defenseless plants! Umm, excuse me while I go find a saw to cut off this horrible nose growth thing that just sprouted from my face!)

3. Pantyhose and/or Knee-highs

-- stretch easily around water faucet handles to clean the junk out from under and between them that my big fat fingers can't reach
-- stretch wonderfully between the bolts holding the toilet seat in place (Those of you with little boys know what a nasty job that can turn out to be!)
-- fill with potpourri and/or leftover melted candle wax (you know how good that stuff still smells sometimes!) and stick in the back of a drawer or closet, or under the seat of your car (In the summer either put it in one of the Styrofoam containers or just forget the wax for the car fresheners. Believe me, it makes a mess if you don't!)

4. Old pillows make great reinforcement for saggy couch cushions. Just unzip the cover, slide them in and smooth them out on top of the existing foam and re-zip 'em. (There are some other things I use these for, but it'd take too long to explain it here. I'll do a post on some of my other interesting uses of old pillows later.)

5. Medicine bottles - We have sooooooooooooo many of these things laying around that I have actually run out of stuff to use them for! In them, I've stored:

-- nails
-- straight pins
-- push pins
-- paper clips
-- change
-- extra Rolaids in each purse and every car (danged reflux!)
-- buttons
-- baby powder (Empty spice bottles also work great for this because they have the little plastic holy thing in the top. See how deftly I slid another thing in here. heh heh heh!)
-- mints & gum
-- toothpicks
-- eye drops (you know, the single use kind in plastic tubes with tops that come off if you sneeze in their direction, so they end up empty when you actually need one to put a contact back in!)
-- other stuff that I'm too brain dead right now to remember

NOTE: If you want some pill bottles to use for anything, please email me. PLEASE! I'm drowning in the dang things because they are not recyclable and nobody wants them. Hubby says to throw them away, but I JUST CAN'T! AACK! It's become my obsession to find new uses for them.

6. Coffee filters make great water retention wads in potted plants. If you have roses, you can even sometimes leave the grounds in them to give their buds a little boost. Just rinse them out, wad them up, and stuff them down in the dirt or save up some to use the next time you have to re-pot something.

7. Styrofoam sheets - I save a few of the ones that come as packing material so I will have them to:

-- easily display my jewelry - I glued ribbon around the edges and then used the extra to make a hanger. Now I can see all my earrings and necklaces at a glance.
-- make cheap and easy treatments for small windows. Fabric, straight pins, and a couple of nails sticking out of the wall are all you need to dress up a small window without having to spend a fortune. This is the valance in my laundry room. I wanted to dress it up, but had no desire to spend money to do it. I had this left over from another house but no rod, so I used a sheet of Styrofoam instead.


-- add height to items displayed on top of my kitchen cabinets because roaches LOVE 'em some cardboard but not Styrofoam. There are lips on top of all my cabinets that everything disappeared behind. A few blocks of Styrofoam saved the day!

-- decorate and use in my curio cabinet to raise the items in the back for easier viewing. (You can cover them or brush on paint, but I wouldn't use spray paint because it tends to melt them! And that stinks. Horribly!)

OK. That's it for now. I love to hear what creative things you do to recycle stuff around the house.

Peace, blessings and HAPPY RECYCLING!

12 comments:

  1. Very ingenious! You have a lot of great ideas lady!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love this. It is so great. I am really into sustainable living and it's great to see a list of things we have or get everyday almost that we can REuse instead of toss. BTW I use my empty pill bottles for seed storage. It works great and I can label as I want and they seal tight so no seeds spill out. I too am drowning in the darn things.
    Thanks for all the tips.
    Vanessa

    ReplyDelete
  3. A lot of really good ideas here. I also seperate my recyclables for the guys. Plus it makes more room in my bin when it is arranged neatly.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow, what a list! I have nothing to compare, well except once I used a pringles can as a display for my necklaces. I covered it in felt, tacked the lid to the wall and attached the can. Voila!

    That's all I got.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I don't have much time now, but this was neat.

    I have to go check creative writing assignments. I'll be back later.

    Take care!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Pantyhose to clean the back of the toilet...never would have thought of it and always struggle to get it clean. Ahhh boys.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dragonstar - Thankverymuch!
    ================
    Vanessa - You make me wish I was a gardener so I could store seedes, too! Will the sunflower seeds I'm addicted to munching on work? LOL!
    ================
    SgtSudsWife - Can't say I go so far as to organize my recyclables, but I do chunk 'em in clear bags which is more than most of the people around here do. ;o)
    =================
    Robin - cool use of a Pringles can. I bet it looked cooler than my styrofoam sheet does!
    ==================
    Brandi - You better be gonna share some of those creative writing jewels with us! Have fun grading.
    ==================
    Lilac - Ahhh boys is an understatement when it comes to cleaning the bathroom! LOL!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wow! I am in awe of your 'cyclin savvy. I bow down to you, Goddess of the Leftovers. Wow!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'll see if the kids want me to post their creative writing. This was their first CW assignment for the year (we've been easing into everything). At this point in the year, I don't grade their CW. In a week or two I will have them start circling words they think they have misspelled. A couple weeks later we will correct their writing according to what they are working on in other areas of study (spelling, grammar, etc.).

    ===================================

    On another topic, Lucille just posted to "Who's Going to Tell You?". She wants to know if we want her to blog again. She said if she gets fifty comments then she will blog again. She also said that she was challenging us, because she knew she wouldn't get fifty. She suggested getting friends and family to visit her blog. She didn't say that the comments had to be from fifty different people. So, I have started her out with ten comments. LOL I'm so ornery! Four more people leaving ten comments each would put her at fifty comments. However, wouldn't it be neat if she could get comments from fifty different people?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Oops! I meant to leave the info. in case any of your readers wanted to go visit Lucille.

    http://whosgoingtotellyou.blogspot.com/2008/11/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go.html

    Feel free to delete this comment if it messes up. lol

    ReplyDelete
  11. Wow - I KNOW I could NOT come up with that many ideas - but thanks for thinking for the rest of us! LOL!

    I think I might re-join the blog world. What do you think? :)

    Me

    ReplyDelete
  12. Goodness, those are a lot of ideas! I'm glad I could help you with the meme, but I'm feeling a little guilty for my measly little efforts!

    ReplyDelete

WELL HOWDY!! Thanks so much for popping in to leave a note. PLEASE be sure to check the box by "E-mail follow-up comments to..." so that you'll get my response to your comment. I almost always respond personally And sorry for making you do the Word jumble mambo. I wish there weren't A***ole spammers running rampant in the blogverse!

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails