Give Your Junk a Second Life
Content Updated October 13, 2007
Some people boast about reusing their items, and you visit their home and discover that they have junk everywhere, and it's not very attractive because it looks like junk. I recommend using some of your crafting skills to give this old junk a new look and a new life. You can have a home that looks custom made by a professional designer and save money while you help reduce landfill size. You can even sell items at yard sales, swap meets, and online and make a profit.
Clothes
Always try to donate old clothes that are still usable, but if it's even too shabby for charity...
- Cut them up into pieces and make quilts, rugs, pillows, tote bags, purses, or even new clothes out of them.
- Turn them into book covers and matching bookmarks.
- Weave old belts into a chair cushion.
Bread Bag Tabs
These are those little plastic clips that are used to close bread bags.
- Save them up and give them to some kids (or a local school classroom). Kids use them for counting, sorting, art projects, and pretend play.
- Turn them into game piece markers (you can use a marker, nail polish, or paint to color them to match the missing pieces they are replacing).
Plastic Food Containers
- Use them to hold small batches of paint during paint projects.
- Use flat ones as pallets when you're painting.
- Use them to contain messy art projects (such as when you're working with glue).
- Use them to keep little pieces of a project from getting lost (such as when you're beading or working on models).
- Use them to
Furniture
- Tear it apart and use the materials to build something new.
- Convert it as necessary to give it a new function. (Turn a crib into a kids' couch. Turn a desk into a table. Turn a dresser into a buffet. Turn a china hutch into a bookshelf.)
Cardboard
- Roll it up and use it as kindling in your fireplace. (Ok, so it's a short life, but it's a 2nd life nonetheless.)
- Use it when making greeting cards to help your cards pop out with a three-dimensional effect.
- Cut them up, trace pictures onto them, punch holes at turning points in the lines of the pictures, and get out some shoe laces. Poof, you've just turn a piece of cardboard into a sewing card for a child.
- Give cardboard boxes to kids. Big ones become forts, caves, and spaceships. Medium ones become doll houses and teddy bear beds. Small ones become buildings in Hot Wheels cities, hideouts for GI Joe, and Barbie's desk.
- Give cardboard paper tubes (for toilet paper and paper towels) to kids. They will quickly turn them into swords, telescopes, trumpets, wands, fishing poles, etc.
Egg Cartons
- Start your seedlings in an egg carton instead of an expensive seedling tray.
- Stick a bunch of them to a wall to absorb sound. It isn't pretty, but it's necessary if your teenager is starting a band in his room. You can drape fabric over the egg cartons to hide them.
Metal
- Use tin snips and punches to create a decorative candle lantern.
Freezer-Pop Sticks
- Decorate them, write your plant names on them, and use them to mark plants in your garden.
- Give them to your kids for craft projects.
...by Feed