Don"t Throw That Away! Creative Repurposing To Save You Money and Reduce Waste

My Grandma Ellen was a foil hoarder.  She was well known within the family for her “forty-year-old foil” and once when she caught my mom trying to throw some of it out, she insisted it still had plenty of use left in it.

A lot of the books I read are set in the Depression Era, when no one wasted anything because everyone was dirt poor, or during WWII, when rationing meant many items were just not available and people had to be inventive, make things last.

I don’t save foil, actually I don’t even use a lot of foil anyway, but I must have inherited some of my grandma’s “reuse it” tendencies, because I hate to throw away something that still has use in it.  My vertical garden is a recent example; I also love to tell the story of how I posted a cut up piece of carpet to Freecycle on a whim and it was snatched up by a woman with a rabbit who needed carpet scraps for the cage.  Last summer, another Freecycle member posted a request for old pallets because she was building a compost container.  (Sadly, by the time I emailed her and offered her the two languishing in my basement, she already had enough.)  Someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure.  I’ve scored some great things off Freecycle, including perfectly good picture frames that I painted and used to frame kid artwork and a brand new composter that would have cost 30 dollars brand new. (I ended up passing it on to someone else because I didn’t have the time or the space to figure out composting in the city.  Another summer.)

Anyway, when a new eBook popped up at my online library titled “Don’t Throw That Away!” by Jeff Yeager, the Ultimate Cheapskate, I thought of Grandma Ellen’s foil hoarding and checked out the book.

Who knew there were so many way to reuse worn out pantyhose? (Also, who are these people who wear out so many pairs of pantyhose?)  My favorite was to cut the legs off, then slip them over rolls of wrapping paper to keep it clean and unwrinkled.  Some options were a little too out there for me (styrofoam packing peanuts strung together to make a Christmas tree garland) or just straight up gross (composting rotten meat), but there are lots of other ideas intended to stretch your money and also reduce the amount of trash you generate.

In addition to my vertical garden, here are some examples of my “reuse it” tendencies.

Receiving blankets as napkins and cleaning cloths–When I had babies, it seemed like everyone gave me receiving blankets.  I didn’t get all that much use out of them, because they are so small and babies grow so fast.  We used some as burp cloths, but I didn’t have particularly barfy babies and the spit up phase is pretty short lasting anyway.  I stored the blankets in a bin on a shelf on the changing table, where the kids promptly dumped them out pretty much everyday.  I finally got tired of refolding them pretty much everyday, so I tore them into four pieces each and used them as cloth napkins/face and hand wipers at mealtime.  Once they moved past the smear-oatmeal-in-hair stage, I relocated them to the laundry room and have used them as cleaning cloths ever since.  They are washable and I never run out and they only get thrown away when they fall to bits, unlike paper towels.

Metal Mini-blind slats as garden markers–The shade on our front door took a beating, between kids and cats, and I finally replaced it last month with something that doesn’t rattle and is washable and ironable.  I cut the strings out of the old blind and most of the metal went into the recycle can, but I did cut some of the slats into 6-inch long pieces and saved them to mark my container garden next year.  I can write on them with a Sharpie and won’t have to try to remember which seeds went where.

Old boat line as doormat–John and I used to sail, and one thing I learned is that weather is hard on lines.  It’s unsafe to use old or frayed lines as rigging, but there’s often plenty of other use left in the rope.  John used some old line to weave a door mat, and it still sits inside our front door, where we park our shoes.  In comparison, I’ve lost count of the number of mats I have replaced that were storebought because they fell apart over time.

Stray socks as heating pad–You can buy rice or bean filled pieces of fabric intended to be used as a hot compress, or you can save your stray socks and make your own for cheap.  Last year, Maureen had a painful ear, but I wasn’t comfortable letting her use a heating pad in bed.  Instead, I rooted around in my sock drawer, found a sock with no mate, filled it with rice (99 cents for a bag of store brand) and tied it shut.  A minute or two in the microwave makes it warm enough to be soothing to sore muscles or painful ears, but not so hot that it’s a burn risk, and it holds the heat just long enough to make a difference.  It’s so beneficial that when her ear hurts, she asks for the “hot sock” first before Tylenol.

Or…use the sock filled with beans as a cat toy.

Bubble Wrap as window insulation–At work, we constantly get supplies in boxes packed with bubble wrap. Baltimore City recycling won’t take it, so we save some of it to wrap our surgical patients in to retain body heat.  This winter, I’m going to snag some and try it as insulation for our rotten single pane windows.  Only on the side ones that no one ever sees.

Are you a reuser?  Do you have any tips to add to my list?