With all the cleaning and purging we are doing as we prepare the house to go on the market, we are coming across dozens of items that we seem to have a lot of. The other day I opened a kitchen cabinet and way in the back behind bottles of seasoning and other things, was six – yes you saw that correctly – six unopened packages of straws. Four of them have more than 200 straws in them. Why in the world do we have so many straws? I seriously have no clue, but I do know what I will do with some of them.
Keeping Things Straight
Keep strings, wires and other long strands from getting tangled up by slipping a straw over it. If it is string, you can tie a large knot to keep the straw in place. If it is a wire for something, you can cut along the seem of the straw and place it around the wire. If you want to, tape it back into place.
Crafts for Kids
Straws are terrific for magic wands, or fairy wands. Attach a star at one end, and there you have it. You can cut the straws up into smaller pieces and they are great for creating necklaces and bracelets, stringing them onto yarn. They make great stems for flowers. They are fun to create stick like pictures on paper with. Cut into smaller pieces and glue. You can use straws as bubble blowers by dipping them into the bubble liquid and allowing children to blow. Be careful that they don’t accidentally suck in. There are dozens of other ways to use straws and I am sure a quick search or visiting the kids craft blog will find you a few.
Substitute a Straw
Straws make great substitutions for all sorts of things. For instance, if you run out of toothpicks, you can cut straws down and use them in a bind. It’s a bit wider, but it works, and they come in fun colors. You can substitute a straw for a fork too, which we had to do once while camping. It was funny but it did work. Just stab the fork into the food and put it in your mouth. It won’t cut it, but it will help you pick it up without getting your hands all messy.
Working in the Garden
I use straws a lot in my various houseplants and in gardening. When we were expecting a big wind storm, I used two straws stuck into the ground and taped together around stems to keep the stems from breaking. It worked great and I kept many of them in place. Because the tape isn’t toucing the plant, they can remain in place and my plants have been growing stronger and sturdier. They also make great plant stakes. Youc an cut slits in the top of the straw and poke pieces of cardboard or thick paper into them with the name of the plant or even directions for caring for the plant. You can do the same thing if you are giving a plant to someone as a gift. Attach the gift card to the straw.
Straws can also be used to build things like you would with popsicle sticks. To make lollipops and other candies and of course in dozens of other ways around the kitchen.
My favorite frugal use for straws is something we tried on a whim a few weeks ago in a restaurant. The cheap restaurant crayons that they provide for children often break and then are hard to hold because they are so small. There was an extra straw on the table, so I grabbed that and shoved the end of the crayon inside it. I pushed it up as far as I could leaving the tip exposed. It worked perfectly. My daughter was able to hold the crayon like she would a pencil and color. We did discover that not all crayons will work, but most of them will.
What other ways can you think of to use straws?
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