There is a certain addiction in our household. I can almost say it is a competition sometimes. We all enjoy discovering new uses for items that are used for something else entirely. The stranger the use the better, though we all agree it must be practical too. I have written articles about lots of the things we reuse often, however I plan to write some new ones too.
In honor of the new articles that are coming, I thought I would recap my favorite reusable items.
A Clever and Very Frugal Way to Use Torn Panty Hose
I am completely fascinated by new and useful ways to use items that have run their course, which you can probably tell by many of the articles that I write. When a friend recently showed me a new trick with some panty hose that had a tear in them, I was so excited to go home and try the same thing. So what was this clever, practical and very frugal thing she did?
More Creatively Frugal Uses for Marshmallows
I spend a great deal of time in my kitchen, and I am always looking for short cuts and other uses for products that I often have on hand. I discovered a few uses for marshmallows that I shared with you in the previous article, and I plan to share the rest right here.
Creatively Frugal Uses for Marshmallows
Marshmallows? You must think I am crazy. What could you possibly do with a marshmallow besides just pop it in your mouth and eat it, or roast it over a campfire. You’d be surprised at the frugal uses I discovered, and they are practical uses too!
You read that right, old doors. If you’re like us, you have at some point acquired, sitting out in your garage, an old door or two. And if you don’t, consider yourself lucky, or maybe not once you see what fun things you can do with them.
More New and Frugal Uses for Newspapers
With all the newspapers we wind up with, from the weekly city post to the smaller community papers, it seems like they stack up fast. We use our newspapers to wrap up breakable items for packing or even shipping out. Newspaper also makes a great packing material for sending fragile items through the mail, or keeping items from shipping around. But what else is it good for?
Lying around our house we have tons of newspapers, which we were saving to pack things for moving. However, we have plenty more than we need. I wondered if there were things you could do with newspapers besides recycling them or using them to wrap fragile items for moving. I found a few:
5 More Frugal Uses for Bandannas
After yesterdays Five New Uses for Bandannas, I couldn’t stop dreaming up more uses for these little colorful squares of fabric. I have piles of them, and we keep laughing about how many more we keep finding. Oh, and if you don’t have any bandannas, the same results can be found from fabric squares.
5 Great New Uses for Bandannas
That’s bandanas or bandannas folks, not bananas. I suddenly have a ton of them. After cleaning out some old containers in the basement along with two dresser drawers I counted 32 of the little fabric squares. And I know we have more in our dress up box, in my drawer and the children have a few in their drawers. While I might not know how we acquired so many of them, I know some great things to do with them.
Reuse: New Uses for Toothpaste
Do you seem to always wind up with tons of toothpaste tubes. I do. Sometimes we try one and decide we really don’t like them, other times we just get a new one and the kids might forget about the old one and by then it just seems silly to use it. So they collect in this basket I have. It didn’t take me long to go on a quest to find out how to use the toothpaste in new and innovative ways.
Reuse: New Uses for Old Plastic Bottles
Every time I used to empty out the trash, I was annoyed at all the large plastic bottles that were in there taking up space. Several years ago, we had a recycling program, but now we don’t. So I decided to figure out what to do with all these leftover plastic bottles from anything and everything.
You read that right, bricks – frugal uses for bricks. I chose to find uses for bricks based on two of my neighbors and their plentiful amount of leftover bricks from various projects that currently are sitting in their back yards. Bricks have a lot of great uses, including several that can seriously save you money. Bricks are also fairly inexpensive and often people are seriously wishing someone would just come and hall them away.
Bricks are one of those universal objects that have more uses than we are immediately aware of. First, they look gorgeous on a house, but there is so much more you can do with them. In Frugal Uses for Bricks, I gave you a couple of great ideas, and I am hoping this article will be filled with a few more that you might not have thought of.
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.
The Many Uses of Duct Tape (1)
What more versatile product is there in this world? Duct tape has so many common household uses, and even some not so common uses.
The Many Uses of Duct Tape (2)
With so many versatile uses, no home should ever be without duct tape. After learning a bit more about duct tape in the first article in this series, you should now be ready to start using it for different things around your home. Some are standard, some are funny, but amazingly all are real and could work!
Cotton swabs are a wonderful invention. While Q-tips is actually a brand name, cotton swabs is the correct term. Regardless of what you call them, they are so useful all around your home. Here are ten great uses for these tiny miracle wands!
Cotton balls are plentiful around my house, especially since I tend to purchase them in bulk from wholesale clubs. So I always have a plethora of cotton balls and I’ve found so many great uses for them all over the home besides just in the bathroom.
To find more articles on reusing items, check out the conservation section, the reuse section or just watch the frugal living blog.
Nicole Humphrey writes about everything related to scrapbooking in the Scrapbooking Blog, saving money and living a frugal lifestyle in the Frugal Blog, and being the best photographer you can be in the Photography Blog. She enjoys guest blogging on a variety of topics as well, and you can read more of her articles by clicking here.