Re-using household items

In the process of trying to reduce our garbage, I’ve come across several items that I needed and wanted to not buy — and conversely, several items I hated to throw away but couldn’t easily recycle. By reusing these items, necessity meets utility.

Quite some time ago, when I started cleaning everything with baking soda instead of scouring powder, I wanted a convenient container – like the one scouring powder comes in. I found an old plastic peanut butter jar in my laundry room, used a nail to punch a bunch of holes in the lid, and voila – my baking soda shaker makes cleaning the bathroom a tiny bit easier.

In the kitchen, we have liquid dishwashing soap for washing dishes, but I prefer to wash my hands with something else. We usually use bar soap that has been sitting on a saucer, but Mr. Cheap complained a lot about the soap’s soggy bottom.

The solution? Inspired by this number on Green as a Thistle’s blog, I saved up chopsticks from a couple of sushi outings (I know, I know, we could take our own, but I didn’t think of it), sawed them in half and tied them together with jute twine. It could be fancier. Then again, we could have soggy-bottom soap.

In my bathroom, I have spent the past several years using up a giant jug of hand soap I bought at Costco (literally several — I bought it before we moved into this house three years ago). In between, I’ve gotten some “soft soap” type liquid soap at the store when it was free with a coupon. Even though I haven’t bought that soap in at least a year, we’ve been using the containers on the sink. Finally, I finished the heinous, stinky bottle of Dove hand soap recently. As I was debating refilling it, I remembered a lotion bottle I had emptied recently that was much more attractive. The label soaked right off, and now I have Dr. Bronner’s organic, fair trade lavender hand soap — in a much nicer container.

Finally, on a recent outing to my sister’s cabin, I was preparing the food to take along and bemoaning our lack of tiny, tiny storage containers — small enough to take along some salt or the cinnamon for French toast. With excellent synchronicity, it came time to change my contact lens container.

I can only tolerate contacts easily by using Clear Care, a bubbling peroxide concoction that requires storage in little hard plastic containers with lens-holder inserts. I hate to throw them out – it’s a lot of hard plastic. But by breaking off the lens-holder portion I can save the bottle for teensy-weensy storage (as a bonus, it’s even a watertight container!). The picture below shows before (left) and after (right).

Now to think of something to do with the broken-off lens portion … it looks like a Barbie-sized version of those crazy devices to hold your bra’s shape in the washing machine. If only our Barbies weren’t braless, brazen hussies.