Decluttering and recycling at the same time

My partner and I were faced with an overflowing kitchen cupboard this morning. It’s the result of blindly throwing things in and shutting the door on it when we first moved into this house. The picture above is now a new, large space for food, rather than just a cupboard for storing crap.

As we surveyed the mess in there, we continued with removing tupperware and other plastic containers containing BPA’s. Our childrens’ playroom did rather nicely out of this haul!

(Just ignore the walls with drawing on them! We’re repainting anyway, so I’m saving myself the hassle of cleaning it off just yet)

There’s lots of fun, open-ended things for the kids to play with here. We have tupperware which will be great for pretend home play, or whatever else comes out of their imaginations. There’s many, many cardboard boxes which the kids can do an infinite number of things with. So far, they’ve made a train out of all the boxes in a row, and built massive towers, which they then take great pleasure in knocking down again! (Back in the day at childcare, we called this ‘constructive/destructive play’. Nowadays, we just call it fun.)

Once the boxes are completely ruined, they’ll then go into our fireplace, or into the recycling bin. I think it’s a good idea to use what we’ve got before it gets thrown out, if it still has a use. Which brings me to cheap, recycled storage ideas.

Here’s an old bento lunchbox full of BPA’s, that’s just too damned cute to throw away.

It’s now a hair-tie and bobby-pin storage box in Missy 9′s room. Every morning we have been struggling to find her hair-ties, and more often than not, the cat was stealing them! So this is easier to find, more secure and makes her room look adorable.

The bobby pin packaging that came with the purchase was perfect for my sewing pins in the studio. The packaging I was using before this was cracked and leaking pins all over the floor, so this is much safer and easier to find.

I can’t talk about recycling junk to use it for storage without giving the good old glass jar an honorable mention, can I?

My dried mandarin peel is now ready for use, and its home is now in a clean pasta sauce jar. Hmm… when I think about it, that’s really two items that normally get thrown out, being put to good use. Not bad. Once I get my herb garden going, I plan to have lots of home grown and dried herbs and spices sitting in this spot.

I think it’s important before we throw things out, to get into the habit of asking ourselves, ‘does this have another use?’ Obviously, if you’re decluttering, you can’t keep everything! But I found this dividing shelf thingy in the kitchen cupboard (you know, to put cans on?) and was going to throw it out. Then I remembered, I still don’t have a drying rack for my woollen clothes. These racks can be expensive! So instead, the shelf is repurposed, and money is saved.

I often hear my parents talking about how they would hate to be raising kids in this day and age, due to the cost of living, and I do know what they mean. But then, I look back on how things were with my parents and grandparents, when I was growing up. Glass jars were always reused to store food, buttons, or whatever they were needed for. Ditto for margarine and ice cream containers. We weren’t such a ‘throwaway’ society, that’s for sure.

I’d love to hear your ideas of ways we can re-purpose junk, or even unwanted items in the home. What do you re-use?