New uses for old things

[Makat2u]

Dental floss to slice cheese

ORIGINAL PURPOSE: Cleaning teeth and gums.

AHA! USE: Slicing soft cheese, cake, and hard-boiled eggs. It's hygienic, neat, and cheap. Unwaxed works best,

REWARD: Neater food, fewer cavities.

OTHER USE: As a substitute for kitchen twine to truss a chicken

Egg slicer to slice strawberries, mushrooms

ORIGINAL PURPOSE: Slicing hard-boiled eggs.

AHA! USE: Cutting strawberries and mushrooms. Give this classic tool a permanent spot on your kitchen counter and -- presto! -- you'll have perfect slivers of your favorite summer foods.

REWARD: Sleeker food and less chance of nicking a fingertip.

Fork to regulate oil flow

ORIGINAL USE: Spaghetti twirler.

AHA! USE: Oil-flow regulator. Use fork tines to poke holes in the foil seals of oil and syrup bottles to better control the way (and the amount) they pour.

REWARD: No more glugging, overflowing spills when you cook.

Ice cream scoop for portion control

ORIGINAL PURPOSE: Scooping ice cream.

AHA! USE: Portion control. The typical scoop holds 1/4 cup, so use one to dish out two scoops (or 1/2 cup, the standard portion size) of your favorite foods, including mashed potatoes, pasta, vegetables, rice, and cereal. Test your scoop by filling it with water and pouring it into a glass measuring cup.

REWARD: All the efficiency of a junior-high-cafeteria lunch lady.

Cheese shredder to strain citrus juice

ORIGINAL PURPOSE: Shreds cheese.

AHA! USE: Citrus-juice strainer. Squeeze the fruit over the grater -- the juice passes through and all the seeds remain behind.

REWARD: Seedless lemon squares.


Coffee filter to make yogurt dip

ORIGINAL PURPOSE: Filtering coffee.

AHA! USE: Making yogurt dip. Use a rubber band to secure a paper coffee filter over the mouth of a deep cup or jar. Follow recipe below.
REWARD: You won't get the caffeine jitters from this dip.

Herbed Yogurt Dip
Pour 8 ounces of plain yogurt into a coffe filter over a cup. Drain 1 hour. In a bowl, mix the thickened yogurt with 1 small minced garlic clove, 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley, and salt and pepper to taste

Cola as ham marinade

ORIGINAL PURPOSE: Thirst quencher.

AHA! USE: Instant ham marinade. Pour a 20-ounce bottle of regular cola over a 10-pound precooked ham and roast for 2 1/2 hours at 350° F, basting every 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven, cut a hatch diamond pattern into the top, rub with a tablespoon of dry mustard, stud the centers of the diamonds with whole cloves, and pat with 1 cup brown sugar and 1 1/2 cups bread crumbs. Return to oven for 35 minutes.

REWARD: Sweet, juicy ham without the goopy stove-top glaze.


Cocktail shaker to make iced coffee

ORIGINAL PURPOSE: Mixing martinis.

AHA! USE: Making full-flavored iced coffee. Recipe for 2 servings: Pour 2 cups strong black coffee or 2 shots espresso into a shaker filled with ice. Add a splash of milk and sugar to taste. Shake vigorously, then pour.

REWARD: Undiluted iced coffee all season.




Cork and tile as pot lifter and trivet

ORIGINAL PURPOSE: Wine stoppers, bathroom walls.

AHA! USE: For a heat protector, slip a cork or two under a lid's handle and you'll always have something safe to grab. For a hot plate, attach felt pads to a leftover tile.

REWARD: Fewer blisters and furniture rings.

OTHER USES: A cork pincushion, a tile paperweight.

[matt&roxy]

Those are some things I am going to have to try out.................

[gkp1031]

interesting!

[MarshHen]

Cool, who knew?

[MarshHen]

I also like to use my pastry blender to chop hard boiled eggs for egg salad, potato salad, or whatever you would use chopped eggs in. Works great!

[baxjul]

New Uses for Old Stuff

Maybe you're a pack rat and have a hard time throwing things out. Maybe you're an organization buff who loves finding a place for everything. Or maybe you are just ecologically minded and feel guilty filling landfills with your household possessions. Whatever the case, repurposing old items can be the answer and is becoming increasingly popular for design, storage and organization reasons. Plus, it saves money to boot. "Just about anything in your home can be reused with a little paint or by looking at it a different way," says Kathy Peterson, designer, organization expert and author of Kathy Peterson's Great Outdoor Decorating Makeovers (Watson-Guptill Publications).

Here, Peterson shares some simple repurposing tips. Try these yourself, or use these ideas as a launching point to start thinking creatively about unused objects you have lying around your home. And soon you'll be able to throw out the guilt instead of your stuff.

Frame Your Jewels
Use a wall-mounted hat rack as a pretty display for your necklaces while also keeping them free of tangles. For earrings, take a cherished picture frame, remove the glass and attach some window screen to the back with a staple gun. Then insert "s" hooks (available at craft stores) and stick one inside the screen to hang earrings. It could be displayed on a wall or a table top.

Flip A Door On Its Side
Take an old door, remove the knob and hinges, re-paint it, and make it a conversation piece by using it as a coffee table top, a headboard or a one-of-a-kind wall display.

Allow Your Kids to Decorate
Revitalize any unattractive kitchen cabinet door and turn it into a family chalkboard by applying Krylon Chalkboard Spray Paint (available in most hardware and paint stores) over the door. The paint can be used on any smooth, nonporous surface and turns any such surface into a chalkboard. Or take a toy chest and spray paint it entirely in Krylon Chalkboard paint, and the kids will have a blast decorating their own toy chest over and over again.

Put Your Old Chipped Dishes Back Into Use
Any small bowl can be used to store tiny things in drawers. For an office, bowls can hold thumbtacks and paper clips. For a sewing room, buttons, snaps, pins, and bobbins have a place. And for a bathroom, keep cotton balls, ear swabs and makeup brushes separate and organized with individual bowls for each.

Get Some Toys Up, Up and Away
Take an old hammock, give it a good wash and hang from wall to wall of the kids' rooms to hold mounds of stuffed toys.

Invent Your Own Containers
You don't need to head to the container store for specialty storage, instead use a small, old bookcase to hold shoes or clothes inside closets. Add old baskets or hatboxes to the shelves to hold kid's mittens, hats and scarves and more.

Christine McLaughlin is a mother of two young boys, a freelance writer, and the author of the recently released The Dog Lover's Companion to Philadelphia.

[miss_thrifty]

I also try to reuse and recycle everything. especially with crafting and using packing materials we usually throw out evryday.

[cspp04]

Chipped or Cracked bowls:

Use a cracked ceramic bowl as a planter pot. I did this with a medium-sized one and I have Sage and Peppermint growing on my living room window sill.

Use a shallow bowl to hold pot pourri. Just line it with a piece of scrap material or lace to fit, or use a round doily, and pour the pot pourri in. It's a scented accent piece I have year round.

[became4347]

Took my nephew on another fishing trip this weekend to the beach. This time, I decided to bring several 2 liter soda bottles filled with water. A couple of days before, I took a couple of spare soda bottle tops and punctured 10-15 holes in the top of each with a small nail and hammer.
After surf fishing, sand is everywhere! When we returned to the car, we pulled out a couple of bottles, unscrewed the intact caps and screwed on the holey caps to spray ourselves off by squeezing the bottles. They worked great!

[peanut]

We've reused things for years. We turned an old microwave stand into a TV stand by cutting it off so it was lower, adding some additional shelving and removing the doors.

We recycled our old fence into a CD tower, bookcase, computer desk, plant stand and planters for the back patio container garden. Oh! and part of a patio chair too.

I take old sheets and turn them into pillowcases, smaller sheets, duvet covers or, if they're really ratty, I use them as mock-ups of clothing I design...like dd#1's wedding dress.

I turn old tablecloths into napkins.

We turned an old printer's desk into a storage unit for the dining room.

I turn old clothes into quilts and rugs...and remake them into other clothes.

I reuse plastic food containers for freezing food.

I use the melted wax from poor candles to make new candles...but I add stearic acid to them to make them burn better.

I reuse cardboard milk cartons as candle molds.

I used cardboard boxes from our move as storage on the sewing unit. I covered them with $1/roll wallpaper from Liquidation World. They look okay up there!

I reused laundry buckets (big ones) as plant stands. I cover them with a length of fabric I have from my days working at the fabric store, and plunk the plant down on top. I tuck under the edges of the fabric and noone knows. I also filled the laundry buckets with my kids nice baby clothes before doing this.

Reuse an old wooden orange crate as a bookshelf.

Reuse an egg carton (painted black) as a jewellry tray for earrings, brooches, etc.

That's all I can think of right now.

Jean

[treeluva]

I reused a DVD/CD storage tower for a place to keep scrapbooking materials. The tower was nice, but small, and after a few years, we had more DVD's/CD's than the thing could hold! It only costed 10 bucks at Dollar General, but there was nothing wrong with it, and it hold the glass jars, (that once held pickles and relish and whatnot) that I washed out and reused to hold all the small scrapbooking embellishments within a arms reach. It is functional, organized, and since I cant do anything without making it look like an endcap in a craft store, quite pretty!

[chewawalove]

Just had an "aha" idea that worked!! I had a plastic coated wire picnic organizer, the type that held the forks, spoons, napkins, etc. that was unused and in the way. Hmm...

I flipped it up on its side, removed the bar on the napkin holder and now it is an organizer in my fridge !! The space that it takes up is about the same as two cartons of orange juice. But, in that space I have-four bags of shredded cheese, six cans of biscuits(deal @ gro.), a med. tub of whipped butter & two cream cheese tubs and still have two small shelves empty! You would not believe the fridge shelf space that this cleared! Yay!!

[catl8dy]

Great re-uses!
Here are some more....

At a rummage, got a great old wood case that held 12 glass soda bottles - flipped it on it's side and it holds 12 pint canning jars perfectly for a spice cabinet on my counter.

Flipped a bench I made of scrap lumber on its back and rested it on top of the two upper cabinets above the counter on each side of the window by my kitchen sink -
it holds all my baskets, then hung some S-shape metal meat hooks from my grampa, on the sides of the bench and can hang frying pan, strainer and wok over the sink too...looks VERY country!

An old wooden towel drying rack is hung in my stair-well and hold herbs that are drying

Another use for dishwasher...Don't use mine very much as there are just the 2 of us, BUT DO us it when I want to wash and sterilize canning jars all at once.

You know those louvered folding closet doors??? got two the neighbor was tossing and have one standing as a divider in my kitchen...it shields the computer from view and on the other side can hang all my muffin tins, ladles etc. with s-hooks. Also have 2 solid folding doors painted white to use in craft room as divider screens and surfaces to tack up pictures etc.

An old wood silverware case makes a great portable desk or jewelry box.

Bought an electric coffee grinder for $1.00 and it chops nuts and herbs awesome!

An old mailbox mounted up at the garden gate holds my gloves, shears, twine, garden fork, dandelion digger, hand trowel and hose nozzle.

As an artist...I save all sorts of "stuff" but the last few years have been saving all those old books and playing cards and "altering" them!
Type in "altered books" and "artist trading cards" in your browser for a cool adventure!

An egg wisk not only wisks eggs, but makes a mean cup of latte!
Pour hot coffee and warm milk in your mug, add a bit of sweetener and then twirl the wisk rapidly between your palms till latte froths up...... sit back and relax thinking about all those re-uses!

[favesis37]

i love the mail box idea, what a neat gift this would make for a gardener!

[Mamaw]

What great ideas! While I am not that creative, I reuse the buckets that cat litter comes in for storage containers. They wash out great and stack nicely in the basement. Stores all kinds of things!

Keep those idea coming~!