Sherry, my dad used to eat Bell-View's horseradish mustard all the time. For years it came in the best glass jars: holds two cups, wide mouth so easy to fill easy to clean, strong well fitting durable plastic lid. I have about a dozen that I use all the time. My siblings have another couple dozen between them. DH knows he better not ever lose either a mustard jar or a lid or he would be in BIG trouble.

I also save rubber bands, and the large strong ones I use to keep bags of flour closed - when I do not put the flour into jars. I go through the flour quickly enough that it can stay in the bag, and instead of using a bag clip, I put the rubber band around the whole bag so that the folded top stays closed. I found this method to be better than bag clips, but only for flour, rice, and other hard items.

I'm learning more from this than I expected, and so I am very grateful for everyone's contributions. There are so many clever ways to use things that most people discard, it seems.

malifluer, thanks for the heads up.

I am filling in these places in response to an erosion situation. I do understand your point, but this is part of a long thought out plan of action meant to avert the erosion.

I do understand your point about creating an undesired situation by trying to corral water. Wherever it flows, it will have an effect and if you stop it in one place it will just find another. You are right.

We have had about three inches of rain these last couple of days and so far it is having the desired effect.

Lars, I do the same with the rubber bands and the flour, then I put that inside a ziplock to keep from having flour dust all over (and reuse the ziplock for the next bag). We have been baking all of our bread since quarantine and have several open bags of different types.

Thanks for starting this thread. It's always interesting to see how others handle disposables. We recycle everything we can; I just hate sending anything to the landfill.

Annie, I save all the shredded paper from chemistry glassware shipments etc as later in the year the kids will do papermaking. It's much easier to make the pulp with pre-shredded paper :-).

I use egg cartons for starting seeds. They get transplanted into cups when they get their first set of true leaves. I can get 3 egg cartons on top of the water heater and 8 more on the heat mats if I were to need to start that many. Used to, but no longer.

I also love the Method spray bottles, I have a bunch with all kinds of stuff from bleach to garden bug killer (organic only, I value my bees!) All appropriately labelled in several places so nobody tries to get rid of a hornworm with laundry sanitizer.

Cardboard as weed barrier, absolutely. Jam jars have all kinds of uses. I still have one lonely glass jar from way back when marshmallow fluff came in them. It is my official homemade mayonnaise jar and I pity the fool that does anything to it LOL. When I was working and went through nylon stockings like crazy once they were no longer wearable they got the tops & toes cut off, cut in half lengthwise and became tomato plant ties.

In Science class we use my old unused nylon stockings to simulate intestines to demonstrate digestion- fill them up with mooshed up crackers, fruit and lemon juice and squeeze it along the stocking to show how an intestine lets the nutrients seep through the walls and then excretes the unwanted solids :-)

"I am waiting for someone to find a reuse for dryer lint."

Back in the day when there were no synthetic fabrics, dryer lint might have been useful as a fire starter or compost ingredient. But with so much polyester and nylon (both plastics) in most people's clothes these days, doing either of those things (burning or composting) is adding toxins to the air and soil and water. Dryer lint, unless it is 100% cotton or wool or other natural fiber should be treated like the toxic waste it is. Unfortunately, it's just as toxic going to the landfill, but that's probably a better place than in your yard or garden.

I had to skip some of the answers... there a so many.

I reuse water. Not because of cost, but because I know how precious it is. Water running to get hot water at the faucet goes in to a pitcher, and gets used later as needed, or to water a plant/tree outside.

I ride my bike to the grocery store/post office etc. Mostly, cause I love riding my bicycle... but it also saves wear and tear on the car, and costs zero gas. :)

Moni

I don't reuse much of anything. I sure don't wash and reuse baggies or foil or saran wrap. I don't use enough of it to make me think I need to. I don't save a lot of left overs. Unless I know for sure it will be eaten the next day. I have gotten good at cooking small amounts. I usually save a jar to put homemade tartar sauce in. I eat a lot of fish, so I always keep tartar sauce on hand. If I save left overs, I put them in Rubbermaid or Tupperware.

I used to save the orange juice and similar containers and cut the necks off of them and use them to cover rose cuttings, but have started growing them under mist, so I don't do that any more.

I do save the bottoms of the containers that rotisserie chicken come in for the cat food.

One thing I never do is put any kind of food stuff in the garbage.

If it isn't something that I can feed to the animals here, I take it back to the hay field and put it over the fence for the coyotes, crows, raccoons, or whatever comes along. Overnight it is always gone.

The clothes I wash are cotton and linen - no polyester - and so I do not think my dryer lint is toxic, but I have never thought about using it for anything. I never put wool in the dryer.

I like the idea of using egg cartons as seed starters. I'm going to start saving them for that.

"----I like the idea of using egg cartons as seed starters. I'm going to start saving them for that."

There are people who raise chickens and sell eggs, and there are small farmers market egg sellers. They are always in need of egg cartons. Save your egg cartons and ask your neighbors to save theirs for you also.

Take them all to those egg sellers. They will be very happy and may even give you free eggs.

dcarch

I use old egg cartons under my newspaper and kindling to start the fireplace. Burns well and creates little air spaces.

Lars, thanks for starting a great thread. I found some new ideas for recycling. Due to my humble beginnings,I continue to repurpose items. Good for us, great for the environment.

I save & reuse those square cartons that juice, half n' half, & cream are packaged in. I use them for freezer containers for things like broth, cooked beans, tomatoes when I have just a few & don't want to drag out the canner. I close them up with an Ace clipper stapler. Label w/ a Sharpie. Now that most of them have a plastic pour spout, I label the plastic cap.

I learned this trick from my mom. She used them to freeze fresh peaches in simple syrup. Best peaches ever. I loved them when the peaches were semi-thawed & still had ice crystals...a primitive sorbet of sorts.

Dryer lint can just be put out in the compost or just thrown into the grass to be mowed with the grass.

It does not disappear off the face of the earth. I doubt that it is really toxic with synthetic fibers, but no doubt it never does really compost. It will just blend in the soil.

I figure that it is either my yard or the landfill. I opt for my yard where it is incorporated in small amounts.

If it is toxic to dispose of, why are we wearing it and drying ourselves with it and dressing our babies in it?

I opt for more natural fibers when I can. That does impose some real limits on what I choose to use and wear. It is hard to do unless you sew some of your own clothes, which I do.

Grandma used to put dryer lint out in the spring, she said birds and small creatures liked to use it to line their nests. I save mine for fire starters, both of my daughters like to camp and they both use fire starters. The dryer lint gets stuffed into a toilet paper roll and then wrapped in a sheet of waxed paper, then a piece of newspaper, the ends get rolled like a Christmas cracker. Use that with a bit of kindling and the fire is going in no time. They each have a supply of them for camping use and for backyard bonfires.

Annie

I use a mesh bag that produce comes in (think oranges, etc.) to hold my soap in its dish in the shower. Just grab the bag and scrub those feet!

I do that as well Annie. Stuff inside t-p rolls with a shaving of beeswax, then fold in the ends. Fire starters. Can also drip in a bit of cooking oil.

A number of years ago I had a couple Greek Flokati rugs drying over the deck railings. Watched a little t*tmouse bird or similar peck up a big mouthful like a Santa beard. So now I roll up a big sausage of lint and floral wire it to the railing near the feeder under the eaves. They still love the rugs but now have 24/7 access to nesting material.

I did get a great pic of that bird. Sent to Dad. He then sent to his bird club. For a brief time they thought we had a 'rare breed'😂. (cropped the rug out of the pic)...then sent the full pic.

We wear 100% cotton and linen. Very few things have a bit of latex or stretch but most of those materials do not 'lint' much. Not sure why it would be toxic.

Yes, it is a good fluffy fire starter but flammable I thought was because it can collect inside your dryer and ignite. Good idea to make sure your exit is not clogged especially in vacation homes where a critter can get in and block the vent.

Some lint collector filters can bend and show some wear over time so lint can bypass the filter. Yikes.

Paper lawn/leaf bags. Especially if they were used to collect tree leaves in Fall, you can easily pour the leaves into your garden area and stash the bag away for next Spring.

What a great topic Lars! I can't think of anything to add, but am thrilled to know I'm not an oddball! I used to reuse items to be frugal, and still do, but as I grew older I became more aware of waste, the earth, and the atmosphere. By no means am I perfect at conservation and frugality, but I'm always working to improve habits and lifestyle.

I sold my roadster gas hog for a compact, more fuel efficient, and practical suv. DH has an old Silverado, smaller like Annie's husband's. He does all repairs on it himself, and needs it for hauling more than I can list.

Jasdip and others, it never occurred to me how strong cereal and cracker bags were, and how I might reuse them, so thank you for that tip!

I also like to use those cereal bags to roll out dough or pie crust on. They have a great many uses.

I forgot the best reuse! There are only two of us and sometimes I buy the mixed, chopped fruit from Publix that comes in the round plastic bowls with a lid. I have been using them to start seeds, but I also found that they fit my three tier hanging holder in the kitchen. I use it for fruit, onions, and potatoes. It is wire, so with the clear plastic bowl in each tray, NO MORE LEAKING POTATOES! Or rather, the potatoes leak, but they don't drip all over everything.

I was just out in the barn hanging box fans for the horses, using string off of bales of hay. This one belongs to Primo. I use it for a lot of things....a quickie lead rope when I have to hurry and catch a horse, temporary fence repairs. I have even used it to hang baskets of flowers. However, I try to not leave it carelessly laying around because it is easy to get your foot caught in it and suffer a nasty fall when you trip. I have done that too.

One of things I miss about not having horses any more is not having baling twine handy. It does have lots of uses. We even made an emergency hinge on a screen door once.

Did you use baling twine? My father used baling wire, and he always seemed to keep it when he opened bales of hay for his cows. He used twine to sew up burlap bags of feed or seed.

You can use the TP roll centers to start seeds in also. Cut them in half to make two of them, set them in a dish and fill with soil, when the seeds sprout, you can plant the whole thing, paper and all.

Right now, I'm using my husband's old worn out socks for a bandage for my arm that is covered in poison ivy! ACK! Just cut the toe out, of course they are clean. I had to do something, I was desperate. Coated my arm in Calamine Lotion and then put the sock on as a bandage.

I also found out the hard way that you cannot put those large nut containers from Sam's Club in the dishwasher. HA! You can put sour cream containers in there though. When I opened the dishwasher to get out the container from cashews, it was hilarious the shape it turned into. My husband and I had a good laugh. Anyway, those are very handy. I'm using one in my truck for a trash can right now with all the coronavirus stuff to throw away, gloves and paper towels etc.

Lars, yes, we used baling twine. It was what the hay farmers in our area all used. Sometimes it was natural and sometimes it was orange. I think the orange probably had strands of plastic because they didn't rot away near as quickly as the natural. There were times I wished we had bales with wire, especially the day we had to "fix" that screen door. That was some unexpected storm damage!

Where are all the reusable containers that various companies were talking about last year? Unilever talked about metal containers for ice cream and other 're-fillables' for many of the gazillion products they make. WELL...where ARE they? Did they discover Americans are too lazy to return containers?

Re: Paper towels. What do *you* use them for? I go for months on one roll in the kitchen. My dish cloths are retired wash cloths. Do you use paper plates? (I'd like to claim that I use cloth napkins...but I don't!)

My town is awash in huge vehicles although few people have many kids or use them anywhere but in the town. I've been in many houses where the heat is cranked so high in winter that the occupants are in summer clothes. These are young people with kids -- not frail oldsters.

Sherry, I have to ask, why do your potatoes leak? If they get to that point, you should buy fewer and use them up more quickly.

If Kevin brings a paper plate home, I use it as a cover when I microwave something, and I use it over and over.

We reuse whatever we can without becoming hoarders. My toilet paper and paper towel tubes were just made into cutworm collars for the vegies I set out in the garden. Vitamin bottles hold seeds and I save the desiccant packets for that. My rose climbs on the headboard from an old iron bed and my geraniums live in old enamel pans and coffee pots. My greenhouse is full of succulents in random antique bowls that have cracks or chips.

I save takeout containers to send leftovers home with the kids. Our favorite Thai food truck has the best curry containers...I freeze broth in them until I have enough to can.

DH always has wood shavings, usually hardwood. My Girl Scouts made firestarters for fundraisers...we mixed shavings and sawdust with melted old crayons and put in paper muffin cups. I still make them now and then...old candles work, too. I use lint, but only from loads I know are all cotton. I worry a bit about breathing the fumes from burning polyester. Scraps from the shop go into the cookstove when I need a hot fire, or into the smoker.

We had a class on making beeswax wraps at my library so I made a bunch. They're good for lots of things....I really like them for cheese. I found one in the back of the cheese drawer that had gotten moldy, so I'm going to hit it with the UV wand I got for sanitizing keyboards. One good thing that came out of covid, lol.

After we lost our milk cow and stopped buying hay I broke down and bought a roll of baling twine. It will last the rest of my life.

WalnutCreek talked about reusing little tins, which reminded me of one of my favorite tins ... that I bet most of you have seen at Trader Joes. It's little window allows me to see the littles beads and things that I store in them.

love the old 35 mm film containers ... just the right size for $7 in quarters ...

insulin test strips come in handy dime size containers ...

those blue produce rubber bands are always handy. I have one one my wrist at all times ..

you never know when you'll have to fix/tighten a carburetor on a 67 VW bug ....

Lars, baling wire is getting as scarce as hens' teeth around here. I have only seen one feed store carry hay baled with wire in recent years, and then only sometimes. The baling twine used now is plastic. I prefer it over the wire, altho the bales aren't quite as heavy, because I can easier cut or burn the twine off than use wire cutters, which have a tendency to walk off with my husband.

I have re-used bailing wire and now bailing twine. We buy only a couple of bales of straw a year for mulch; the twine around here on straw seems to always be sisal. DH loves the plastic stuff; he came home with a whole huge roll of it. He found it along side the road where it had evidently bounced out of the back of pickup. I don't like to use it because any use for outdoors is very temporary. The birds come along and unfrazzel it to make off to use in their nests. Anything you tie up with it is likely to be hanging by a thread in short order. I prefer to use tie wire, the wire that is used to tie rebar. It's very similar to bailing wire.

Thought of one other thing. Once a month I get a delivery of Forteo. It has to remain cold continually. Delivered in a 12in X 12 in box with 5 frozen cold packs . We picnic on beach quite a bit so it’s a perfect size for the two of us to take our cold foods. Also when we travel (back in the olden days) I have to keep my injections cool. Included in my delivery is a list of ideas for the container boxes. We have a neighbor that travels due to her job, she ask for one to keep her drinking water and snack cold when she is traveling.

We, too, only use paper plates as microwave covers -- when we don't use the plastic 'hat' we've had for decades. I use paper towels for something nasty or for a spill that would permanently stain a cotton towel. I use them on a paper plate to soak up grease when microwaving bacon. I use them with Bon Ami to clean sinks and the cooktop.

I do a lot of what’s been mentioned in the many good responses. But for some uncommon, if eyebrow raising, re-uses:

Gallon Bleach bottles w handle — cut the bottom off at an angle, makes a good boat bailer or scoop. (Just need a few.)

Cain’s mayo jars — ~ 16 Oz with screw on lids. Lots of uses. Catch & release indoor spiders. I take one dinghy sailing or boating. No place to pee? I have a technique to (out of sight) use for a urinal. Screw the cover on and dispose of down the toilet once home.

Glass widemouth natural peanut butter jars: decanting alkyd paint cleaner or mineral spirits. Let paint solids from cleaning paintbrush settle out, decant to new clear jar. Re-use. (I use clean lg tomato cans for cleaning brushes in mineral spirits/paint thinner.) These days we mostly use low voc latex paint.

Peanut butter jars-2: store oily rags (furniture finishing, e.g.) in tightly covered jar. Keep track of these, Don’t let glass break.

Narrow, tall glass jars (Greek olive jars, e.g): I take cut garden flowers to (pre-covid19 visits and appointments. Jar with weather and flowers fits in my cup holder/bin because it’s narrow. If fancy up desired, cover w sims brown paper & add a raffia surround or stringy bow at top.

Gallon or liter clear plastic jugs (Ex cranberry light juice):

—- store extra water for power outage times (we have well & electric pump). Clean & refill periodically.

— Make a gift or temporary vase by slicing off the top to open it up. Right now I have a huge bulky bunch of blooming rhododendron blooms in my kitchen. Jug is hidden by blossoms. Easy to view water level. Refresh water daily. Usually woody shrub blossoms don’t last long, but these are still looking great. Because the jug is wide, filled with water, it is heavy enough not to get top heavy and tumble over. I could even set in an empty cooler box and take as a gift. No need to worry about vase return.

—

Clear, durable plastic lip balm cylinders. See through & w cap. Clean out old lip balm remnants w q-tip then hot H2O. I can then store sewing machine needles in them, and have one for dull needles. Label. Compact storage.

Dryer lint. Probably best to just toss into trash. You won’t be wasting landfill space. I did once make fire starters (for outside “pit”) with egg carton, compressed lint and hot paraffin. But paraffin is very flammable, be careful or melt outside. Too much bother.

Here is a link to a good, homegrown company started by a teen. Stokes Starters. Nice product. Easier than taking time and resources to make my own.

Here is story of how he got started (dryer lint & egg cartons)

https://www.stokesfirestarters.com/story

I give my clean cardboard egg cartons away to people with laying hens. That is the best use. I think using them for seed starting poses a risk of fungus and there are better alternatives.

Toilet paper cores: I can use as tick tubes or fire starters (outdoor). I put one core inside of another. Squish to fit. Then, outdoors, I set up a double boiler to melt paraffin. With tongs, dip the double core into paraffin, drain excess, let cool-harden. Makes a more durable tick tube

Tick tubes: material is a combination of thing like cotton fabric scraps from rotary cutting, serger, other; maybe extra cotton balls, of pieces of frayed poly rope (the mice have demonstrated to me that they like this.

Put on atop a few sheets of newspaper (non-windy day outdoors, well away from plants, grass, bees). Important: be sure you only use a weak concentration of Permethrin sold to be used as outdoor clothing spray or the concentrate. You have to do a bit of math. I have the dilutions written down some place. Once you have the right ratio permethrin:water, spray or apply to tube stuffing. No need to soak it, but get it moderately wet, and use gloved hands or a stick to mix and combine. Let dry in a place where no bee like insects will come upon it. After it’s dried, with gloved hands put into the tubes. Don’t pack too densely.

You can place the filled tubes horizontally amid brush piles, stacked firewood, into dry stone walls. As a matter of fact, dry laid stone walls, with spaces where chipmunks, deer mice, other small furry (tick host) critters hide, nest or move about, is a great place. Bonus: no need for the tube housing for the treated scraps as the holes between the stones is out of the weather.

Personally, I do not suggest tick spray services. I have a neighbor who gets this done by a “green” touted company. I’ve watch the tech apply/spray the permethrin. Daylight! Bees are active then and permethrin is highly toxic to bees (which are already in distress, even wild ones). Better to just wear long trousers with the pant legs tucked into socks. You can spray Sawyer’s permethrin onto your socks, sneakers and trousers. We do this and it has all but eliminated our deer tick attachments.

Dental Floss: easy to landfill. The problem w trying to reuse it are that, since it is designed to have a bit of rough surface to grab the plaque (clear, gummy biofilm on your teeth, once used, this surface won’t likely be as micro-rough as it needs to be. While food debris will come away, and that’s good, you really want to remove the film of plaque before it hardens (~within 24 hours) to tartar or calculus. Dental floss is a tad pricy, but cheaper than a restoration. (Reach is great, btw). Sort of “scrape” the side on each adjoining tooth (forgot term) from the bottom up. Advance floss and do interspace side of next tooth. Careful not to use force when putting floss between teeth because you don’t want to break the gum tissue attachment to the tooth. If space is tight, gently see-saw wiggle the floss down into space. Be careful not to snap it down forcefully.

Curiosity: to see if I could do it, based on a tick removal article, I used a length of untaxed dental floss to remove an attached deer tick from my leg. The tick wasn’t deeply embedded, and the floss worked like a charm. I took a photo ;)

The article suggested that fishermen, away from their splinter point tweezers, could use fish line to remove a tick.

Edited for readability & typos

Bonus pedantic info, no charge.

I've been using egg cartons for seed starting for a couple of decades & have never had a fungus issue. And I'm using the foam ones as that is the only thing available around here. I'd love to have cardboard ones if I could get them. But since we mostly get our eggs for free from my son's FIL I am not going to rock that boat! And we do give him back all the cartons we don't use in the spring for seeds. They get re-used until they fall apart.

That’s good to know, Edie. A couple years back I tried growing seeds in the cardboard egg cartons and a few of them begin to get mold, but perhaps there were other factors or I had overwatered.

Why do you like the egg cartons? And don’t you have to quickly review pot the Why do you like the egg cartons? And don’t you have to quickly repot the ceiling seedlings? What if people tend to like them because you just put the whole thing into the ground and it breaks down?

I like them because they fit nicely on top of the water heater, seedlings come up fairly quickly, it is easy to check every day and if one is up but its next-door neighbor is not I can get the baby out easily without disturbing anyone else. I have an ancient plastic spoon I keep for just that purpose. Egg cartons, once all the seedlings are up, are easily washed, after all the only thing that was in them was sterile seed starter, so they can be reused the next year.

I use old bedclothes for staking new trees. I also use other people's discarded broomsticks for staking shrubs. You chuck it - I pluck it.

I keep those pumps off of soft soap etc and reuse those. You can get the straw part off of other bottles if you need a longer one. The soft soap squirt fits perfectly on the small Dawn bottle which I keep at my sink and refill. I needed a longer straw, so just got one off a different bottle and cut it to the perfect length which gets all the soap down to the bottom. I also reuse the huge pumps that come on large shampoo bottles and will use those for bottles that did not come with one, they are often interchangeable as the screw tops are the same on a lot of bottles.

I also reuse my BBW foaming bottles and make my own foaming soap hand wash.

@sheilajoyce_gw

we're assembling quit a collection of Talenti ice cream jars as well. Nothing stored in them so far but apparently my wife thinks they have potential!

I save all plastic bags and give them to my sister to crochet mats for the homeless. She can use any that's he can cut loops out of including toilet paper ones if you open the ends instead of tearing down the side. I takes 5 or 600 bags to make one mat. she can also use dry cleaning bags, .like I said it would be any cylindrical bags. The mats are 6 ft long and 2 1/2 feet wide and have a carrying handle and loops to hold them together when they carry them.

I save bread bags. I use those for all kinds of things. I guess o got that from my DM.

I have just started using worn out socks for rags. My DH goes through socks fast.

I use single slippers for on my Swiffer.

I saved the bottom part of my old litter box and cleaned it up really good and use that for soaking clothes in OXy CLean.

I also save twisty ties.

I have some of those nut jars too. Mine had fruit in them at the restaurants I cooked at.

Here is the big one. I save almost all of the glass jars that I get. I use them for canning. If they have the rubber inside of the lid they work. I like the small ones, so if I want to give something to somebody They don't have to return the jar. I always make pickled beets and give some away. I boil the lids just like I would Kerr or Ball lids and fill the jars and screw them on tight. I had one jar that wouldn't work once because the lid wouldn't tighten. It just kept turning. I just made sure I used that one first. then I threw it away. I also put other things in them

Great topic! Very gratifying to see so many people care about the environment.

" What do you re-use that you think most people do not?"

I am an odd ball. I do crazy things. :-)

Some time ago, I used to participate on a Forum here, Can't remember "Garden Junk"? or “Trash To Treasure”?

Participants on that forum would turn/transform/repurpose throw-away objects into something artistic or useful.

We all have frying pans we throw away because they are not non-stick anymore. Here are a few things I contributed to that forum. I made them with expired non-stick coating

1. Garden spade – I hate spades you get from the stores. They are too small for many tasks. I am very happy with this spade.

1. Pizza peel – very practical tool.
2. 

1. Birdbath – watering hole for my feather friends

dcarch — artistically Ingenious! I envy your imagination and talent.

Now you can await the chorus of “make me one!”

I used to love looking at Trash to Treasures, but it's really no longer very active. Yours are beautiful!

I use waxed paper rather than foil or plastic wrap. Even then I avoid the waxed as much as possible.

Shopping, buy ice cream and laundry det. in cardboard containers rather than plastic.

We don’t use plastic bags for trash can liners. As another poster said, just put some newspaper in the bottom of the empty can, and cleanup isn’t too bad after the trash is emptied. Dump rinse water under the tree.