What do you reuse?

Norman_Bean

Some great ideas here x I reuse as follows:

All foil, freezer bags, cereal inners etc for freezing.
Plastic milk bottles to store and freeze soup.
Oil from anchovies to cook with.
All food scraps get saved / frozen to be eaten at another meal.
Fat from roast for roast potatoes next time. (I never use the jelly bit though ... can I use that for anything??)
All cream containers for storage.
Fabric scraps to make bunting.
Wine bottles for HM wine.
Parchment paper from ready roll pastry either as baking paper or tracing paper for the kids.
Stamps go to charity.
Reply envelopes get used for school dinner money, money for school trips etc.
Scraps of paper for shopping lists and meal plans.
Cereal packet card for kids craft 'projects'
Glass and jam jars for HM jam, onion marmalade etc
Kids disposable party stuff: cups, paper plates (just give them a wipe over and they are fine, just don't serve messy food!), table cloth etc.
Old cloths for dusters and chalk board cleaners.

No wonder my house looks a tip :rotfl:

Tibbie's_mum

Norman_Bean wrote: »

....Fat from roast for roast potatoes next time. (I never use the jelly bit though ... can I use that for anything??)
......

Add it to gravy to make it extra yummy!

phizzimum

willa wrote: »

Round Vitalite tubs were great for putting leftover food in for work lunches. They've changed the tub to rectangles now though and I don't think they're perhaps as strong!

yes I came home from the supermarket saying exactly the same thing! however the rectangular shape would fit in the freezer better...

mrssnowy_2

Think I do most of the above,also save plastic wrappers off magazine/catalogue things that get popped thro door-not always sturdy but useful.

mrss

Trinny

Hello there

Not sure if these have been already said, I am a total convert to eco MSE,

In our house we:

1. reuse wine bottles - OH is keen on HM wine
2. reuse carrier bags - either for shopping or as bin sacks
3. reuse food - we love leftovers
4. reuse water - we harvest rain water for the veg patch and also to "flush" the loo if its just a number 1!
5. reuse takeaway containers for fridge/freezer storage, ditto margerine tubs.
6. reuse toilet rolls, yogurt pots as containers to plant seeds in
7. this is a bit tenuous -but we actually reuse our food peelings as compost via the compost bin.
8. Oil from food cartons to cook with (esp if its olive oil)

ATM just trying to stop buying paper towels and have just converted to using fabric napkins rather than serviettes.

Thanks for the thread - great ideas here

Trin

deborah64

This is a great thread, i try and reuse as much as possible like all that have been mentioned.
My new one i have just started doing is using o/h envelopes from his wage slip to send in money for my daughters dinner / snack at school.
I was tidying a drawer a while ago and there was this massive pile of unopened wage slips, the lightbulb went on lol.
I have to admit i have taken this reusing thing one stage further, i work in a school and at luchtimes i am with the nursery children who stay have have their sandwiches in school, i now refold and send home the sandwich bags that they bring in, it was juat a automatic action, i had done it before i had realised.
Keep the ideas coming please,

LameWolf

A lot of the things I re-use have already been mentioned.

Mr LW loves his cotton hankies, and when they've got too tatty for their original use, they become dusters. Sadly, my underwear would be no use as dusters, as there's simply not enough material (think triangle plus 3 bits of string:rotfl:).

I do collect wax that drips off candles, and melt it down to make more candles; and I use an old 800g dog food tin to melt it in. That tin has to be a decade old; Penny-Dog passed away in 2002, and for the last couple of years of her life, she was on a chicken'n'rice and fish'n'rice regime!

My stash of sunflower spread cartons got used up when I had a whole load of Dungeons & Dragons figures to sort, repaint as needed, and make presentable for the D&D group I belong to. They'd been in the keeping of one of the group, but when he died, his widow wanted them out of the way, and they were in a right muddle, so the cartons ended up labelled things like "Orcs", "Skeletons", "Lizard men" etc.:rotfl:

pepsimax62

charlies-aunt wrote: »

It has to be postage stamps Jexygirl

Please cut them off the envelope, leaving a half centimetre or so margin.

When I used to work in a shipping office which got a ton of letter every day, I would spend my coffee break going through the discarded envelopes salvaging stamps but the only envelopes that I see nowadays is the ones that come through my own post box so my collection ratio has gone down!

Bransby Rest Home for Horses take ponies, donkeys and Horses - many of them are cruelty cases referred by the RSPCA. It is staffed mainly by volunteers and relies heavily on donations to keep going.

If I won the lottery I would make sure that they got a very big donation

Oh I sent my stamps there last time after seeing thier name in a magazine,I have another load now so will send them asap.

Linda32

Hello all,

You will laugh, I've been trying and trying to think what on earth Jiffy Bags are I was thinking of lemons as in Jif I even did a google search!!!! Now I know what they are, and yes I did know already, we have a placcy box full under the bed for re-using

Apart from that, we get lots of charity bags through the door, around three a week, which I use in the kitchen bin, its too big for carrier bags.

Carrier bag in the allotment veggie peelings bin for taking said peelings to the allotment.

The bags which apples come in from supermarket for pack ups and also the bag which you put fruit and veg in, for pack ups.

Plastic food boxes for my sandwiches - does that count as re-using?

Plastic bottles to put over canes at the allotment to stop you from taking you eye out when you bend over.

Pegs for cliping bags of frozen peas/sweetcorn closed.

Old bedding as rags but I guess everyone does that.

Tomato punnets for sowing seeds, and the same as trays when they don't have holes in them.

zarazara

Norman_Bean wrote: »

Some great ideas here x I reuse as follows:

All foil, freezer bags, cereal inners etc for freezing.
Plastic milk bottles to store and freeze soup.
Oil from anchovies to cook with.
All food scraps get saved / frozen to be eaten at another meal.
Fat from roast for roast potatoes next time. (I never use the jelly bit though ... can I use that for anything??) its absolutely delicious on toast with some ground black pepper,yummmmmmmmm. or you can melt it down for gravy stock.
All cream containers for storage.
Fabric scraps to make bunting.
Wine bottles for HM wine.
Parchment paper from ready roll pastry either as baking paper or tracing paper for the kids.
Stamps go to charity.
Reply envelopes get used for school dinner money, money for school trips etc.
Scraps of paper for shopping lists and meal plans.
Cereal packet card for kids craft 'projects'
Glass and jam jars for HM jam, onion marmalade etc
Kids disposable party stuff: cups, paper plates (just give them a wipe over and they are fine, just don't serve messy food!), table cloth etc.
Old cloths for dusters and chalk board cleaners.

No wonder my house looks a tip :rotfl:

lots of ideas here. good thread this.