The Great 'Are you a re-user - what items do you reuse for max value?' Hunt

suffolkpumpkin

edwink wrote: »

If you grow your own peppers, you will noticed that they are often all ready to pick within a week of each other. This year I had over 30 peppers and did not want to waste them. So I lightly roasted some of them sliced and let them cool, then portioned them up and put them in the freezer ready to use for quiches over the winter when peppers are really expensive.

Happy recycling. I really have enjoyed this thread.

Edwink

I roast vast amount of home grown veggies in the summer too. Freeze them portion size. I roast apples, plums etc as well. Huge baking trays of them, I peel (the tough skin ones), core and roughly chop them, in the oven, until they are soft and the liquid is evaporated. Freeze in portions for crumbles, pork, breakfasts topped up with yougurt...
For me it's a win-win situation, I don't waste, save time on cooking, roasting them reduces the bulk to freeze, but most importantly for me, it enhances the flavour as opposing to stewing.
Rosted mix of homegrown peppers, courgettes, onions with a few basil leaves thrown over the top smells divine in the depth of January.:T

ljonski

I use a piece of rubber that came off a bus as a draught excluder to the lounge!

blossomhill_2

ljonski wrote: »

I use a piece of rubber that came off a bus as a draught excluder to the lounge!

I hope the bus company don't mind! Your lounge seats aren't green moquette by any chance? I have several bus conductors' boxes from the 1950s in use - for shoe cleaning kit etc

londonlydia

Bizarre one from me:

Ladies, if you ever get those sponge filled, fabric coveres fillers/ chicken fillet things in your bras...the ones that you can take out....you can use these for finishing paintwork! NOTHING gives a smoother finish.

So you can slap on the paint however you want, paint/ roller, and then you go over after but whilst the paint is still wet you rub/ glide over with these pads. You can use thicker paper towels, but they can disintegrate and leave bits in the paint, so this is better as nothing drops off.

Learnt this trick because I did A-level art, where you have to paint whole pages in your sketchbook before writing on them. Perfectly smooth. I then used it on my living room wall, and it nearly every vistor we had commented on the perfect finish

good_advice

I use a free plastic trouser coat hanger in the bathroom to hang the bath mat from the shower rail.

Cut open the toothpaste tube this morning to get one last bit of paste out before throwing in the bin.

I throw the ariel gel bottle in the washing machine when empty. It goes round with the washing and gets a rinse out. Then in recycle bin.

Primrose

I save commercial jam jars with lids for my own marmalade & jam making. Other bigger jars are used for storage of dry goods like lentils & dried beans.
Brown paper bags are saved for snacks taken out.
Newspapers are either recycled or torn up and put on compost heap.
Plastic containers from supermarkets containing tomatoes or fruit and are used as seed trays for sowing my vegetables in.
Plastic cream/Creme fraiche cartons with lids are used for storing small amounts of leftovers in the fridge, to be reused.
Inner cardboard rolls of loo rolls & kitchen rolls are used for sowing runner beans or parsnips in
Egg boxes are returned to butcher for reused in his sale of free range eggs.
Jiffy bags received in the post are saved and have a fresh label stuck on them for a new addressee.
Plastic freezer bags, especially the zippable kind, are washed in warm soapy water, dried & reused.
Not a lot is wasted in this house.

elizabethhull

A further thought:
when my girls were younger we had a 'Craft Box' - believe me in their eyes it definitely merited the capitals !! And yet all it contained was anything gold/silver/glittery that came into the house (eg from inside a chocolate box), some Munch Bunch fromage frais containers for mixing paints, shells from the seaside, odd pretty buttons, bits of ribbon, etc etc - you can imagine the sort of thing. The box itself was one that originally held a pair of boots so was quite large and we kept it on top of the fridge. On a Sunday afternoon, it was a big thing to ask me to get the Craft Box down so they could mess around with cheap glue, bits of paper, glitter sprinkles and so on. They made greetings cards, pictures for grandparents, drew their own wrapping paper, my elder daughter even made a full set of Thunderbirds vehicles (what would we do without toilet and kitchen roll inners !!).
Anyone who thinks they are not particularly creative - it's amazing what fun you can have in this easy and cheap way.

Melswansea

It sounds a bit gross but I always reuse a swim nappy (obviously only if it's got a bit of wee in it!)

I simply give it a really good rinse in the shower after swimming or pop it in the washing machiene when we get home.

At up to 50p a swim if you don't get them on offer the nappies are very expensive.

(I've never got on with the reusable ones they seem to leak poo)

colinthecockrel

I do lots of what has been mentioned, but another use for those takeaway tubs with lids (not that we have one often!) is as kitchen drawer organisers. I have a whole kitchen drawer filled with these with various bits and bobs in, ie, birthday candles and cake decorations; lables; small pads and pens/pencils; paperclips; rubber bands - you get the idea! I can stack them 2 high and have room for about 12 in total - then the little gaps in between are for scissors, or the stapler, etc.

On the hand-wash pump bottles - I just empty anything into these like left over shampoo (if not liked) and if I run out of bits then I buy supermarket value bath foam to fill them up.

Primrose

One pint plastic milk bottles will hold two servings of whizzed soup for freezing.

For anybody selling small individual cakes like cup cakes at fund-raising cake sales, the plastic punnets from supermarkets which contain tomatoes, nectarines, etc, are ideal for selling small amounts as the cakes don't get squashed as they would do in plastic or paper bags.