Ok, we’ve already covered shampoo bottles and plastic drinking bottles but I think shower gel bottles are a little different.

The ones I use have got a little, I don’t know, valve thing on the top to stop the gel falling out while they hang upside down in the shower. I don’t know whether this would stop anything as wet as water but the liquid gel stuff stays put.

So could this be used for anything else? I guess I could refill it with liquid soap for sink-based handwashing – either commercial stuff I’ve bought in bulk or when I get around to make my own from soapnuts – but any different, non-soapy suggestions?

Since there was such a positive response to Em’s sponge scourer query, I’ll post about something I’d also worried about the gackness level: mop heads.

We’re not ardent moppers but have to change the mop heads themselves quite a lot because the coarse and often dirty nature of our floors means that after a couple of uses, they look really quite sad and/or not the type of thing you want to use when ‘cleaning’. We swap and change between using cloth mops, string mops and those new-fangled-super-dooper-cost-£3-a-time mopheads but none of them seem to be particularly hard wearing.

Any suggestions on what we can do when with them once they’ve been relegated from their rightful role?

A suggestion from Jo:

My husband and I are both on a monthly contact lens package. We are accumulating vast numbers of lenses cases which I do not have the heart to just chuck in the bin! There must be something you can do with them other than make salt & pepper containers for when you go camping!

I await inspiration!

I’m a glasses gal so I haven’t faced this problem – but I’d love to hear if other people have used them for anything or if anyone’s got any suggestions : )

(Photo by jocan)

Little brushes on sticks.

Oh you look so useful with your littleness and your brushiness.

But how? How? How can I use you again?

(Photo by Vixs)

For some reason, all our towels have decided to go threadbare at exactly the same time. Well, when I say “ALL our towels”, I mean the top two bathsheets and hand towels that are in the endless use/wash/cupboard/use/wash… cycle – the ones underneath those in the stack are, presumably, fine since we’ve not used them for years (we’re not thoughtful enough to rotate stuff like that).

So anyway, we have a holey bathsheet and two holey handtowels – both gone in pretty much the centre and in patches elsewhere – so my initial idea of chopping them down into flannels/smaller towels has been somewhat eliminated.

Any suggestions about how they can be reborn? Any crafts/upcycling ideas?

(Photo by jellofishy, c/o sxc.hu)