I think this is up there with printer toner and ink cartridges: lots of places – including some charities – take them to reuse or recycle – but does anyone have any particularly noteworthy suggestions?

This (albeit badly photographed) pizza box support thing has been sat around on our table since we last had take out pizza.

It looks infinitely useful in a misc supportive way but aside from as a patio in a dolls house, we can’t think of anything to do with it.

Any suggestions?

(If you don’t know what I mean by that stunningly vague name I’ve given the entry, it’s about 3cm high and about 2cm in diameter and it is put in the middle of the pizza box to stop the centre of the box caving in when boxes are stacked or stuff, like side orders, are balanced on top of the box. They’re very useful to avoid sticky cheese situations.)

Completely out of character, I went on a bit of a tidying rampage at the weekend. Well, I sorted out some boxes in the spare room and the storage chest in the living room – that’s a rampage for me.

Amongst the random bits of paper (recycled/composted) and unnecessary household objects like two phones even though we don’t have a landline (charity shopped/Freecycled), I found various nuts, bolts and screws in various states of rusting. I added these to the ice cream tubs of random nuts, bolts, screws, washers, hinges etc that we have in the cellar and it made me wonder if we’d ever get around to using them.

We dip into the boxes whenever we need a fixing but we just don’t need enough of them to make any headway through the tubs and we tend to pick the least rusty ones when we do need something – so what can we do with the rusty rest?

(Photo by fugue, who seems to have a similar collection)

We have a stone floor in the kitchen; a very hard, very cold, stone floor. In the summer, when it’s hot, it’s fantastic but in the winter, it becomes a game how we can step on it the least (I’ve cooked dinner kneeling on a stool on more than one occasion).

As much as we dislike it then, there is one collective entity that hates it more: our crockery. One slip when we’re washing up and – smash! It has no chance really.

When saucers or shallow dishes break cleanly, into just a couple of pieces, we glue them back together to use under plant pots and handle-less mugs are collected in the under-sink cupboard to be used for “bits” – but are there any other ways we could re-use them? What about stuff that can’t be glued back together?

Or should we just bury them deep down in the soil for future archeologists to find and give them final proof that our society worshipped a God named “Microwave safe”?

(Photo by acerin)

A few years ago, I went through a spate of buying candles. We don’t use them much any more but have been known to have the old candle-light game of Scrabble or lit by candles, eat soup inside a den built out of cushions and quilts in the middle of the living room (we are possibly not as mature as we should be at our age and still like building dens).

Anyway, from those times when we have used them, we’ve got a number of chunky candles still around the place but while their external wax is still fine, they’re insides are all melted away and the wick is pretty much non-existent.

So what can I do with old candles?

Can we make new candles by reusing the wax from the old ones?

Or are there any other good/fun things we could do with them?

(Photo by jilted)