I’ve been thinking about doing a post on books for a while but the very, very obvious answer for me is “charity shops”. I buy a lot of books from charity shops and give away ones I’m done with but we’ve got a big stack of books that aren’t really suitable for that route – namely, very out of date geeky tech books.

A lot of the technology that John’s interested in moves so fast that the books are practically out of date by the time they’ve been printed and sent out. He’s trying to buy e-book versions instead now but that doesn’t address the collection he’s amassed over the years. General theory books might be of use to someone but a lot of the (very geeky, professional) training-manual types are pretty much obsolete. They’re very specialist and as I said, very out of date so chances are they’d just sit on the shelf at a charity shop until they were thrown out, or someone would waste their money buying them, thinking they’d be more useful than they are. We’ve tried giving them away through our local geek group (WYLUG) but no one wants them.

They’re big, thick, well-printed tomes and it seems a waste just to send them for recycling.

So any suggestions?

(Photo by hatashonin)

We’ve had an email from Carole Minvielle about shower curtain rings:

I have loads of these stored for some use I am yet to discover, but I found a use for ONE! I wanted a pretty soap dish for my favourite scented soap but it had to have ridges in the bottom so the water could drain off and the soap not be a soggy mess.
But the only ones I could find were ugly.

Eventually, I had the idea of putting a plastic shower curtain ring in the base of a pretty dish. The soap goes on top, stays dry and lasts longer, the translucent white ring disappears against the white dish, and the dish looks lovely in my bathroom.
But what can I do with the other 30-odd?

We’ve got loads of wooden rings (exactly like the ones pictured) floating around too – I think the person that owned the house before us had a bit of an obsession. I’ve thrown a stash in my craft supplies box – for use, say, at the bottom of a macrame plant hanger – but aside from that I can’t think of much else to do with them. Suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Jasmin:

I shred bank statements, receipts etc but our local authority doesn’t accept shredded paper in the recycling bin. I don’t have a garden so composting isn’t easy either, does anyone have any other suggestions?

I’ve seen shredded paper used as packaging to protect breakable items in the post so that’s one idea – but any more reusing or recycling suggestions? What do you do with it?

(Photo by winjohn)

We’ve had an email from Am about bottle caps:

As we have a lot of plastic water bottles, and they are easy enough to recycle/reuse… but what about the screw-on bottle tops?

When they are recycled the council insist the lids are not included…and I hate to waste all those little lids.

I always keep a few spare ones in case I lose/drop-somewhere-rank the lid of a bottle I’m re-using. I’ve also used them (usually in pairs for stability) to add height when a plant pot sits too low in the planter – water bottle caps add about 1cm while milk bottle ones are a little wide and not as tall.

Anyone got any other suggestions?

We featured babies’ dummies last week and it made me realise we hadn’t covered much baby paraphernalia – but there is a sure to be a lot of it out there.

So how about babies’ bottles?

Can they be sterilised sufficiently to be passed on to others? And if not, what other things could they be used for?

• How can I reuse or recycle other baby related stuff?

(Photo by spekulator)