Because we so often get caught up doing other things (and/or are lazy), John and I have take-out about once a week. Sometimes this is pizza, as I’ve mentioned before, but recently we discovered a new Chinese place open up nearby and we have been partaking in its various offerings.

Long gone are the days of foil tubs and cardboard tops – everyone in the take-out world seems to use microwaveable plastic lidded containers these days. While I have worries about storing food in plastic for any length of time, we kept the first few rounds of tubs to use for leftovers from our own culinary exploits and the like. But now we have more tubs & lids than we know what to do with – we have more than enough for use in the kitchen and around the house – and storage is getting to be a problem.

We can’t doorstep-recycle them because they’re Polypropylene (type 5) and our council only recycles types 1, 2 and 4 (as seems standard) – and I don’t know anywhere else that recycles them. I doubt the take-out places could take them back for their re-use for hygiene reasons – and ditto anywhere else that might find them useful but lacks sterilising equipment.

So any suggestions? Recycling ideas or uses outside the normal ones around the home (food tubs in the kitchen; nuts/bolts/screws in the cellar; under plants..)?

I have a (not terribly developed or serious) conspiracy theory that brand-name lemon juice manufacturers always put a January/February “best before” date on their lemon juice bottles to make everyone buy new lemon juice in time for pancake day each year.

Consequently, I tend to ignore such dates but by this point in the year, when it’s pushing a year after the date on the bottle, I start to get a bit dubious, despite there being half a bottle left over.

I know that lemon juice can be used for a ton of cleaning jobs around the home but have only ever used it for descaling the kettle. Any other cleaning suggestions?

And is there anything else we can do with it in addition to making our home sparkling and lemony?

A few years ago, I bought a box of supermarket value cling film (aka plastic wrap, saran wrap, cellophane) but in the process of making it value, the producers seem to have left out the cling.

I don’t use it much anyway (more of a fan of re-usable tubs) but whenever I do use it, it’s absolutely infuriating because it doesn’t stick to the bowl/pan in question, or to itself, thereby rendering itself utterly pointless as a thorough covering. Grrr.

So any suggestions on what I can use it – essentially just very thin plastic sheeting – for instead?

(Photo by Ilmari Karonen, c/o Wikipedia)

We’ve got a couple of sieves that I’ve had for years. If I remember rightly, I bought a pack of three of them at the 50p shop in Liverpool before inflation hit and the 50p shop turned into a Poundland-esque effort.

Needless to say, they weren’t the finest quality sieves to start with and after years of use, they’re not going to be winning any “best sieve in the world” contests.

They’re flimsy plastic and the edges of the sieve seem to be permanently gacked up with flour/water glue as well as tea stains from being used as a tea strainer so they’re not really suitable for culinary uses any more.

But what can we do with them instead? They’re a bit fine for using in the garden for getting the stones out of soil but I’m sure there must be other possibilities. Any suggestions?

We went for a walk in a local wood the other weekend and while we were walking around, I saw one of those plastic things that holds together four packs of (usually drink) cans.

It was still intact so I picked it up to tear it apart (none of the non-existent deers that are supposed to live in that wood would be choke on it on my watch) but as I did so, it made me wonder whether those seagulls-killers have any possible reuses.

Any suggestions?

(Photo by celiece)