I realise yesterday’s post on aerosols would be mostly recycling rather than reuse, but how about a similar item that has more reuse potential – pump action sprays?

We’ve got a number of old pump action spray bottles around the house – from old cleaning products and from a body spray that I use from time to time – and they can all be refilled and reused, but we’ve used up all our ideas about what to put in them and still have a stack of spares.

So any suggestions what would be useful to have as a spray/mister that doesn’t already coming with its own pump spray?

Most of the time, we buy loose veg – less packaging, get to choose exact which items we want and how many etc etc. But every now and then, usually when we go shopping last thing and there is no choice at all, we have to buy it pre-packed.

The most common offender is courgettes but I couldn’t find a picture of courgettes on a tray and we’ve got loose ones at the moment so I can’t take a picture myself. So here’s a picture of sausages on a similar tray, just imagine the sausages are courgettes. Ok.

So here we have our courgettes on trays. They’re narrow, shallow trays, either make of cushioning foam or flimsy plastic and we don’t know what to do with them. They’re not deep enough to use as kitchen top compost collection receptacles (we use mushroom boxes for this purpose when cooking or for collecting tea bags/leaves each day) but the plastic ones especially are too flimsy to be used under plant pots.

Any suggestions?

(Photo by fritz018)

I posted an item from my mum last week about how to reuse washing powder tablet nets and it made me think of their solid plastic friend: those funny shaped ball things that you put washing powder in before putting the ball directly into the washing machine.

I’ve got a few floating around from back in the day when they were the washing powder innovation du jour and since I’m trying to move away from chemical powder onto soapnuts now, I have no need for them.

Any suggestions for reuses? They’re really sturdy with a flat bottom but awkwardly shaped apart from that.

This one is from my mum.

She buys branded washing powder tablets quite regularly and each time gets a little net in the box. The idea is the tablets go in the net and then in the washing machine, and if you don’t use the net, then all hell breaks loose and demons run the earth (or something).

Anyway, as she just told me on IM: “i’ve got quite a lot of those bags,usually stick them under the sink or hang them in tall cupboard for storage” but it seems they just stay in storage.

Any suggestions on what she can do with them?

(If you can’t see the picture clearly, here’s a description of what I mean: they’re little nylon string nets with a drawstring at the top, and the drawstring has a toggle attached so you can close it up, stopping the tablet from falling out during the wash cycle. Because if it did fall out, hell, demons, etc etc.)

I’ve caught wind recently about a company that recycles tetrapak. Since the stuff is getting everywhere, even where it’s not needed, these days, it’s nice to see that someone is recycling it on a large scale.

But what about reuses around the home and garden before sending it off for recycling?

Any suggestions?