We’ve had an email from Josh:

Hi, I’ve got one for you, playing cards. I play a lot of poker with my buddies and our cards get bashed up pretty quickly, the edges bent over primarily so we can’t play with them anymore. They’re plastic (?) coated so can’t be recycled with cardboard, right?

Just because you can’t play with them any more though doesn’t mean that they’re at the end of their useful life.

Yes, you’re right that they can’t be recycled as paper if they’re plastic coated – but they’d make fun bookmarks, the non-face cards could be used for shopping lists and if some still have strong edges, you could drag them between keyboard keys to pull out the stupid amount of cat hair and sesame seeds collected in the gaps (maybe that’s just my keyboard).

Any other reuses?

They can also be included in a number of crafts/decoration projects – for example, they could cheer up dull storage boxes, and could also be used as a fun way to differentiate the boxes or label them if they need to be in sequence. Some brilliant people have turned them into business card wallets, MP3 players/iPod cases, or even a fantastic bag. They can also be used for any type of small scale papercrafts that require a light card.

Any other suggestions on what to make from them?
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Here we are, again: New Year’s Eve.

The supermarket at the edge of our estate is selling giant packs of party poppers for 80p so come tomorrow, some households (and probably entire streets) will be covered in strings of paper and little empty plastic shells.

The obvious answer is not to get them in the first place but assuming they’ve already been popped, what are the options?

The paper is usually none too fancy – not glossy or heavily printed – so can go in the compost, or if you’ve got a lot of it, could be used as packaging for small items.

The plastic bits though – essentially a small cup with a (holed) stem at the bottom of it – aren’t quite so easily reusable. I mean, aside from fun hats for finger puppets. Can you think of anything else you could reuse them for?

Aside from that, do all have a wonderful New Year’s Eve and all the best for 2009. Oooh, and stay tuned for a vaguely Recycle This related announcement tomorrow :)

(Hey, sorry for not posting anything on Friday. I don’t celebrate Christmas so should have posted really but then we stayed up shockingly late playing video games on Thursday night because everyone was off work and I didn’t wake up until Friday afternoon :) )

We’ve had an email from Maya – which reminded me of an email Agata sent me a few weeks ago but which got buried in my email inbox for some reason – asking about reusing dolls’ furniture.

Maya says she has “loads of old doll furniture, mostly from Barbie sets. I don’t have a clue what can I do with them.”

Well, the obvious thing is, if they’re still in ok-to-good condition, to give them away, either to charity shops or through Freecycle – let someone else use them for their intended purpose.

It might also be worth checking eBay in case you’ve got an item that collectors want.

But assuming that’s not an option – say if they’re broken or damaged – what else can be done with them? Any crafty ways to repurpose them?

I’ve seen small dolls’ house kitchen items and the like made into jewellery – kitsch earrings, brooches or pendants – and I imagine something like a dining room table could be used as a podium type thing on a shelf to give a second layer for small items, and armchairs could become phone/ipod rests. Any other suggestions?

(Oh, and if case you’re interested, we covered the dolls themselves just about a year ago.)

(Stock photo by Carin)

We covered leftover cooked rice about an eon ago but for some reason haven’t covered the other thing I usually over-estimate when cooking: pasta.

The obvious answer is, of course, lunch the next day and we usually go down the quick’n’easy route of it microwaved with a bit of pesto or fried up into a frittata.

And what about reusing it in other fun ways? I’m guessing like with cooked rice, pasta shapes work great as a filler in soups – just not added *too* early in the cooking process. Spaghetti/tagliatelle might be a bit too stringy for soups as they are but a little chopping up never hurt anyone.

Any other ingenious places you use it up? Or any crazy ways to use it in non-culinary situations?

(Photo by TouTouke)

I know we’ve kinda covered this topic before – in the form of “real” tea bags – but I was thinking about chamomile ones the other day and wondered if there aren’t some special reuses for different herbal ones, instead of just winging them into the compost.

According to lore/half memories in my head this Monday morning, chamomile tea is good for bringing out blonde bits in hair: after you’ve enjoyed the tea, stew the bag/bags to get a couple of strong cups full of it, then lash it over your head. Wisdom (and by “wisdom”, I mean some internet forums I once read) differs on though whether it just cleans residues off blonde bits or (with the application of a bit of heat/sun) it actually lightens/re-colours the hair. Anyone know?

Any other less spurious re-uses for second/third/fourth soakings of chamomile?

And what about other herbal teas? I’ve always thought herbal teas smell better than they taste – anything to take advantage of that?

(Photo by Egahen)