I spent most of yesterday afternoon in the garden with a few of the neighbourhood children because one of the girls got it in her head that she wanted to dig over our veg plot ahead of this year’s planting and I’m a firm believer in exploiting child labour at every opportunity.

Since we’ve all been pretty much in hibernation over the winter, it’s the first time I’ve seen them in a while and it reminded me about something her dad made last year. He’d got the metal chassis of an old pull-along trailer and rebuilt the rest of the trailer out of scrap wood etc. Over the random spare tyres, he had some natty wheel arches and he asked us to guess how we thought he’d made them – we guessed scrap wheel arches from something else – but as the title of this post might suggest, they were in fact an old plastic dog bed cut in two and spray painted to match the rest of the trailer. They really looked the part and as a bonus, didn’t add any extra weight to the trailer either. I thought it was a pretty great re-use and kept meaning to post it on here but forgot until now.

So that’s one idea – but probably not one most people would use – so any other suggestions?

A few weeks ago, we had to pick up John’s car from the garage after a service/MOT and while we were breathing in lungfuls of carbon monoxide waiting for the mechanic to finalise all the paperwork, I found myself staring at a big box of used disposable gloves near the counter. I don’t know how long the pile had been accumulating but there was a scary amount of them apparently just about to go in the bin.

Once I got back into the open air and my head stopped swimming from all the fumes, my first thought was “how could I recycle or reuse them?”.

I’ve only used latex gloves once – to provide grip when removing my now defunct tongue piercings – and I don’t think I’d have liked to have used dirty ones for that — but my tongue piercing fondling ones were clean after use and have been kept in the cleaning cupboard if we need them for any dirty jobs.

I guess there will be some overlap with rubber gloves – but the thinner Latex may restrict – or inspire – other uses.

So suggestions?

(Photo by Capgros)

We featured make-up itself a while ago and have also looked at mascara wands and nail varnish, but Annie G has come up with a clever idea for old pressed powder compacts:

As I was coming to the end of my blusher I wondered what I could do with the plastic container afterwards and had a great idea. I travel by train regularly and found the empty blusher container makes a compact and secure travel case for flattish earrings.

That is a great idea – I always need a little baggie or something to keep my earrings in when we’re going away, but that’s a better idea because it’s solid and I’d be less likely to squash them by mistake.

Any other clever ideas for them though?

(Photo by esrasu”)

We’ve had an email from Mary asking about recycling hollow core doors.

I always see doors of one sort or another in skips around here but Mary has come up with an idea for an old one of hers – but needs a little help:

I would like to make a rattan or seagrass headboard for my king size bed by covering an old hollow core door, maybe I can use old matchstick blinds, or I’ll buy some mats, any ideas? I’d also need some kind of edging.

I really like big headboards like that so it sounds like a great idea. Mats would probably be a bit more flexible and may bend around edges – eliminating the need for separate edging – but I do like the idea of “bamboo” blinds – it seems like it would be less rough to lean against.

Any help for Mary?

Or any other ideas about what could be done with an old hollow door?

I was re-watching Juno the other day and it gave me an “ooh, how could I recycle…” moment.

For those who don’t know, Juno is an interesting and funny film about the titular character’s unplanned pregnancy at 16. While Juno herself is a little too wise-cracking for me, the rest of the characters and performances are great so I wasn’t too upset when it got the Best Original Screenplay last month (I’d have given it to Lars and the Real Girl ahead of Juno but the Academy didn’t put me in control of picking the winners this year, boo).

ANYWAY, the father of the baby in the film, Bleeker, has an obsession with orange TicTacs and at one point, he opens his postbox to find Juno and her best friend have filled it with a hundred boxes of the things as a gesture of Juno’s love for him. Since I’m a bit of a recycling geek, my first thought wasn’t “aww, cute”, it was “once fictional Bleeker has munched his way through those, what could he do with the boxes?”

So any suggestions? If you’re not familiar with the low-cal sweets, the clear plastic box is about 5cm (2.5inches) by 3cm (1.5inches) and about 1cm (0.5inch) thick with a little flip lid at the top.

(Photo by bruno-free)