We’ve had an email from Barbara Patrick:

I have a whole box of these plastic spiral book binding thingies at my work and no idea what to do with them. I would love some creative crafty suggestions. I live in United States and our currently recycling only takes 1’s & 2’s. Our print shop doesn’t want them. ugh! help!

If they’re still in (re)usable condition, maybe a school (or the like) would be able to use them in their reprographics department? A print shop might worry about them being in less than perfect condition but a school probably wouldn’t be as fussy.

If I had access to one of the whole punching machine things, I’d probably use them for making scrap paper notepads but if not, I suspect that would be a lot of hassle and I’d just use a bulldog clip as I usually do instead.

Any other suggestions?

(Photo supplied by Babs)

Because I run a number of websites as well as generally having been around the whole internet thing for a while, I get a LOT of spam. A ridiculous amount. Thankfully most of it gets caught by my spam filter these days but it does get a bit over-sensitive sometime so I have to go through my spam bin about once a week to check there aren’t any false positives in there. (Handy hint: when doing so, sort by subject – makes it far easier to scan through.)

Anyway, the other day I spotted a message with the subject “joysticks” in my spam bin. Oh!, I thought, what a great Recycle This idea, there must be bazillions of obsolete and broken ones lying around!. Except it wasn’t that, it was a spammer trying to give me stock tips. Sigh.

But still though, what CAN be done with all those old joysticks and console game pads? Jewellery out of the buttons/D-pads perhaps?

(Photo by shikaz)

We’ve covered the nasty cheap plastic good-for-little coat hangers you get given (usually whether you want them or not) at clothes stores but Elizabeth Phelan wants to know about other types:

I have lots of wire hangers and nicer quality plastic hangers (not the ones they give you from the retail stores). Do you know where I can take them to have them recycled or reused?

I’d see if the local charity shops could use the better quality ones and I’d keep some wire ones around the house for those emergency prodding and poking situations that require a sturdy bit of thin wire – but that wouldn’t be suitable for Elizabeth’s “lots”.

So any suggestions? Elizabeth lives in Northern California so location specific recycling points would be great – but if you know somewhere outside that locale, feel free to add it in case it’s of use for someone else.

(Photo by Capgros)

I read a good article the other day about how to avoid wasting food including bread, cream, rice and pasta.

I’m a big believer in using up leftovers, particularly in the form of soup or soup related products – but as much as I love soupery, I’m a little sceptical about the comment in the article saying that “even salads” can be soupified.

While I can find a few recipes for different lettuce soups – and am impressed with the suggestions of using up the often wasted outer leaves and inner most bits, I’m still not sure I fancy giving it a bash.

But leftover lettuce is often an issue in our house – if we get a couple of different types of lettuce to have an interesting salad, they start to go limp before we get through them. I guess it’s the mass of people in a similar position that has led to the huge popularity of bagged salad – but we’d rather not go down that route.

So what else can we do with the leftover lettuce? Obviously it can go in the compost heap but if we can use it up before that stage, it would be good.

(Photo by lusi)

Following on from last week’s soggy sponge post, what about those newfangled body scrubber things?

For those that aren’t familiar with them, they seem to be some sort of nylon (?) net, squished together into a puffy ball shape.

They don’t “sog” up as much as sponges but as a commenter on the sponge post notes, all that type of thing are such a fab breeding ground for bacteria, they probably shouldn’t be kept hanging around for too long – and so will be thrown away when there is still a bit of life in them (and I don’t mean the bug life).

I imagine they’d be quite a fun texture for using for paint effects while decorating – but any other suggestions?

(Photo by kitalanya)