…And moving on from old paint, what about old nail varnish?

From the days when I actually used it, I’ve got quite a few half-bottles left over in all sorts of colours. Some of them have separated but recongeal with a quick shake, but I’ve only painted my nails once this year and can’t see myself doing it again in a hurry (for both aesthetic reasons and for the sake of my nails) so they’re pretty much redundant.

So what can I do with all the leftover nail polish? And what about the bottles with their little brushes – any reuses for those?

(Photo by tijmen)

Posting the paint tins entry last week made me wonder what about paint itself.

I know there are a lot of worthwhile causes out there that collect the half-cans of paint sat around in everyone’s cellar/shed/store-cupboard and put them to good uses – like painting murals, bit of furniture or when there is enough left, decorating interiors of community projects and the like.

These things tend to be local but does anyone know of any national schemes? If not, how about local ones in your area? If you do, leave the details in a comment – including which area it is if it’s a local one.

And aside from that, any crafty craft-y reuse ideas for old emulsion/gloss paint?

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)

I’ve had an email from Andrew Urban:

I have something that needs to be recycle and actually is recyclable but maybe companies will charge a lot to take them.

We have considered using a wood chipper to chop them into smaller pieces and then send them to a landfill but that will only solve our waste issue not our recycling issue.

This is probably on a lot bigger scale than most of the commenters on this site usually think about but if anyone’s got any ideas at all, post a comment below and maybe Andrew and his company will be able to scale it up and save all that landfill space.

I was potting up the many, many children of my spider plant the other day and I needed more containers to use as plant pots. I went into the cellar and found a couple of old paint tins – gloss paint so actually tins rather than the standard plastic tub used for emulsion these days.

They were just the right size for my plants so have been commandeered for that this time but it made me wonder what else I could use them for – especially since they have (admittedly difficult to remove) airtight lids.

Any suggestions?