Sometimes our little box of eggs gets lost at the back of the fridge and we forget it’s there until we fancy omelettes for tea and then we find out that they’ve gone out of date. Sigh.

I know eggs are best used as fresh as possible – and it’s not ideal to keep them hanging around for the weeks and weeks until the “use by” date – but how strict is that “use by” date?

And if we can’t use them for culinary purposes, what else can we do with them when they’ve reached the end of their in-date period?

(Photo by alitaylor)

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?

I suspect this is going to be more of recycle one than a reuse one – but if I’m wrong, suggestions on both are most welcome.

Since we’re not big consumers of aerosol-driven personal hygiene/hair products, we don’t have that many of them – the ones we do have are from specific cleaning products (namely, at this time of the year, household flea sprays – two of the cats have quite bad flea reactions so we have to go a bit OTT on the extermination front to stop them from getting all bitten to shreds, even after they’ve been treated themselves).

So what can we do with the aerosol cans ones we’re done? Can they be recycled?

(Photo by cinezi)

I’ve got a pair of jeans that I’ve had for years.

They were one of those ‘best friend’ pairs of jeans that I lived in for a couple of years until they started to give away at critical areas (read: the bum and that vague, important area).

Then they got relegated to decorating pants since I wasn’t bothered about those helping me decorate see my derriere and so are now both holey and covered in paint splashes – a few years ago that would have made them the height of fashion I’m sure, but not now.

As wearable jeans, they’re not really wearable any more but the denim in the non-holed places is still good and inside out, there are only a few paint stains.

So what can do I do with them now? How can I reuse the good bits of denim?

(Photo by nicholasc)

I know digital cameras are usurping their existence now but we’ve still got a large number of these little pots lying around the house.

I also vaguely remember that these little items were subjected to months of discussion on the Guardian letters page a year or so ago – but I can’t remember any of the suggestions other than using them for salt and pepper for camping trips.

So can anyone else remember any of the suggestions or does you have wonderful ideas of your own?

(Original photo by Underdog80)