Another suggestion from SaraR:

Hi guys. Thanks for the great ideas for what to do with the leftover coffee – I told one of my colleagues and now she’s taking it home to use on her garden.

Anyway, I have another one for you based on another of my naughty addictions – red wine. We have a number of cork-corks and plastic-corks lying around the house and add to the number regularly, but I don’t know what to do with them. Do you have any ideas?

We’re not wine drinkers so we don’t have much call to reuse or recycle wine corks or the plastic synthetic equivalents so any suggestions for SaraR would be very useful indeed.

I know there are a number of popular wine cork crafts – most commonly noticeboards or trivets – anyone got any specific favourites?
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I know, we all hate them with a passion. But despite taking cotton bags when we go shopping (most of the time…) and using them as bin liners, we still have about seventy-nine billion plastic bags in the house.

We have two of those bag tidy things full, another load wedged between the freezer and the wall, and then ones from clothes shops and the like in the bedroom (because they’ve yet to walk downstairs yet).

What, oh what, can we do with the accursed things?
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A suggestion for Bev:

I bought hubby a shaving mirror as a hint but as a hint back, he accidentally (or so he says) broke it while putting it up. So now, while we had to bin the smashed mirror, we still have the expandable bit that holds the mirror against the wall. I’ve sent a not very clear picture so show what bit I mean.

It looks so useful and I sit in the bathroom expanding and contracting it wondering what I can do with it but nothing is coming to mind. So I realise it’s probably a bit obscure and only good for me, but have you got any suggestions?

Also suggestions for a name for it would be awesome too because “expandable thingy” is the best I can come up with : )

Last Friday, before setting forth on an expedition that would involve standing in the sun and shouting for a long time, we decided to gather all the water bottles in the house and refill them to take along.

We’re not fans of bottled water and only buy bottles when we’re in a bind, so it was quite surprising to see how many we had accumulated around the house.

We only need so many for reusing as water bottles* for over the summer so what can we do with the rest? What are your favourite reusing or recycling ideas?

* refilling old bottles, I should add, is strictly forbidden, according to notes on the labels of the bigger brands. So don’t do it! don’t! ;)
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There were four 30cm by 50cm frameless mirror tiles on the bathroom wall when I moved in but given there was no storage, I quickly (read: three years) replaced them with a cabinet instead.

Since then, the tiles have been floating around the bathroom/bedroom/hallway storage locations, waiting for us to reaffix them somewhere or get rid of them (neither of which has happened). We have enough mirrors around the place for when you’re as fugly as us and they’re not in great condition (bits of the mirrored backing having come off in various spots, particularly near the edges) anyway so we haven’t got around to re-using them as mirrors.

But what else can their reflective properties be used for instead? They’re essentially sheets of glass with a mirrored backing by the look of it – reasonably sturdy but not invincible. Any suggestions?