And from toothpaste tubes to the toothbrushes themselves.

John has a habit of splaying the bristles all over the place in a single use so we go through quite a few. We’ve got a small collection of them in the bathroom cleaning products cupboard with the idea that we’ll use them for cleaning around taps (something that rarely happens and when it does, a cloth usually suffices) and they occasionally get used to cleaning the cat hair/food/assorted beverages out of computer keyboards – but has anyone got any other suggestions from how we can use up the stash?

They’re mostly bog-standard manual toothbrushes but we’ve got a few to go on the top of an electric toothbrush from John’s short dalliance with power-assisted cleaning so suggestions for both the long and short would be appreciated.

(Photo by kadrip55)

Every now and then, one of those upright toothpaste dispensing tubes makes it into our bathroom cabinet and when we reach the end of it, I stare at the solid plastic case and wonder if there is any way that it can be refilled, reused or recycled?

Does anyone know if the companies take them back at all?

Or if there are any other alternatives? It seems like it should be refillable with something or other (liquid soap?) but I’m not sure how I’d go about doing it – any ideas?

Because we so often get caught up doing other things (and/or are lazy), John and I have take-out about once a week. Sometimes this is pizza, as I’ve mentioned before, but recently we discovered a new Chinese place open up nearby and we have been partaking in its various offerings.

Long gone are the days of foil tubs and cardboard tops – everyone in the take-out world seems to use microwaveable plastic lidded containers these days. While I have worries about storing food in plastic for any length of time, we kept the first few rounds of tubs to use for leftovers from our own culinary exploits and the like. But now we have more tubs & lids than we know what to do with – we have more than enough for use in the kitchen and around the house – and storage is getting to be a problem.

We can’t doorstep-recycle them because they’re Polypropylene (type 5) and our council only recycles types 1, 2 and 4 (as seems standard) – and I don’t know anywhere else that recycles them. I doubt the take-out places could take them back for their re-use for hygiene reasons – and ditto anywhere else that might find them useful but lacks sterilising equipment.

So any suggestions? Recycling ideas or uses outside the normal ones around the home (food tubs in the kitchen; nuts/bolts/screws in the cellar; under plants..)?

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)

We’ve got a couple of sieves that I’ve had for years. If I remember rightly, I bought a pack of three of them at the 50p shop in Liverpool before inflation hit and the 50p shop turned into a Poundland-esque effort.

Needless to say, they weren’t the finest quality sieves to start with and after years of use, they’re not going to be winning any “best sieve in the world” contests.

They’re flimsy plastic and the edges of the sieve seem to be permanently gacked up with flour/water glue as well as tea stains from being used as a tea strainer so they’re not really suitable for culinary uses any more.

But what can we do with them instead? They’re a bit fine for using in the garden for getting the stones out of soil but I’m sure there must be other possibilities. Any suggestions?