As previous posts may have indicated, I have rather a sweet tooth and from time to time, treat myself with cake or biscuit related products.

When we buy them, we don’t fool around and usually get full sized cakes or at least loaf-shaped ones but sometimes we get fiddly, little individual ones like this pack of Viennese Swirls. Mmm, swirly.

The Swirls came in a cardboard box then inside that, nestled in a formed plastic nest. The plastic is really thin and flimsy but still… Any suggestions?

Continuing on from the tidying “rampage” mentioned earlier in the week, I’ve been sorting through our old clothes in the bedroom.

In addition to the clothes we wear regularly, we have a couple of boxes of old clothes on the top of the wardrobe. These are the clothes that we will wear again just as soon as we lose the required weight, height or fashion hindsight that caused them to be banished to the boxes in the first place. Periodically, these boxes get sorted through again and the “nah, I’m not going to be a size 10 again in a hurry” cast-offs get sent to the charity shop.

But there is some stuff that isn’t really suitable for charity shops – because they’re damaged or stained, or hideous travesties against everything that is good and/or pure — like these old ties of John’s.

Aside from sending them to be recycled for their fabric, any reuses?

Completely out of character, I went on a bit of a tidying rampage at the weekend. Well, I sorted out some boxes in the spare room and the storage chest in the living room – that’s a rampage for me.

Amongst the random bits of paper (recycled/composted) and unnecessary household objects like two phones even though we don’t have a landline (charity shopped/Freecycled), I found various nuts, bolts and screws in various states of rusting. I added these to the ice cream tubs of random nuts, bolts, screws, washers, hinges etc that we have in the cellar and it made me wonder if we’d ever get around to using them.

We dip into the boxes whenever we need a fixing but we just don’t need enough of them to make any headway through the tubs and we tend to pick the least rusty ones when we do need something – so what can we do with the rusty rest?

(Photo by fugue, who seems to have a similar collection)

We have a stone floor in the kitchen; a very hard, very cold, stone floor. In the summer, when it’s hot, it’s fantastic but in the winter, it becomes a game how we can step on it the least (I’ve cooked dinner kneeling on a stool on more than one occasion).

As much as we dislike it then, there is one collective entity that hates it more: our crockery. One slip when we’re washing up and – smash! It has no chance really.

When saucers or shallow dishes break cleanly, into just a couple of pieces, we glue them back together to use under plant pots and handle-less mugs are collected in the under-sink cupboard to be used for “bits” – but are there any other ways we could re-use them? What about stuff that can’t be glued back together?

Or should we just bury them deep down in the soil for future archeologists to find and give them final proof that our society worshipped a God named “Microwave safe”?

(Photo by acerin)

I know most water cooler bottles already go back to the supplier for reuse or recycling (she says, hopefully) but what about ideas for those ones that get lost along the way?

John rescued one from a skip near his work the other day and brought it home thinking we could use it as a cloche or something in the garden – but since we already have lots of drinks bottles set aside for that purpose, I’m trying to think of something else to do with it instead.

The plastic is so solid it seems a shame to cut it up but there isn’t a lid so I can’t think what we would bottle in it.

Any suggestions?