Creative Ways to Repurpose Old Kitchen Stuff

A lot of household waste comes from the kitchen. There is a plastic wrap from food packaging, as well as wasted food not used before it spoils. Cardboard containers food items come in must also be discarded, as well as bottles and jugs. In addition to the daily waste generated in a person’s kitchen, there are also outdated food preparation materials and broken dishes or partial sets of cutlery a person may wish to replace. Although it is common to generate a lot of trash in the kitchen it is also possible to reduce the volume of garbage headed to landfills in creative and meaningful ways.

Composting

One simple way to reduce unnecessary waste is to compost leftover food. Compost is an excellent way to maintain nutrients in the soil in your garden or potted plants. Composting can be done directly on the ground or in composting bins. You can also add newspaper to your compost mix, which eliminates another item you potentially need to discard from your home organically. Even if you don’t garden you can compost and make the product available to farmers and gardeners and help the environment and reduce landfill at the same time.

Repurposing Food Products

There are companies that thrive on used cooking oil collection. They will take your used cooking oil without cost to you and then they turn it into biodiesel. Not only does this reduce the amount of trash you’re producing, but you can save money by not paying to discard used cooking oil with your garbage and contribute to the production of environmentally-friendly fuel.

Reusing Bottles

Although many bottles and jugs can be recycled there are also other ways to repurpose used bottles. Schools, daycares and summer camps may be interested in bottle donations for a number of reasons. There are a lot of different crafts that children can make with bottles, including producing musical instruments to learn about sound and air. Once you’re done with the bottles that you acquire from your local grocery or liquor store you can also use them yourself as vases to hold flowers.

A Second Life for Strainers

Strainers can be used as planters. They can also serve as the base for a kitchenware wind chime by adding metal utensils on wire. Colanders can also be turned into bird feeders, so when you’re ready to repurpose yours you can use it to attract birds to your yard or garden.

Camping and Re-Homing

While you may want to maintain matching sets of utensils and dishes at home, when you’re camping you’re less likely to care about whether everyone has the same fork design. One good way to reuse your utensils, pots, and dishes is to add them to your camping gear. If you don’t camp you can also donate these items to a second hand store. People who are looking for inexpensive camping supplies will be happy to use second-hand dishes.

Toys

Children love to play, and they often mimic things they see adults doing in their play. This includes pretending to cook meals and serve food. One way to reuse old pots and pans is to make them part of your child’s playhouse materials, or offer them to others with young children. They can also use plastic dishes to complete their kitchen play sets.

Storage

Do you have Tupperware containers with missing lids? You don’t need to throw them out. Even a container without a lid can make an ideal storage bin. Those who like to do crafts may have a drawer where they place containers so that they can separate different items they use, such as beads, ribbon, lace and sponges.

Hand-Eye Coordination

Introducing items like velcro also eliminates the act of tying shoes. This is one example of why some children aren’t developing all of the skills they used to. Take old cookie cutters and add them to your child’s art collection. Let them trace the shapes to help create works of art for friends and family and reuse those kitchen items in a way that will help your child work on developing their hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.