How can I reuse or recycle toothpicks?
We’ve had an email from Jo:
Work was clearing out a stockroom the other day and unearthed a giant box of 10000 toothpicks which must have been there for years. My boss was going to throw them away but I jumped in to save them. Please tell me there is something I can do with them!
Like used matchsticks, they’d be great to use as spacers while tiling or you could use them to make modern, spiky ornaments.
Any other suggestions?
(Update 9:13pm: apologies for the unexpected downtime we’ve had this afternoon – our hosting provider had a server crash.)
If you have any friends that do model railroading or wargaming or the like, these make great scenery bits.
You can turn them into mini flags! Also on that vein you can add little paper circle etc and turn them into cupcake toppers – great for parties!
They make great mini knitting needles for crafts and stuff. Also, in school I remember two projects – one was a cross shaped Christmas ornament – the other was a bridge for science class to see how much weight it could hold.
Throw a (really, REALLY big) party, serve lots of cheese cubes and other toothpicky foods. Set toothpicks out for stabbing & eating said cubes/foods. Fin.
Since there’s a whole lot, you could also try donating it to a school for craft projects or science projects (marshmallow & toothpick towers, anyone?).
Some things are ok to throw out…… I have put them in the compost.
If you have a loose screw in a wooden chair or something, stuff the hole with toothpicks and they will have something to grab on. I have actually used this with the old metal kitchen chair frames as well.
We have a small parrot who just loves his treats on a toothpick. Afterwards he plays with them for hours and uses them to “feak his beak”.
(Cleans out the roof of his beak.) He then shreads them up and another bird – a love bird – uses them in nest construction after she chews them up even more!
The suggestion of using them to help fix chairs is a good one. Or send them to be, i use massive amounts of cocktail/toothpicks in my carpentry/art work! (i’ll pay for P&P!)
Jack x