Thanks to the felines, we generate at least one empty tin can a day. Given the size of our kitchen and the delightful pseudo-fishy aroma they tend to emit, we tend to just throw the cans in the recycling bin as soon as they’re empty.

But there must be a thousand uses for them.

Back in the pistachio shell days, we came up with the idea of using the shells in two cans taped together to make a rattling percussion instrument, so that’s one idea – but I’d love to hear more because a girl can only use so many noise makers.

A few weeks ago, on the coconut shells post, I found a very cool way to reuse plastic milk bottles to make covered bird feeders for small birds (UPDATE – the link I had has stopped working, the next best one uses big milk jugs but the same principle applies to smaller bottles too, from a 2pint/1ltr upward).

But as we’ve only got one tree in the garden (and that’s not really a tree, it’s an overgrown bush which is very cat-accessible), I’d love to find out other ways to reuse them rather than just slinging them in the recycling bin.

Any ideas?
Continue Reading →

A suggestion from SaraR:

Hi guys. I’ve got one for you. We drink filter coffee every day at work – a couple of pots a day – and if I remember, I bag up the leftover grounds and throw them on my compost heap at home. But are there any other ways I can reuse or recycle them instead of just dumping them in there? I get such funny looks on the bus on the way home so it would be great if there was some way use them at work too!

Thanks!!
-SaraR

Continue Reading →

Turning over our compost bin is a ineffective nightmare. It involves precariously balancing on a metre-high brick wall and digging down, now below foot level, into the flimsy bin without using the sides of it for leverage in any way (because of the aforementioned flimsiness). Needless to say, it doesn’t get turned that often.

But every time we do turn it over, egg boxes return to the surface, almost completely unchanged by their weeks of being surrounded by rotting matter. I suspect we would do better if we tore them up or soaked them with water before throwing them in, but it did make me think: they’re clearly not as disposable as I thought, so what else could they be used for aside from the compost heap?
Continue Reading →

When I left my last but one job, I was given a juicer as a leaving present. Since I abhor fruit in its many evil forms, we swapped the fancy be-tapped blender for a breadmaking machine since we love bread and thought it would be a darnsight more useful.

Oh, we had such good intentions. We made bread at least twice a week and made pizza dough too. We made quick white bread and long slow wholemeal. We used the timer so we’d wake up to nice fresh bread in the morning. Ah, happy days.

Then after about a six weeks, like I guess about 95% of people that own a breadmaker, the novelty wore off and suddenly we just had an unused appliance taking up half the worktop and a couple of big bags of buy-one-get-one-never-use flour in the cupboard.

Time passed.

Then, recently, I found I had a bit more time on my hands and I decided to make a pizza base-esque garlic bread. I turned to our good old flour mountain with glee. Our now out of date flour mountain. Our now out of date with ick, some tiny crawling things in it. The glee wore off and I learnt a good lesson about buy-one-get-one-free products and novelty devices.

I’m not obsessive about best-before dates but I draw the line at cooking with tiny crawling things. So what non-culinary uses are there for old flour?
Continue Reading →