Well, this isn’t so much as “reuse or recycle” question as saying “instead from leaving them there to rot, can conkers be used for anything fun or practical?” It is kinda a “reduce this” question too – can I reduce my use of something else by using conkers instead?

I picked up some conkers on a dog walk at the weekend – I couldn’t help myself because fresh from their slick shells, they’re a delight to touch – so shiny & smooth. Could they be used for decorative crafts? Any techniques for preserving the lustre?

Conkers are more correctly known as horse-chestnuts but they’re a completely different species to sweet chestnuts and are actually poisonous. Apparently though that poison can be harnessed for good – bowls of conkers can be used to deter spiders & moths from moving into your home/wardrobe.

And of course, they can be used for playing conkers.

Anyone know of anything else that can be used for?

(Photo by fredb2)

A couple of weeks ago on The Really Good Life, I was umming and ahhing about whether or not to buy an automatic chicken coop door. There were several reasons arguments for it but we don’t *need* one, it would just be a convenience – and I didn’t know whether convenience is worth £100.

The wonderful Alice helped me justify wanting to sleep later than daybreak and added:

Is there anything else you could give up or change to save the equivalent of £100 in a year to compensate? For instance I’d go a whole year without a takeaway to pay for being able to lie in all year, and that’d probably save me enough money over the year (as well as probably compensating somewhat in carbon/environmental terms). Can you “trade” anything else in your life that you don’t really need, motivated by knowing that the sacrifice is “paying” for the lie-ins?

As I said, Alice is wonderful and this is a great idea – and without naming any particular thing, I’ve decided to I’ll give up numerous often-fleeting wants over the next few months to (retrospectively) pay for it — mostly, I suspect, unnecessarily food while I’m out and about, stuff that can be easily done without and isn’t really missed outside of the moment — money thrown down the drain for little value.

Anyway I thought it would be fun to keep track of this money through a moneybox/piggy bank so I can see it building up (and at the same time, see how much I normally fritter away!) – and whenever I think something like that, the next thing that comes to my mind is: “how can I make one of those reusing or recycling stuff?”

So what can I reuse or recycle to make a money box or piggy bank?

Around our house, we already have some old coffee cans with slits in the tops for collecting change and my dad uses a giant old whiskey bottle from a bar for his pennies. They’re both very practical but I’d like something that’s a bit more fun if possible.

One idea I had was to make a papier mâché chicken from old newspaper and out of date flour. I imagine a hollow plastic ball could be used in the same way instead of the papier-mâché – and could be decorated in a similar way to become a rotund hen.

So any ideas?

Every now and then I search for something on Recycle This and am floored when I find we’ve not covered it. The most recent example: tin foil.

We’ve talked about possibly recycling aluminium foil for charity and about related items such as easter egg/chocolate wrapping foil, foil trays for pet food or pies and tarts, even the serrated boxes that silver foil comes in but not silver foil itself. Crazy!

It’s easy to reduce using it in the first place by swapping to using lids on tubs or bowls instead etc and reusable wrapping materials – and it’s widely recycled too — most kerbside/community bins for tin cans accept foil too. But what about reuses for it?

I know a lot of people reuse clean bits of foil as new. Do you do that? If not, do you have other reuses for nearly-new foil?

What about for “dirty” foil – stuff with food baked onto it?

(Picture by pasukara76)

The other week when I asked how people make their home baked goods last longer, Dani suggested using little packets of silica gel crystals to a biscuit jar to draw the moisture away from the munchables. (I’ve heard rice can be used in the same way.)

Dani’s comment got me thinking about other ways that those little sachets of silica gel could be reused. Dani gets hers from bottles of vitamins but they are often included with other things too – I’ve had them in shoes or leather bags/purses, or thrown in with deliveries of dried food items.

Care should be taken when reusing these pouches – because silica gel crystals can cause irritation to the repository and digestive tracts – but their moisture absorbing qualities are very useful: they can absorb up to 40% of its own weight in water vapour.

Looking around the web, people suggest using them to protect sensitive items from getting damp: important papers, seeds, camera/electronic equipment – even jewellery (the moisture adds to tarnish on silver). You can also use silica gel crystals to as cat litter – but I imagine you’d need a helluva lot of these little sachets to fill a tray.

What else can you do with them?

Over on the Suggest an Item page, Kate asked:

What can I do with old pencil stubs, the used ones that are too small to write with any more?

Stubs of old crayons are super easy to reuse – just melt a load down into a new, easy-to-hold shape and off you go – but I suspect pencils will be harder.

I vaguely remember being a kid and taping two together, end to end, to make a slightly longer, double-ended pencil – and it seems you can buy gizmos to help you do that now (although I’m pretty sure I just used tape).

I also know that Jane Eldershaw of JunkJewelry uses the ends of pencils in her work.

Any other reusing or recycling ideas?