From making dog toys last week to kids toys this week… We’ve had an email from Petra:

Thank you for your very nice and useful site. You helped me before, but now I have a new (reverse) question:

In a few months, my youngest daughter becomes 3 years old. On her day care, it is common to give the other (little) children a small present or healthy treat.

I prefer to give a small present, especially when it is useful and they can play with it for quite a while. Last year, I made them little bags from foam that was left over from a party.

This year, again, I would like to make something for the children, preferable a nice little toy by recycling stuff. But I’m out of ideas.

Could you or your readers help me with some ideas? It should not take too much time to make, since I need to make 20 of them. And they should be safe for little ones as well.

I’ve not had a lot of experience of making gifts for children en masse so I’m going to have to ask other people to help out here… Any ideas?

One suggestion I would make – and one that might be better for slightly older children – is to take advantage of free child labour ;) Provide them with the materials to, say, make their own puppet or little creature and encourage/help them to put it together/customise it themselves. Any more age appropriate suggestions?

This one came to me in my sleep the other night – the waxed paper type wrapping you get on some loaves of sliced bread. I obsessed about it until morning so I wouldn’t forget to write it down and let me tell you, I had some weird packaging related dreams that night.

ANYWAY, waxed paper bread packaging. We’ve had bread bags and the film stuff from fancy fresh supermarket baked bread but not the waxed paper option. It’s not as common as it used to be but some brands still use it across the board.

The wrapping is not currently recyclable but carefully opened, it can be opened out into a decent size wipeable sheet. It can then be reused for it’s original purpose again and again – wrapping around homemade bread or sandwiches – but has anyone done anything more involved with it?

From a reduce point of view, you could make you own packaging-free bread or source packaging-free bread from a local baker/independent store. If you have to rely on supermarket but also have decent plastic recycling facilities in your area, you might prefer to buy bread in easy-to-recycle plastic bags – that seems to call back to our discussion the other week, about whether or not you choose to buy things with more packaging or in this case packaging which on the face of it seems worse for the environment (paper versus plastic) but is actually easier to recycle.

Over on the Suggest an Item page, Cate B asked:

I have an old ali baba wicker laundry basket that is unravelling itself after years of use. Do you think I could grow potatoes in it and would I have to line it to stop soil falling out?

If the wicker is made from natural fibres, I imagine that it would start to rot pretty quickly once it was filled with wet soil — I had a purpose-bought, plastic-lined wicker hanging basket a few years ago and that fell apart after two years max, in the garden – and that was designed to be outside and hold wet soil.

I probably wouldn’t be much more willing to use it if it was made from synthetic fibres either: plastic for outdoor use is treated to be resistant to UV rays, else it discolours & starts to break down – and I’m not sure I’d want plastic breaking down that close to my food.

On the flip side though, if you can grow your potatoes in something else, you could use the wicker basket for storing them – brush off any damp soil and leave them in the open to dry off excess surface moisture for a couple of hours, then they can be stored in the wicker basket in a cool, dry part of your house. The wicker will let excess moisture to escape unlike a solid container.

Has anyone tried growing potatoes in an old washing basket?

Or does anyone have any reusing or recycling ideas for one?

We’ve had loads of really good suggestions for what to do with egg shells over the years but here are some of my favourites:

1. Feed them back to your chickens (or lizards, or dogs…)
Eggs shells contain a considerable amount of calcium – they’re 95% calcium carbonate, with the remaining 5% being a binding protein to hold the shell together – so they can be used as a useful mineral supplement for birds, reptiles or animals.

To feed them back to chickens, bake them in a hot oven for about half an hour then crush them into small grit-sized pieces. Bake them while you’re cooking something else to be more energy efficient – it kills bacteria, makes them easier to crush and changes the taste so are less likely to encourage the hens to peck their fresh eggs. The hens will reward you by recycling the old broken egg shells into fresh new eggs!

The same baked crushed shells can be added to the food of egg-laying reptiles (same principle as chickens) but for dogs on raw food diets, most people simply blend/crush a whole fresh egg in with the dog’s other food every now and then as a calcium boost.

2. Use them for cleaning
Again, baked and crushed, they can be used as a mildly abrasive, natural way to clean stains off the insides of bottles, flasks, vases, or other hard to clean things. Place a couple of tablespoons of crushed egg shells in the container, add water, then shake, baby, shake! The egg shells should help remove stains from tea & coffee or wine, without scratching the much harder surface. After you’re done, you can tip the shelly water into your compost (see #5).

3. Make your own Sterno/heating fuel
Again, taking advantage of all that calcium, you can turn egg shells into homemade Sterno – a long-burning heat sauce made from jellied alcohol, used instead of tealights to keep food warm or as a camping stove fuel. Full instructions on how to make it can be found on the Zen Stoves website (along with advantages and disadvantages of using Sterno as a cooking/heating method).

4. Turn them into chalk – or other pieces of art
If that’s a bit too much like a chemistry experiment for you, how about just making them into floor chalk instead? It’s a pretty easy thing to do – perfect for kids as it doesn’t involve stabbing instruments or flames.

5. Use them in the garden
Roughly crushed egg shells have traditionally been used as a slug deterrent in the gardens – the theory is if you sprinkle a circle of shell around plant stems, slugs won’t cross the sharp rough surface to get to your precious plants. It’s very much more of a deterrent than an eradication measure though and while some people swear by it, other people just swear at the continued loss of their lovely hostas.

Egg shells can also be added to the compost heap – whole shells take ages to break down but crushed ones disappear into the general matter very quickly.

More reuses or recycling ideas for egg shells…

Brr! For few days last week, it felt like we were getting a last minute reprieve from summer’s sayonara but now it feels very autumnal indeed. I guess it’s time to shift into winter mode – I’ve got a list of insulating chores to complete, the garden needs more tidying, I need to make soup, lots of soup, and I also need to go through the woolies in my wardrobe to see what’s in there & what’s still wearable etc.

Now is the perfect time to do the latter because charity shops, shelters and other related charities need clothing in good time before winter properly kicks in – they need to time to sort and distribute them etc. I urge everyone to have a look through their wardrobes and see if there is anything that could be used more productively by someone else. And it’s not just jumpers or cardigans – scarves, hats & gloves are all very useful and in high demand too.

When possible, passing on items for reuse by others is always the best option — but what if they’re not they’re not in a suitable condition for passing on? Or if they’ve got sentimental appeal (such as they were made by a loved one)? What can be done with them then?

If part of the scarf is damaged/stained, the rest of it could salvaged to reuse as any flat knitted fabric – cute tote bag, cushion cover, nappy/diaper cover – and if it’s got a decent quantity of wool in it, it could be felted opening up more options (oven gloves/hot pads, wrist warmers, even cute tote bag).

Any other upcycling ideas?