We’ve had an email from Katy:

Cleaning out my mum’s cupboards I’ve found some tatty straw tablemats and a set of coasters that must be as old as me! Can I compost them?

Maybe. A cautious composter might want to leave them out – you don’t know if the straw has been treated with anything and the thread used to hold them together might be synthetic too – but if you were less concerned about things like that, the straw ((or similar woven wood, if it’s not actually straw) would probably rot down pretty quickly once it got warm & damp and you could just remove the thread if it remained intact.

However, before you throw them on your compost heap, you might want to consider reusing or upcycling them first.

How about using them to make a fun casual bag or purse? There is a how-to on Craftster on making a bag from a big placemat – I’m sure it could be modified if the placemats were smaller and not embroidered. Very floppy straw placemats can apparently be made into hats as well.

Is the tattiness just at the edges? Perhaps they could be neatened up with a bit of sewing – attach any stray strands back into the mat and/or cover the edges with strip of fun fabric. If one side is tatty or stained but the other side ok, they could be covered with a thin layer of fabric – the straw would still protect the table.

Any other recycling ideas?

We’ve had an email from Adele:

For my Product Design A2 level I am aiming to create a chair made from recycled materials. I’ve got to be able to collect them in a fairly short time, and of course it would be very helpful if the items were free…I’ve got an open mind about it, and I need some inspiration fairly quick.

Cardboard chairs are the first thing to spring to mind – designers have made them in all sorts of shapes and styles and there are a number of how-tos around the internet, and people talking about the theory of making them too.

If it doesn’t have to be a formal chair, it might be worth exploring upcycling old clothes or bedding to make a bean bag. (I’ve also used old clothes to repair broken chairs on a number of occasions – an opened out jean leg is about the right width for a director’s chair seat – but those projects did start with a real chair frame.)

Getting a bit more involved than just cardboard or fabric, you can make chairs from old oil drums/barrels – for example, these basic chairs or a more flamboyant rocker. Plastic barrels might be slightly easier to work with but still transformable (these chairs aren’t made from old barrels but give an idea of possible shape).

Any other suggestions for Adele?

(Photo by Jascha400d)

We’ve had an email from Sylvia in a similar vein to our “how to use the last of everything” post a few months ago:

I love Avon products but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get all of the gel out of the bottle when I can’t shake any more out!! Any suggestions??

Back in the day, I used to use a straw to get the last of my (apparently frizz-easing) hair gel out of the narrow, tall bottle – that was pretty messy but got a lot of the sticky gunk off the sides of the jar.

Depending on the gel’s use, you might be able to do the old add-water-and-swoosh-around trick used for shampoo — it’ll make the gel a little more watery but that’ll be fine for some gels.

If you’re losing a lot of gel, and the bottle is plastic, you might want to see if you could swap to getting it in flexible tubes rather than bottles – that way you can cut open the tube and scrap out the stuff left on the sides.

Any other suggestions?

A couple of weeks ago on on The Really Good Life, I post my top 5 clothes line drying tips.

One of my tips is to use a clothes peg airer thing if possible – one of these things – it stops the little items taking up space on your main line and is easy to take inside if it starts raining.

Petra liked the idea and decided to make her own out of “some electricity pipe, an old iron coat hanger, some rope and pegs” – and that’s so great that I’m now adamant about reusing and recycling to make my own, once my current flimsy plastic ones break. And it got me thinking about making other line drying/clothes airing stuff too…

Have you made any clothes lines/airers/drying racks yourself, reusing and recycling old materials? What did you use?

Or have you fixed/extended a shop-bought airer to make it more suitable for your needs?

Any tips or advice for anyone else?

(Funnily enough, I was thinking about this a year ago too – I asked how to make a cover for my rotary airer so I could leave clothes out during occasional showers. It must be something about this increasingly moist time of year!)

When we were talking about making jewellery from drinks cans a couple of months ago, Mary Anne Enriquez sent me links to some relevant Flickr groups which then got buried in my inbox – sorry for that Mary Anne!

Anyway, Mary Anne thought Recycle This readers may be interested in the following Flickr groups:

• PET Bottle and other Plastics Recycled Creativity – jewellery and other knick-knacks made from old plastic bottles
• Fan>TAB>ulous Aluminum & Tin Can ART – art and accessories made from, or incorporating, drinks cans or can tabs.
• Cardboard Tubes ReCrafted – all sorts of ornaments and other things made from assorted cardboard tubes – from toilet roll tubes to giant sturdy ones.

Lots of wonderfully creative work – inspiring stuff.

Thanks so much for the links, Mary Anne and sorry again that it’s taken me so long to post them!

(Roses photo by rosely pignataro; cardboard cutout photo by giulia massera)