We’ve had an email from ReuseRecycleMom‘s Von, saying:

I am recycling my grandmother’s old tea cups into bird feeders. I thought I’d share….

I’d love other ideas with what to do with odd bits of china.

We’ve already covered some bits and pieces – like mugs & cups that have lost their handles, and broken crockery in general – but what about other odd bits: cups & saucers like here, or gravy boats, milk jugs and other random tableware.

If they’re in good condition, they can of course go to charity shops or the like – the household bricabrac shelves are my favourite place for picking up beautifully ugly china – but what about stuff that chipped or cracked?

Like with last week’s baby food jars, I’ve seen old pretty cups and saucers used to make sewing kits (the cup topped with a pincushion and used for storage, the saucer used for holding pins/buttons mid-job) and old chipped shallow bowls around here are frequently used underneath plants.

Any other suggestions?

As I mentioned before when talking about broken crockery in general, we have a very hard, very cold stone floor in the kitchen. Things tend to smash, or at least break, when we drop them.

In addition to that general broken crockery thing, I thought broken mugs, particularly handle-less mugs, deserved their own post. We’ve got a small collection under the sink, holding random bits and bobs (fuses, screws, bits of chain) that really should be sorted out and put where they belong because we’ll never remember to look there when we need them.

So what else can we do with our stash? We’ve got the handles for two of them but they can’t be glued back on and used for drinks again for safety reasons – and all the mugs are just a bit too small to use for planters (well, for the houseplants we’ve got at the moment at least). Any other ideas?