A few weeks ago now, we had a weekend away (to Lindisfarne – was great) and when we returned, we were greeted by a big bundle of wires in the middle of our garden path. A neighbour had found – and disassembled – a broken sunbed while we were away and the wires were leftover. He knows we like using odd things so left them out for us.

So I took them in and sorted them by colour – but don’t know what to do with them. They seem to be quite thick – but malleable – copper, coated in pretty tough plastic. They mostly range in length from around 50cm (20″) to about 1m (40″), but there are some shorter ones at about 20cm (8″) too.

The wires look pretty flexible and strong but I don’t know if they’re bendy enough to use for something like macrame – at least fine knotting – but I like the idea of using them from something crafty. So any suggestions?

Or any more practical ideas?

After the disposable razor post the other week, I decided to make a concerted effort to avoid using them in the future and stick to using my rechargeable electric razor instead – and then, of course, said electric razor died.

I don’t know if the battery just stopped holding charge or if something mechanical went wrong with it suddenly but either way, it’s now an ex-razor.

Any suggestions for ways I can recycle or reuse the razor itself – presumably a battery as well as the actual shaving bit – or the related charger? With the growing popularity of rechargeable batteries in electronic devices, I suspect there is a growing mountain of electrical adaptors with proprietary connectors that are no longer needed once the device has died or is replaced because it’s the wrong shade of chrome for this week’s fashion. So any ideas what to do with them?

Robert Adler, one of the guys that co-invented the remote control, died last week.

I suspect when a piece of remote-controlled equipment dies, people just sling out the remote too but are there any way to reuse them? Let’s assuming getting the equipment fixed isn’t possible or feasible, are there any uses for the now-redundant remote control?

Or are there any places that re-sell them? We lost our tv remote control a few years ago and after searching everywhere, bought a replacement – but the replacement was brand new, when a second-hand one would have sufficed. Then, because life is just like that, we found the original and so now have a spare – is there any way for us to pass it on?