Philip Mitchell Graham has left us another suggestion/excellent upcycle idea:

Ironing boards. One of the great monuments to inbuilt obsolescence is the common ironing board. They are designed to break after a few years, because the folding mechanism is made of cheap mild steel and the legs often buckle if someone places a heavy load of washing on them.

No matter, use a bit of fencing wire to lock them in an open position, then use them as light work benches in the studio or garden. Sure they are light, but many tasks do not need a heavy table. If you have a few of them, you have in effect a modular bench system that you can reconfigure with no effort. They are light enough to move with one arm which is very useful if like me, you find yourself in need of a bench when you have one arm full.

I suspect our ironing board will outlive us since we use it that rarely (in fact we were utterly shocked to find we had one – we thought it had gone to the furniture charity shop before we moved house). It feels really flimsy though so I suspect if we used any more than once a year, it would fall apart in a shot.

I like Philip’s mobile workbench idea. With a tablecloth over it, it could also be an emergency table for a party or bbq.

Any other suggestions? What about if it can’t be fixed with garden wire – any uses for the metal pipe legs or the board itself?

Philip Mitchell Graham has left quite a few comments on the Suggest an item page recently so I guess I should start making my way through his ideas!

First up:

Old split plastic rubbish bins. I used one as a liner in an old metal rubbish bin. Metal bins often loose their bottoms, whereas the plastic ones often split on the sides. Between the two, I made a perfectly serviceable bin. I expect to get a few extra years of service out of two bins that had no future at all.

Great reuse Philip.

Without a metal outer, they’re useful for storing stuff that needs to be pretty dry but doesn’t need to be bone dry. We’ve got a split plastic bin in our woodstore for kindling – it keeps it neat and in one place, and not enough water makes it through the cracks to be a problem. If we had another, I’d probably use it for my garden stuff – spare pots and other bits and bobs – that don’t need to be in the greenhouse but need to be contained so they don’t get blown around.

Do you use old bins around your garden too? Do you have any other reuses for them?

We’ve had an email from Simon:

We’ve got two old electric kettles in our garage, one works but is very grimy, the other doesn’t work, not sure why. Can we do anything with them?

Electric kettles are covered under the WEEE Directive so in theory, you should be able to send them back to their manufacturer for recycling. In practise though, this isn’t always easy to do – but most, if not all, councils in the UK have some provision for small appliance recycling at household waste centres. Some even do periodic doorstep collection of electrical items so do check on your local situation.

It might be worth seeing if the dirty working one can be rescued though – it might just need some elbow grease and a good de-scaling. If you don’t have a use for it, someone on your local Freecycle/Freegle group might be able to use it either for general kettle use (if they’re happy with how it cleans up) or for non-food purposes.

Fun/pretty old kettles – or vintage-style new ones – might also have some appeal as a quirky planter.

Any other reuses or better ways to recycle them?

We’ve had an email from Chrissy asking what to do with an old doormat:

The bristly kind. Compost it?

The bristly ones are usually made from coir – coconut fibre – so a natural material that will compost — but it can apparently takes many years to decompose. That’s a good thing really – we’d have to replace our doormats more often if they rotted every six months – and it probably would rot down quicker in a warm, moist compost bin than on the doorstep, but possibly one for a long term compost bin rather than a quick turn around one. (Also, be careful if it has rubber or synthetic backing – you might not want that breaking down in your compost bin at all.)

In her short and sweet email, Chrissy doesn’t say why she’s getting rid of it but depending on its condition, it might be reusable in the same or another capacity – if I had a spare doormat right now, no matter how tatty, it would go outside the door to our chicken run so I could wipe my feet on the way out before traipsing back up the garden. Or, I made a wellie stand a few weeks ago and it could easily be fitted out with some stripes of bristly coir to help clean the mud off them first.

Any other reuse suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Kelly, asking about reusing a “Swiffer” handle:

I’m sick of having to buy Swiffer cloths so am swapping to a regular brush and mop instead. What can I do with an old Swiffer then?

Disposable branded cloths aren’t the only option for using with Swiffers and the like – there are lots of homemade alternative options, often reusing and recycling old fabric from clothes, which can be washed and reused like any household cloth.

Looking at the pictures on Google, they’re look like a pole with a flat bit on the end so I imagine could be used for various other cleaning purposes – gazing at our filthy window here, I could imagine using it to dry water stains off the glass.

The pole away from the base could be useful by itself – I remember an old thrifty decorating tip was to use wooden broom handles instead of curtain poles, I’m not sure if the Swiffer pole would work for that but maybe it would… Could the base be used as a sandpaper block when you want to lightly sand a large area?

Any other suggestions?