While I have my garbage down to a small bag per month, I have way too many things that get recycled. I am a firm believer that I am not living completely within my values if I have a bag of recycling every other week. I thought I would share a newly re-purposed item, one I would have normally recycled.
I love canned pineapple! If I eat too much of the fresh pineapple I end up with sores in my mouth. It’s frustrating as I enjoy the taste. Every now and then I splurge on a couple of cans of pineapple. I ended up with 2 empty cans and had put them in the recycling bag (I use one of my re-usable grocery bags and dump it when I need to use the bag). I pulled them out and decided I could find a use for them.
I had previously been using a paint can to store the children’s markers and crayons. This wasn’t working well as they would either have to dig to find the one they wanted or spill them out to make it easier. You can see here what a mess the can looked like inside.
Here’s what I did. I added fabric to both the inside and outside of the can. The fabric was leftover from other projects (and made in the USA!), then sealed it well to protect them.
Then I sorted the crayons and markers into their own can leaving the cap or the tip of the crayon standing up to make finding the needed color easy.
Not only is this easier and makes coloring more enjoyable, but the children like it so well they don’t have to be asked to put them back the right way, they got it! An added bonus is that these two cans take up less space on the shelf than the paint can did. The paint can will be re-purposed into a hanging planter in the summer.
Zero waste, zero recycling!
If I were to do this again, I would use a lighter weight fabric as this heavier Waverly fabric was a little difficult to work with. You can probably see some of the wrinkles in the photo. I also found folding it over the lip of the can to protect the sharp edge was a little difficult with the heavier fabric.
What have you re-purposed lately rather than recycle something?
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Life In A Minimalist Farmhouse 
Cool idea! Thanks.. 😀
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You’re welcome, I’d love to see what ideas you could come up with for using cans to help me when I have one needing a purpose.
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Perfect and beautiful! Recycling is good, but to find good new use to old things is much better 🙂
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Thank you. I agree, recycling is good, but it still takes resources to convert it into something new.
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Wonderful idea, and new, better way of looking at things. I very much want to visit more often and certainly will, even if there are gaps between visits.
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Good to have you when you can visit. Glad you liked this idea, I don’t often have cans, but will share any thing else I can think of when I have some.
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Way to go! I wish I was this good at re-purposing things… 🙂
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Thank you Tegan, there are plenty of ideas out there if you want to do a few searches when you have something. One new app is the trash backwards app that you can type an item into a search and click to find a new use for the item you have.
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Wow, that’s pretty awesome, I had no idea there was an app like that. O: I should check it out because my recycling bin is actually over flowing at the moment! xx
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go to app.trashbackwards.com it’s a great app, although I’ve only played with it long enough to know it was worth suggesting to my readers.
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I’ve spray painted some commercial cookie tins to reuse as packaging for homemade treats this year. That’s about it for right now though. I have a few bins of recycling that go out each week.
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Not a bad idea, I like it. I have one commercial cookie tin that I put aside till I could think of a use for it. I too have more recycling than I would like to have, but I tell myself at least my trash doesn’t go out often. I have a small can that takes me about 3 weeks or more to fill. I want to reduce that as well, but so far that’s as long as I can go.
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I still have a pencil can that I made from when I was a child. We glued burlap to the outside of a can and then cut out felt pieces to make our design on top of that. I made little flowers on mine.
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Now that would look much nicer than mine. I wish I had burlap on hand. I’d love to see a photo of it for inspiration.
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It’s at my mother’s house right now so I’m not able to take a picture of it. The burlap was yellow, and we had lots of colors of felt. I think it’s my favorite craft I did as a child. I made it in Vacation Bible School.
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I’m glad you still have it, it shows how much it meant to you even, if it’s at your mother’s house.
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Your post title really caught my eye. I so agree that Reduce and Reuse come before Recycle! Sometimes if cans are just the right size and have a lid (like coffee cans) I save them and refill them with stuff I buy at the Bulk Barn. My pet peeve is cans that are not made of metal – they are made of treated cardboard with metal ends – because they can’t be recycled. Like the ones for frozen juice concentrate. But they are pretty good for crafts like pencil holders.
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There have been so many dumb IMO choices in making containers, one that bugs me is why paint cans are now made of plastic. I too believe we have to learn to reduce and reuse first. Since I made it my goal to have zero waste I have to stop and try to think of a use for every thing before I purchase it.
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I hope I can get to that stage. Do you ever have to buy anything in molded plastic clamshell packaging?
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Not that I can recall in a while. The one thing I have gotten is the new bags that are filled with air when I buy from Amazon. I get that it’s recyclable, but wish they used something else.
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I have a small mason jam-jar holding my toothbrush, another jam jar holding my baking soda for toothbrushing purposes, and just last night I used a glass juice bottle to put tea in so I could have iced tea in the fridge 🙂 yay!
I’m trying to eliminate plastic… I dunno how well I will do, but I’m trying!
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I’m glad you are finding a way to eliminate plastic. I have a stainless steel cup for my toothbrush and metal tin for my baking soda other than the toothbrush and a toilet bowl brush I have no plastic in my bathroom.
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My wastebaskets are plastic. Eventually I’d like to switch to wire mesh or even wood… I just have two little “dorm room” size ones.
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Ok, you got me there. I don’t have a waste can in the bathroom, but the one I do have in the kitchen is plastic, it’s a small one, shorter than my dorm sized fridge. Like you I would like to get rid of it at some point. I pretty much have all the plastic out of the rest of my kitchen, I do have a sippy cup for my youngest grand daughter that is plastic because it’s the only kind she would drink out of, but I can soon get rid of that because she now likes to drink out of a regular cup.
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