Repurposed Items

[barkley]

anyone want to share ways they've repurposed unused/end of original lifespan household items that would have otherwise been destined for the trash?

my top 3 that i use consistently-

a couple of old plastic rectangular laundry baskets that have some broken sections that would snag laundry. instead of going into the dumpster they are in the back of the car so when i go grocery shopping i can put the bags inside and if they tip over i'm not opening the hatch to cascading items (also great for food orders to go-no more tip and spills).

4 of dh's old dive weights (bean bag style)-in a niche in the back of the car so if i buy a sheet cake or large pizza i can surround it and prevent sliding.

2 old thrashed rolling office chairs. torn up seats but they work great in the garage where i use them to hold the freezer door open and stack items as i'm searching for what i need but their greatest use is when i return from grocery shopping and roll them out to the car. pile a bunch of bags on top to make for fewer trips back and forth to the car AND also can designate one for just the frozen foods to roll over to the freezer and put away.

 

[easyas123]

We took down a old dairy barn on our farm last year, only I kept the milking house up and we are using it as a potting shed. My husband fancies himself as a bit of a Monty Don We painted it to match the other barn and it turned out nicely.

 

[china mom]

I snagged a rusty old cookie sheet that was headed for the trash. I am going to spray paint it and put contact paper over the flat part and hang it on the wall in my office for a magnetic board.

 

[HopperFan]

Team Repurpose, Recycle, Upcycle, Thrift Store, Estate Sale, Garage Sale ....
.... so I'm excited to read all the interesting stories here!!

I think most mine are small items or projects, or using items I bought resale for another purpose or maybe same but saving from the dump just because injured or not in use.

- Our attic is floored with all recycled wood, so different colors and some variation in height. No sense in throwing away something that will work in a space no one but us sees anyway.

- I bought a bathroom sink from men's room of the Loews Grand Theater (ATL - premiere of Gone with the Wind) in 1978 and it sits outside as a planter. (I also have 4 of the movie seats on loan to my brother in his basement pub).

- Mom's hope chest that lid split got some add-ons and made into a window seat.

- Saved from dump: Laundry room has about 15 ft of bottom cabinets saved from a business going to dump, Garage has a full wall of upper and lower oak cabinets being dumped from Mom's kitchen demo, Wall of bottom cabinets in basement bedroom saved from dump .... all about reusing items in new place or way to keep from dumps.

Look forward to reading so hopefully folks keep posting .... give me

 

[Micca]

2 old thrashed rolling office chairs. torn up seats but they work great in the garage where i use them to hold the freezer door open and stack items as i'm searching for what i need but their greatest use is when i return from grocery shopping and roll them out to the car. pile a bunch of bags on top to make for fewer trips back and forth to the car AND also can designate one for just the frozen foods to roll over to the freezer and put away

I don't use the term "Hero" lightly but...

 

[HopperFan]

I don't use the term "Hero" lightly but...

Residential grocery carts! Great idea!!

 

[Cadiewampus]

I snagged a rusty old cookie sheet that was headed for the trash. I am going to spray paint it and put contact paper over the flat part and hang it on the wall in my office for a magnetic board.

If its aluminum won't work

 

[china mom]

If its aluminum won't work

No, its an old one. It is magnetic.

 

[BlueStarryHat]

I use empty toilet paper tubes to stuff extension cords in for storage. Easy to stack the rolls in the cupboard and just grab one when needed.

 

[dizneegirl]

If its aluminum won't work

Aluminum wouldn't rust.

 

[Imzadi]

2 old thrashed rolling office chairs. torn up seats but they work great in the garage where i use them to hold the freezer door open and stack items as i'm searching for what i need but their greatest use is when i return from grocery shopping and roll them out to the car. pile a bunch of bags on top to make for fewer trips back and forth to the car AND also can designate one for just the frozen foods to roll over to the freezer and put away.

Love this idea! To make a cart without needing to make a cart.

 

[Imzadi]

Team Repurpose, Recycle, Upcycle, Thrift Store, Estate Sale, Garage Sale ....
.... so I'm excited to read all the interesting stories here!!

I think most mine are small items or projects, or using items I bought resale for another purpose or maybe same but saving from the dump just because injured or not in use.

I love this concept! I got turned onto it by a fellow DISer who told us about the local Free/Freecycle/Spend Nothing type groups, as people try to GIVE away stuff they no longer use, but are in perfectly good condition, or are possibly able to be easily fixed, instead of the items going to the landfill. Also, many of us don't want to re-sell something. We just want the items GONE.

I now understand why garage sale-ing and antiqueing are such addictive hobbies. Although, I'm not into antiques. But "new-to-me" items, that other people barely used and are letting go of, I'm in! I've been able to update, remodel and redecorate my place for next to nothing. And I am sending my own items into the community, onto new homes. I only wish I knew about these groups during the pandemic, when we were all sitting at home and had the time to make exchanges.

Two of my favorite "new-to-me" acquisitions:

A Sonos soundbar for my TV. (Would have been $400 used.) The owner was moving in with her BF and consolidating items. He had a better soundbar and hers wasn't connecting anymore to WiFi. I was planning on hard-wiring it to the back of my TV anyway, so I didn't need the WiFi. But, after I brought it home and did a factory reset, the WiFi works perfectly! I no longer need to have the closed captions turned on my TV, the TV's speakers suck so badly. Now, even whispering comes out crystal clear.

The second item: I was in the process of buying new inkjet cartridges and a refurbished printhead to get my really old, all-in-one, color inkjet printer working again. (The cartridges & printhead dry out and clogged up due to non-use.) It would have cost me about $50 to swap everything out and get it working again. But, I really, really wanted a newer, wireless printer.

Someone listed one as she was back to working in the office, which has one. (They had actually paid for her brand new printer so she could work at home during the pandemic. They told her to keep it, but she wanted her space back, since she could use the office printer again.) She said the yellow ink was coming out really streaky, but all the other colors worked fine.

I suspected that the yellow printhead was clogged. (If I was wrong, I just go back to fixing my old printer that I knew would work.) I flooded the printhead with isopropyl alcohol, swabbed it with with a Q-tip, and did several cleaning cycles on it. It works perfectly now! I printed out several photos on it that are flawless. And the HP company has some weird "ink membership" for this printer. They sent me brand new ink cartridges as a new member, and I'm signed up for only the $1.50/mo membership, as I print out so few pages. It will take me about 3 YEARS to equal the $50 I would have spent to get my old printer working again.


As for my old printer, I taped on a sign saying the printer works fine, and listed the items needed to get it up & running again. I placed the printer next to my building's dumpster, so others would see it. (I didn't bother listing it in the groups.) I happened to walk by several hours later to toss out some trash, and it had already been snatched up.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

We put wheels on one end of an antique apple crate and use it (standing vertically) in our half bath to hold some reading material and a small basket (as a hamper, as the laundry is also in that room). Wheels make it easy to move for cleaning and elevate it a little bit. We’ve had that for many years, and even kept it last year when we renovated that bathroom.

DH makes his own flies for fly fishing and has a lot of repurposed items for that. He uses a pool noodle or even a coffee cup to hold his flies as he’s making them. He collects cigar boxes to hold different materials (feathers, discarded animal fur, plastic eyes, wire and other parts, etc.) and even made a shelf with nine cigar boxes as drawers. We have also buried our hamsters in cigar boxes.

Outside we have an old milk can in original condition that we keep as an extra seat on the porch that doesn’t take up much space and adds a decorative effect. DH built an armoire that originally we used for the stereo and storage of small holiday decor, but now it’s being used as a TV stand (but still has the stereo and holds less decor as we had to cut the shelves). We keep an old goose decoy on top.

I’m sure I’ll think of more because we like to thrift.

 

[princesscinderella]

We live in so Florida and in order to qualify for an insurance discount when putting in hurricane windows all the doors also need to be hurricane rated. We had a beautiful wood carved door that we had to replace to get the discount. It had eight inset carved panels. My friend is a woodworker so he took the door and trimmed off the edges and cut it into one section with two of the panels and the other has 6. I stripped the paint off the back side that was inside and took off years of varnish off the front, stained and resealed it. I got hairpin legs off Amazon and had glass cut to fit the top and made it into a matching coffee & side table. I love them and they are part of the history of our home, and just such beautiful craftsmanship that’s just not made the same way anymore. I couldn’t bear to just throw it away.

 

[luvthatduke]

. I got hairpin legs off Amazon and had glass cut to fit the top and made it into a matching coffee & side table. I love them and they are part of the history of our home, and just such beautiful craftsmanship that’s just not made the same way anymore. I couldn’t bear to just throw it away.

Pictures, please?

 

[barkley]

We live in so Florida and in order to qualify for an insurance discount when putting in hurricane windows all the doors also need to be hurricane rated. We had a beautiful wood carved door that we had to replace to get the discount. It had eight inset carved panels. My friend is a woodworker so he took the door and trimmed off the edges and cut it into one section with two of the panels and the other has 6. I stripped the paint off the back side that was inside and took off years of varnish off the front, stained and resealed it. I got hairpin legs off Amazon and had glass cut to fit the top and made it into a matching coffee & side table. I love them and they are part of the history of our home, and just such beautiful craftsmanship that’s just not made the same way anymore. I couldn’t bear to just throw it away.

nothing beautiful like yours sounds but a friend's family had a catering company and their stock of banquet tables had been made of doors that they attached folding legs to. when she was trying to declutter her home years ago i gladly took one. it's stored in our crawl space but has been useful for a variety of projects and get togethers.

 

[Imzadi]

We live in so Florida and in order to qualify for an insurance discount when putting in hurricane windows all the doors also need to be hurricane rated. We had a beautiful wood carved door that we had to replace to get the discount. It had eight inset carved panels. My friend is a woodworker so he took the door and trimmed off the edges and cut it into one section with two of the panels and the other has 6. I stripped the paint off the back side that was inside and took off years of varnish off the front, stained and resealed it. I got hairpin legs off Amazon and had glass cut to fit the top and made it into a matching coffee & side table. I love them and they are part of the history of our home, and just such beautiful craftsmanship that’s just not made the same way anymore. I couldn’t bear to just throw it away.

I love watching YouTube videos where people take a thrifted item or a discarded item that has one or two really lovely elements, but not in it's current state or incarnation, and figure out a way to turn it into something else that is just as fabulous and will continue to live on. Sometimes the new piece is even better than the original.

 

[mamamary]

We have a Buy Nothing group in my immediate area. Over the last year or so I gave away so much stuff. I’m glad that my old and not so old stuff gets another chance.

 

[NYCgrrl]

I donated a lot of my woolens to a knitting group.
They unravel the sweaters and reknit into new goods.
Given that so many items are knitted with acrylics (personal yuck) it was a win win.

 

[tony67]

So many things I have repurposed over the years.

The two most recent. One was a piece of an old counter top left from when I built my bar. Basically butcher block.
I sanded it down and routed the edges and made a very nice cutting board.

The other was a cheap wooden box that was used as a vase for a plant my wife got as a gift. She liked it for some reason, but it was not great. Anyway I painted it with a white mildew resistant paint - several coats - and we use it for microfiber cloths on the kitchen counter.

I have numerous boxes of spare parts from various things we have put together, scrap wood, things that make no sense at all to keep, random screws and washers etc.. but every once and a while its exactly what I need to fix something.

My wife gets annoyed but I do MacGyver a lot of things and it usually goes well. Always enjoy pointing out that its something she wanted me to throw away that solved a problem.