Strange Items You Can Re-purpose at Home

Do you ever find yourself with random household items that you just don’t know what to do with? If you’re like my family, you probably have issues getting rid of stuff because you “just might need it”. Why not re-purpose these household items and give them a new life? Strange as they may be, they actually work, and are pretty useful!

Here are examples of some of the items we re-purpose and their different uses.

Mason jars

So, I think the whole point of mason jars is being able to re-use them for different things, but I figured I’d add them here anyway. I’ve been gifted plenty of cookie mixes, soup mixes, and what have you in these beautiful jars, but most of the time the empty jars have been sitting around collecting dust.

Here are a few ways I’ve used them:

• Coffee creamer- I just recently made my own 2-ingredient coffee creamer and it’s delicious! Mason jars are perfect for this as you can just shake it all up and store it in the fridge. Not only can you save money on creamer, but you’re re-using the jar over and over!
• Hot chocolate mix- Back in the winter, my family was obsessed with hot chocolate. And when we ran out of packets, I found and created a recipe for homemade hot chocolate mix to store in a jar. You can even make the jar look festive with special ribbons and labels!
• Savings jar- I was gifted a huge mason jar of soup mix, and after making the soup I turned the jar into a makeshift piggy bank for my coins. It sits on my bedside table and it’s cool seeing the jar slowly fill when I have extra coins.

Formula containers

If you’ve ever bought formula from Sam’s Club, you’ll know how sturdy these containers are! They’re huge and perfect for storage.

We’ve used them to hold our DIY laundry soap, and now we use one to hold our clothespins. Strangest of all, I now use the scoop for my coffee in the mornings.

I have a re-usable coffee filter for my Keurig that lets me use ground coffee, and the opening isn’t very wide so using a regular spoon makes coffee spill everywhere. But this formula scoop is the perfect size, and fits right in the opening!

Medicine cups

I’ll be honest- when I first saw John doing this, I thought he was weird. Now I think he’s a genius.

We practice portion control with meals, and it can be hard to judge the correct amount of salad dressing. But these little medicine cups hold exactly two tablespoons- the same amount as a serving of dressing.

We use these cups every day now, mostly for salad dressing and coffee creamer; John jokes that we need to buy more medicine because sometimes we actually use up all the cups in a day.

Miscellaneous

I looked throughout my house for other odd objects we re-purpose and here’s what I found:

• Food storage container: to hold my Post-its!
• Apple juice concentrate container: to hold John’s pens. I’m honestly not sure when or why that happened, but it did. And I think I’ve learned not to question our odd choices.
• Paint can: a make-shift trash can for the dryer lint.
• Grocery bags: to use inside the small trash cans around the house. I think a lot of people do this, though!

So some of these things you might be thinking, “Why in the world would she keep something like that?” Sometimes I don’t know, myself! I mean, we could easily go out and buy baskets for storage, or buy a special spoon for coffee. But if it works, why try to change it? I call it being resourceful and frugal.

What odd things do you re-purpose to keep from spending money? Leave a comment below!

Be sure to check out the other posts in my ABCs of Frugal Living series!

 

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