Paper your walls with old maps!
For some of you, the term “creative reuse” might seem a bit daunting, especially if you don’t consider yourself to be “creative” or “crafty” or “artistic.” Creative reuse doesn’t have to be about how or what you make, but that you just reuse something to make something else. And looking at an everyday object and asking yourself, “How else can I use this?” well, that’s creative enough. In our world, there are no wrong expressions of creativity, and more often than not, it’s easier than you think. There are infinite ways to give new life to things we don’t use as they were originally intended.
For example:
Old teacups can be used to hold critters (I mean, souvenirs) or jewelry.
A cream pitcher–which most of us probably wouldn’t use for cream–can instead be used to hold rubber bands, twist-ties, and clips for resealing food packaging.
Your medicine cabinet looks much cheerier when you store cotton balls and swabs in mason jars and teacups.
You can use teacups and jars to hold things in easy reach, inside your medicine cabinet. That way, the big bags of cotton balls and Q-tips can stay in a pantry where there’s more room.
Old postcards and maps can be framed and hung on your walls to brighten rooms. Maps also make excellent wrapping paper.
Spices are very happy in their reused containers.
A lot of these things probably seem trivial and perhaps obvious, but they make a big difference! Creating a masterpiece out of wine corks and magazine cut-outs is great, but allowing a teacup to hold more than tea hardly takes any effort or money and makes just as big a difference. There are so many easy ways to divert waste from the landfill that don’t take any time, money, or talent. Plus, you may find that your surroundings are more visually pleasing once you get rid of all that plastic and packaging! And that’s really what creative reuse is all about: enhancing the world around you with what you see every day.
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