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I was washing my sugar shaker today as it had gotten a little yucky over the last round of use. I try to wash it every time it becomes empty. As I was washing the little plastic tab that said "Nestle", I was pondering the nature of my sugar shaker.
You see, when I got divorced, some of my kitchen items went with me and some stayed with my husband. Regardless of the fact that I'm the coffee drinker in the house and use way more sugar, the sugar shaker stayed with him. Rather than buy one, however, I just reused a Coffeemate creamer container. I washed it out, tore off the label, and filled it with sugar. I've been divorced for 5 years now, and I'm still using this sugar shaker! No, it's not gross. It's actually in really good shape! It's a pretty durable plastic container to be quite honest. I know, I know. I could have bought a "real" sugar shaker for a dollar or so, but I'm like that. I reuse stuff. It's not about how much stuff costs, it's about how much I hate throwing perfectly good items into the trash and sending them off to landfills.
For instance, rather than continue to have my then-toddler's plastic drinking cups break or get gross inside and have to be thrown out, I would buy the juice in the plastic containers and reuse the containers as cups for him. They were going to be thrown out anyway, so I didn't feel so bad if he let a glass of juice get disgusting because I was too lazy to do the dishes and I had to throw it away! They are very durable, not easy to break. In fact, he's 7 now, and I still do this! A friend of mine misunderstood my reasons for doing this and bought me some "real" glasses made of actual glass. My husband broke half of them within a year!
A spaghetti jar is my toothbrush holder.
I use old newspapers to clean my windows instead of paper towels. Leaves them streak free and shiny!
Does anyone else reuse items like this around the house, or anywhere else?
I was going through some older posts and blogs and I couldn't help but feel very connected to this one. Although my youngest boy is growing like a weed, we never throw out his old clothes. Anything that is still in good shape (and that isn't much) goes to friends with younger kids or Goodwill (or similar organization.) As for all the rest of it, we reuse shirts as cleaning rags, the jeans become cat toys, any old blankets, sheets, etc. go to local animal shelters (they really need that stuff.) It drives the hubby crazy to have boxes of "old crap" as he calls it, but there is at least 1/2 ton less landfill ;)
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