Upcycling

This is like, one of my favorite hobbies now. It's absurdly fun. BTW you can absolutely make a business out of any of the more involved upcycles. 6/23/23 Reorganized to put the recommended resources at the bottom of the page since that list just keeps growing

General Listing

• Upcycling Miscellany
• Upcycling Basketry Materials
• Upcycling Glass
• Upcycling Ceramics
• Upcycling Compostables and Food
• Upcycling Fibers
• Upcycling Metals
• Upcycling Paper and Cardboard
• Upcycling Plastic
• Upcycling Wood and Bamboo

Recommended Resources

• Flickr Search for "upcycled." Added 2/9/24
• Dumpaday Genius Ideas Section Added 6/23/23 Starting from the oldest entries, page 47
• Family Handyman search for Reuse Added 6/23/23 Surprisingly informative, though there are admittedly some sketchy ideas
• Jessica Lawshe on Ranker You might need to scroll down some to find the upcycling stuff posted
• The Secret Yumiverse at WonderHowTo Kind of mind-boggling.
• Sustain My Craft Habit A fun blog from Canada, containing nifty stuff
• Am now transferring items from Recycling Insanity section over here piece by piece via duplication so anyone who bookmarked the page won't look at it and go "where did everything go?" so this is going to get a little bit redundant. But hopefully better organized.
• Moms and Crafters Recycled Crafts Section
• Happy Hooligans More of a focus on arts and crafts for kids, but these are interesting enough for anyone of any age really
• Creative Jewish Mom Recycling Crafts Section
• Tip Junkie All Crafts Section
• DIY n Crafts Repurposing Section
• Instructables
• One Crazy House
• The Krazy Coupon Lady Tips At Home
• Sunshiine on Instructables A wide variety of ingenious upcycles and DIYs here
• Jessyratfink on Instructables Generally reliable tutorials be they for upcycling, food, or anything else.
• Hometalk Added 7/9/24. Link takes you to "drink can" search results, but you can search for any kind of stuff you'd otherwise throw out and find a wide assortment of stuff you could do with it instead.
• Gardening By The Yard TV series
• Don't Throw It Out! by Lori Baird and the editors at Yankee Magazine
• The Tightwad Gazette I and II by Amy Dacyzyn
• Back To Basics by Abigail Gehring
• Woodland Craft Handbook by Ben Law
• The Complete Practical Book of Country Crafts by Jack Hill
• Country Crafts Today by J.E. Manners
• The Joy of Cooking, almost any edition
• Craigslist See the "free" section. When you can't think of anything to do with something you'd otherwise throw out, put it on the curb, list it on Craigslist's free section, and it will probably disappear.

General Upcycling, section added 10/11/24

• Have you ever noticed that throughout the year you tend to accumulate cardboard boxes and other containers in good quality only to throw it away later, and then you wind up needing a good container to give away a Yuletide, Hanukah, birthday, or Christmas present? D'oh! Assigning one clean odor-free and bug-free closet or shelf in your living quarters to be the gifts for people place could help solve this issue. Then you'd just need to remember to put stuff there. Art supplies and wrapping paper or cloth will make it into something the giftee could treasure for a long time.
• Speaking of packaging and containers, what do you think people go to the Container Store for? Right, the stuff you'd otherwise throw out. If it's clear and you can put a label on it, or if you can use it to store stuff anyway, you might be able to store just about anything in there. Worst case scenario if it's good quality storage just donate it to a thrift store or recycle it, no need to junk it
• No matter what your trade or business is or what your habits are, if you are using raw materials for it, list out what they are. Then consider if you could reuse other materials instead. Hey, it's a lot cheaper.
• The following disciplines help a whole lot with certain parts of upcycling: woodworking (helps you figure out how to use raw wood, bamboo, cork), metalworking and wireworking (same for all metal), tinsmithing (metal), smithing (metal), glassblowing (glass), homebuilding or building sheds and such (assorted reused materials), mosaic working (broken ceramics), basketry (paper, cardboard, cloth, fabric), sewing (fabric), crochet (yarn, fabric), knitting (yarn, fabric), weaving (fabric, flexible rods), arts and crafts (of course; and depends on the kind of art or craft), chemistry (miscellany esp. liquids), gardening (food, farm wastes, garden wastes, wood), lapidary (rocks), jewelry (really depends on what you think looks good and is durable enough to last, also metals), maintenance and repair of anything and everything (whatever you're trying to repair), and masonry (rocks, bricks, concrete). If you happen to like any of these, learn as much as you can about that subject and then take a second glance at your materials, cause you are in luck. There is a lot of upcycling you can do. If you have a business in any of these then it's in your best interest to have people recycle the relevant stuff by straight up asking them for it, like maybe on Craigslist or through local business arrangements. (Incidentally the IRS will try to tax this, which is one of the many reasons why I think it needs a thorough overhaul and for that kind of stuff to be totally illegal, but eh, tangent is a tangent) In fact there is so much raw resource that people would otherwise throw out that you can find the raw materials for your work (at least in the US) just about anywhere!
• You should also be aware that the better you get at any or all of the above topics mentioned in the previous point, the more upcycling you will be able to do with the relevant substance. Hitting the books, watching the DVDs and taking the lessons is worth your time and effort and you can get lots or all of it for free at your local library

These suggestions come from a variety of sources. Figuring out who came up with what, and when, and who did it first is such a tangled knot of annoyance that copyright law can just go fuck itself on this one. However, if you would like to try to make this for-profit and copyright some idea or other such as "you can't reuse tin cans without paying me a royalty" after all the work many many people (and I) have put into it, then uh, that be bad karma. For some of these, I don't remember the source and for that I apologize. Ironically, I remember that a lot of these ideas which are now being copyrighted on various sites, including some of these, originally came from memes of unknown origin. Or, in particular, Instructables. You know? If you know you know.

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