Upcycling Miscellany

Rubber Boots

• Meet Mr. Boot Dog at Empress of Dirt

Old Shoes

• There are often shoe donation bins in grocery store parking lots. Sometimes you can donate them to thrift stores also. Consider these before you throw them away.

CDs and DVDs

• Fabric and CD coasters tutorial from Crafts by Amanda

Little Boxes, Any Material, including ticky tacky

• Stash doodads in here until you know what to do with them. Label the outside if you want to be responsible and don't if you want it to be a surprise. Ideas include buttons, bottlecaps, scraps of ribbon, stickers, and an array of presents for your family members as a kind of "I love you" easter egg. If you do the last bit then considering where to put the box is important too, unless you plan on inadvertently making a time capsule.

Luggage

• Use to store fabric items, or books, or anything when you are moving. Use to store out-of-season items. Can be used like a fancier cardboard box. Or, like any other air-permeable storage box.

Nail Polish

• Do some rock painting This one is a tutorial from The Craft Train

Old Lipstick

• Lipstick Resist Process Art from Moms And Crafters

Soap Slivers

• Rub these into a washcloth and use that as a soapy washcloth

Solar Cooker

• Make slow cooker candles; put a bunch of chopped wax directly in jars surrounding wicks. Put them in the slow cooker. When you come back after a hot day, you should have either melted wax or candles.
• Use the same process to melt together herbed olive oil and beeswax for salve
• Warm dried herbs in olive oil for a day in there, then strain through a coffee filter lined sieve to make herbed oil
• Warm together the oils and/or waxes for making cold process soap. Proceed to make cold process soap.
• Melt chocolate with other fondue stuff. You now can have a midsummer fondue.
• Warm up premade cookies in here til the chocolate chips are melty

Blush brushes, or actually any synthetic-bristle artist brush that's kinda large and rounded should do the same if it's fluffy enough and clean

• Knock all the dust off these and swish them in water with dish soap to get the makeup off; dry them well.
• Use to dust leaves of houseplants
• Use to dust vents of vehicles with one hand while using a vacuum with the other to get the loosened dust gone
• Use the same process to dust small knickknacks

Used sponges

• Cut off a corner to designate these as utility sponges, then thoroughly dry these out in the sun, save them, and use them for heavy-duty tasks like cleaning the car tires, cleaning the trash can, and other similar things
• Put a utility sponge handy to where you think you might use it later. One near each sink, near a back door to a garden for scrubbing out pots and wiping down mucked up boots, near a bucket intended for outdoor cleaning tasks, near a bunch of cleaning tools you intend to use on any vehicles you have - some ideas

Tennis balls

• Can be used to help with cleaning, as listed in the Wood and Bamboo upcycling section
• With X's cut in their tops, make just about anything nonskid and help to prevent scraping noises on chairs, walkers, and other stuff like that. You've probably seen things like that in the past, it's like the whatever it is has tennis ball feet.

Used candle wax

• Re-melt and pour over flammable stuff, such as toilet paper rolls with one end bent inward and filled with shredded leaves or paper (unbend the end later to help with air circulation), to make fire starters

Bicycle wheels

• If you have an entire room or dry dark drafty place for it, with a fan in there, then you can mount this from the ceiling and dry herbs from it. Ladders also work.

Pool noodles

• The Internet is full of these, just so you know, there are like so many pool noodle hacks
• Moms And Crafters Pool Noodle Uses List The links and suggestions below mostly come from this list
• Pool Noodle Pencil
• Pool Noodles Lightsaber
• Pool Noodle Abacus
• Pool Noodle Connectors
• Use them to hold up boots in storage so they don't flop over, as long as you cut them to size
• Cut a lengthwise slit in one side of one and use it to jam up under a door to prevent drafts, as long as the room has adequate air circulation and it doesn't mess up the home's HVAC function
• Cut one in half lengthwise and drill it to a garage wall to prevent the wall from getting messed up from opening car doors

Live herbs and stuff you can propagate in water by putting them stem down in jars in a sunny window, when they develop roots gently plant them in soil and water regularly for two weeks til they root, then according to each individual plant's needs thereafter

• Mint
• Willow
• Golden pothos

Live herbs and stuff you can propagate in soil by putting them stem down or cut leaf-stem end down in potting soil filled pots in a sunny window, watering once every day with about half a cup of water per 8" diameter (at the top) pot til they get established then as needed (and don't forget to top up with more soil, granular fertilizer, and liquid fertilizer diluted as needed throughout the growing season - my rule is usually a spoonful of organic dry fertilizer once every two months and diluted liquid fertilizer once every two weeks from spring to autumn only, and more potting soil as needed to keep the soil's level about 1/4" below the pot rim)

• Pelargonium
• Jade plant
• Green onions
• Snake plant aka sansevieria
• Aloe vera

Can be planted "as is" by pushing into dirt about half an inch to an inch deep then covering it back up, using a spoon or your fingers or anything; try to mimic nature's cycles by planting these when they fall from the tree!

• Raw hazelnut in the shell from a farmer's market
• Raw chestnut in the shell, same
• Redcedar berries
• Crabapples
• Acorns
• Mulberries
• Wild grapes
• Wild plums
• Pawpaws

Can be planted "as is" by pushing into dirt about half an inch to an inch deep then covering it back up, using a spoon or your fingers or anything

• Sprouting cloves of garlic, leaving the sprout above the dirt
• Sprouting onions, same

Natural Fires and Wood Ash

• When burning non-chemically-treated charcoal and/or wood, chuck just-picked weeds and diseased plant material on there as long as they aren't poisonous. The cool ashes can be sprinkled on lawns, fields, and land in general at a ratio of about 1 pound per acre once every 3 years at maximum. Don't go crazy with this but it can sometimes help with soil fertility. The charcoal however can be a soil amendment more often and in higher amounts, though I'm not sure exactly how much makes sense.

STUFF YOU CAN MAKE OF VERSATILE MATERIALS

Board Games

• One material you can use to make a board game is plain cardboard. A ruler, a pen or Sharpie, and some bottlecaps, and you can make for instance backgammon, checkers, or even chess. Or, you can make such boards out of actual scrap wood such as an old cutting board. Make some kind of reproduction of a traditional eons-old board game, or make up your own board game.

Card Games

• Card games? Make your own cards. Cardstock, pens, art materials; these choices will work. You can do a lot with this. Make some kind of reproduction of a traditional eons-old set of cards, such as the usual 4-suits playing cards, or make up your own card game. If you like to make card castles you can make cards for that too.

Jigsaw Puzzles

• With a CNC machine you can make lots and lots of these. Or, a cricut, or something similar. You will need to figure out how to print directly onto used cardstock, or how to glue together several sheets of cardstock and then print directly onto that. Seal with something to make the surface water resistant-ish, such as mod podge. The options for using new technology to make good jigsaw puzzles are not as limited or as expensive as they once were. Or, go low-tech and make one out of several layers of cardboard with an image carefully glued on top, omitting glue in the cutout lines before you cut out the pieces using an x-acto knife or something, then painting decoupage glue on the edges and top of each piece, letting the just-glued dry on wax paper at each step. This is either a labor of love or a colossal pain in the ass, depending on how you look at it

3D Puzzles

• Can be made of recycled cardboard or plastic... if you're geeky enough. See all the cardboard instructions on Instructables for inspiration, and seal each piece with decoupage before proceeding. Paper templates or printouts can help here.

Natural items

• Do try to source these things ethically. With that said, here is a most excellent list for crafting with natural items from Moms And Crafters

Natural Christmas trees

• Consider decorating a live tree from year to year that lives outside instead of buying these. But, if you must...
• Put through a wood chipper to make mulch for gardens, or take it apart with a chainsaw or axe to compost. Why waste all that?
• Certainly will make excellent tinder for any campfire if nothing else. Take it down bit by bit to provide tinder and firestarter material for grilling, campfires, etc. instead of having to use lighter fluid, or as much lighter fluid
• Put it at the bottom of a compost pile. It will break down. Eventually. Or, cut it up however much you can and put it at the bottom of a raised bed. It too will break down over time. Self Sufficient Me has a few interesting tutorials on his Youtube channel for this kind of gardening.

Logs And Shrubs and Branches

• If you have a whole bunch of these you can make a hugelkultur bed. Basic idea: strip down the outer branches to leave only trunks, lay down several layers of cardboard box or newspaper, pile a bunch of trees round the outside, fill the middle with compost or dirt, plant stuff in it. Might be wise to match the kind of plant with the kind of tree you're using. It's like making raised beds of processed wood just without the processing part. This will work with any spare logs or untreated timber you have around, actually, as long as it isn't known for killing plants, like walnut.

THE STUFF YOU ACTUALLY CAN'T UPCYCLE; RECYCLING AND DONATIONS

Info included here for convenience

No time to upcycle, recycle, or any-cycle

• Cardboard boxes, reusable grocery bags, plastic bags, laundry baskets, pillowcases, baskets, any old container will do to hoard the stuff til you can drive it out to the nearest recycling plant that accepts these things. And the nearest thrift store. My family's used cardboard boxes for most of this for a while but anything will do. Just pre-sort it as much as possible to avoid the nasty surprise that a lot of these places don't take unsorted recycling (For some reason?!) and if it's far away, call ahead to ask if a. they still accept this kind of thing and b. if there are any kinds of recycling that they do not accept and c. what their hours are. I'd say to check their website but most such places neither have one nor keep their hours and information up to date. Note: even with all of this information in hand each recycling intake facility has its own quirks, moods, and habits so to speak and they might just be closed out of nowhere. It will take time getting to know the local one or ones.

Resale stores

• The usual suspects: local thrift stores and pawn shops, eBay, Goodwill, rummage shops, Half-Price Books, libraries, soup kitchens or other charities with attached donation areas for stuff
• Garage sale, being sure to record all transactions to report later to the IRS. Sigh.
• Stuff owned by Winmark Corporation, the parent corporation of all these:
• Plato's Closet and Style Encore for used clothes
• Music Go Round for used musical instruments and gear
• Play It Again Sports for used sporting gear
• Once Upon A Child for used children's clothes, toys and so on

E-waste and appliances

• Best buy still offers recycling of these

Crayons

• Send to The Crayon Initiative in the mail

Hazardous Waste

• Find the nearest place that accepts these things. Put all this in a box and drive it out there when you can: expired medications, expired herbicides and pesticides, expired cleaning products, expired chemicals, batteries, burned out lightbulbs, literally anything else that should not be in the general landfill. This is extremely important for things like old refrigerators or AC units, old aerosol cans, or anything else that could have ozone layer-killing refrigerants or propellants. If any of that rusts and leaks, the damage to the atmosphere is several leagues worse than that done by CO2. Here's an earth911 article about HFCs and CFCS.
• Automotive chemicals: check to see if your local Autozone will take it. Some will, depending on what it is. I'm pretty sure they take engine oil and antifreeze but doublecheck as it might vary based on location. Other corporate auto repair shops may also do this. Never, ever pour this stuff down a drain anywhere or dump it on land anywhere.
• Here's something kinda important. Some colleges and health care locations offer sharps disposal for free if you happen to be visiting. But at home, if you're for instance diabetic, sharps accumulate in a storage box. It's not ethical to dispose of them in the general trash. What the heck do you do with them? Paying for Stericycle at home is probably not financially feasible if you are ya know, already sick. Hmmm. Next time you're in for a blood draw or lab test of some kind, it might be wise to ask the lab technicians and front desk people if there's a safe way to dispose of medical waste. Or, go to the nearest hospital and ask someone at the front desk for some assistance. Cause I have no idea. 6/27/23 Ok according to this source at the EPA, and the parent page most hazardous waste disposal sites will dispose of used sharps. There are other options listed in that pdf also such as, supposedly, mailing out sharps in a safe package, but that's kinda weird.
• Drug Takeback Day seems to be a thing the government does. Here is the official link for it. For heaven's sake don't ever flush your medicines down the john unless it says to do so on the packaging from the pharmacy. The link also contains assorted details for how to properly dispose of other medical wastes.

Roof shingles

• Shingle Recycling

No idea what to do with it but it's obviously still in good condition and perfectly usable

• Research its function on the Internet to see if there's any way you can refurbish it for some other use, or upcycle it. Or, use it in some other way.
• List it for sale on a re-sale site or on Craigslist or something. Or, have a garage sale. Or, meet with a bunch of people no matter the country and organize a car trunk sale, might be an English idea but it can be done anywhere. Be careful because the transactions still have to be properly recorded or there's a chance the IRS could wreck your shit.
• Sell it at a pawn shop
• Thrift stores, food/resource pantries, charitable organizations, homeless shelters, other charities will often accept a lot of donations as long as you aren't a jerk and clean it thoroughly first. Bring boxes of the stuff there, and expect them to only accept some of it. Check to see what is available in your area. When in doubt, Goodwill usually takes a lot of these.
• Try listing it on the Free section of Craigslist if you're comfortable with that, and either put it on the curb or meet at a neutral location and give the person that responded the stuff
• Freecycle is another option for listing free stuff you'd otherwise trash
• Some folks evidently use upcycling as raw material for having fun, crafting, or making art, as seen on Creative Succah Decorations by Creative Jewish Mom. Or, for entertaining kids, as seen at Happy Hooligans

Upcycling

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