Paper and Cardboard

Recommended books and some source material

• How To Make An Eco Garden by John Walker
• Easy Home Organizer by Vicki Payne
• The Home-Scale Forest Garden by Dani Baker
• I Save A 2 Z
• Assorted authors on Instructables
• Cereal boxes upcycling from One Crazy House
• Aluminum Foil Crafts from KidsActivitiesBlog
• Cardboard Box Crafting from IKatBag and Tutorials on Ikatbag

FYI paper is relatively easy both on a small scale and a large scale to make into recycled paper. If you don't have a local recycling plant for anything else but paper, then it's likely the first profitable plant that can be made in your area. We use so much of it. In fact we use so unbelievably much paper that the shift to electronic everything possible likely has a bigger impact on the environment than you'd think.

Spiffing it all up

• A good stash of wrapping paper and tape helps. Washi tape, colorful or beautiful duct tape, sharpies, and other art supplies help also. Office supplies also.
• Stickers help
• Acrylic paint followed by sealant also helps
• Glitter glue really helps as does a lot of markers
• Clear packing tape over any decoration can help the decoration stay put
• Wrapping paper saved from received gifts or fancy storebought packaging, tissue paper etc. is great at making these creations look a lot better
• Needle, thread, and fabric of any sort can certainly make these look a lot better. Same deal with painted on adhesive, such as fabric glue with a foam brush. Depending on the artistic effect you're going for here you can also add cut-outs of foil, from aluminum foil or from the inner sides of well-washed snack bags. Glue that on, then cover 'er up with some packing tape. Or, just cover the whole thing with foil, shiny side out.

A hybrid thing: aluminum-fronted cardboard insulation panels. Here's how you make one. Measure the dimensions of the window you need to put this in. It will go behind the venetian blinds, if any. Decide if you want light and air to circulate from behind the panels or if you'd like to seal out as much as possible; in that case you may just want to use masking tape, scotch tape or duct tape (depending on if you're renting or not; goo gone will take care of duct tape residue if you took that route) to tape the aluminum foil directly to the interior of the window, but leave the bottom half loose so you can open the window and escape in case of emergency as explained in the instructable by Computothought that shared this idea there.) In that case you wouldn't bother taping aluminum foil to this contraption: you get a flattened box in the dimensions you want (a few inches shorter than and skinnier than the window height & width to keep it accessible for escape in case of emergency), duct tape it about five inches away from another flattened box, fill the innards with as many plastic bags as you can cram in there, tape it almost shut, cram in more plastic bags, then tape it so it's solid. Don't completely seal in the bags with duct tape or you might invite mildew and lack of air circulation. You should have an insulated pad about 4" thick, more or less as you see fit. Then if you didn't tape foil directly to the window, tape it to one side of the panel. Cram that panel in the window, put the venetian blinds down, duct tape the panel to the window, and there you have it. Energy efficient, but not cute. R-tech foil-faced insulation panels cut to size are a lot better and last longer, but hey, this is cheap or free. Note: I still recommend adding curtains and pelmets.

Art forms that rely on paper: usually best to use scrap paper or cardstock as practice before you spring for expensive materials

• Papercutting
• Origami
• Paper sculpting
• Pepakura

Books you aren't reading, haven't read for more than a year and will probably not read much if at all

• If moldy or mildewed, trash them. (If they contain directions for how to make evil weapons of mass destruction, or the how-to for black magic, or that are proven by well conducted scientific studies to give the reader serious crippling mental illness, shred them and burn them - those are the only circumstances in which I support that kind of shit)
• If you still want to read them eventually, maybe, donate them to the library
• If you don't think you'll read them despite your best intentions, such as they've just sat there for like a good year untouched, either donate them to a library or sell them at rock bottom prices to a secondhand bookstore, or see if Dolly Parton's Imagination Library will take them if they're kids books
• Above all, perfectly good to read books (that meet the requirements in the first point on this list namely that they don't have those issues) should not go to the landfill ever. That's just sacrilege.

Miscellaneous paper, cardstock, and other stuff like that, without stuff printed on both sides

• Cut the side off a cereal box, or decorate the sides of one, or something similar and stash it in there. Junk paper comes in handy more often than you'd expect for writing stuff down or similar.

Miscellaneous paper, cardstock, and other stuff like that, with stuff printed on it

• Raw clip art material. Hoard it, store it, and your next art project will be awesome. Or, donate it to an artist you know can use it after you hoard it for a while. Worst case scenario put it on Craigslist's free section after you amass a hoard.

Candy wrappers

• Halloween Candy wrapper DIYs at WonderHowTo

Cereal boxes

• Use a ruler to measure specific points on the four corners and mark them as such. Cut down to the marks using scissors. Fold down what's above the marks to make a box any size you want.
• Cut these up to make bookmarks
• Use to file scrap paper; cover with decoration and label so you know that’s what it is
• Use to file magazines by cutting one corner off at a diagonal
• Use to store boxes of pantry stuff such as aluminum foil, wax paper and parchment paper by cutting off one corner at a diagonal (from Pantry Organization Ideas at One Crazy House)
• Cut this to size to make your own file folders for temporary use, such as for studying in class, at school, or in college. Reinforce as you will with hand sewing and/or duct tape.

Miscellaneous cardstock, from any item

• Generally speaking if you plan to cut a lot of similar items out of this material to reduce the drudgery you might want a cricut machine. A paper cutter, guillotine type, seems like it would work but is a royal hassle unless properly maintained!
• Use with pen to take notes when on the go. Lasts a lot longer than a restaurant napkin, is easier to find, and is way more durable.
• Cut this up to make bookmarks
• Raw material for any postcard, quick on-the-go snail mail letter, or holiday card. Especially Valentine's Day cards if you spiff it up enough.
• Cut into uniform shapes, use a hole punch to cut out a little, then attach string or twine with a lark's head knot. For a finished look tie the other end around the item with both ends tied into an overhand knot, then cut off the excess about 1/4" away from the knot. Labels for items at a garage stale or tag sale or anything like that. Can help with labeling things for a home business.
• Raw material for creating boxes and other 3d items of any shape and size you can imagine, although the more complicated and less angular it is the more trouble you could have. For instance, let's say you decide to create a sphere. LOL
• Creative Jewish Mom Embroidered Pomegranate On Cardboard Apparently you can embroider cardboard.
• Creative Jewish Mom Huskies Tutorial Cardboard huskies as a wintertime table ornament

Soda boxes

• Cut the top (when you're looking at it with it laying flat and the little diagonal dispensing-soda side taken off) off, cut slits in the corners to make it foldable til it reaches the bit where the diagonal ended, and fold them down. Use to organize in every room of the house - pantries, cupboards, closets, craft rooms, storage shelving. (from Pantry Organization Ideas at One Crazy House)

Shoeboxes

• Use to store birthday cards and similar correspondence
• Miscellaneous closet storage
• Great storage for a lot of different crafts
• Not the greatest for file storage of stuff like owner's manuals, checks, brochures and so on, but often better than storing things loose
• Line with acid-free paper and store small fabric items in these to prevent dust from settling on items but still allow the items to "breathe" so mildew and mustiness don't set in as much
• Use for their obvious purpose: to store out of season shoes. Also out of season hats, belts, and leather items like gardening gloves.

Tissue boxes

• Stuff a toilet paper roll in one. You can then stash things like office scissors and pens in the middle, crochet needles and yarn needles in the roll itself, and if you ever run out of toilet paper elsewhere in the house, nope you haven't
• Use scissors to cut the top to each corner at a diagonal. Fold the sides inward and use as desktop organizers. These can also be handy catch-all containers in every room of the house.
• Put a couple of small empty ones of these in the car as portable trash cans
• Stuff an empty tissue box with plastic bags and put one in each room of the house. That way, you can restock and empty the tissue boxes with the ubiquitous plastic bags instead of having them multiply like rabbits all over the place!

Tea boxes

• Reuse as catchalls; fold the lid and flaps into the box. Then you can put them in junk drawers and cabinets and on shelves to help organize small doodads
• Use for reusable batteries
• Store buttons, ribbons, craft items, candles, and the like in these
• Keep these around; use them to package gifts for people

Magazines, Catalogs and Junk Mail

• These can be fancy and glossy or rough and scratchy.
• Literal clip art. Tape clipped images onto metal surfaces using double-sided tape, and cover with packing tape and it'll stay there for eons. You can also use regular sided tape and tape stuff onto anything else on this paper upcycling page. Or, you can decoupage things, using 1 part plain liquid glue (any really) to 1 part water, or plain undiluted Mod Podge, and a foam brush or artist's brush, by painting a thin layer onto the back of each clipped piece and then painting another thin layer over the top to fasten it to whatever.
• Raw material for origami

Newspaper

• Crumple this and put it in shoes to help them retain their shape
• Crumple this and use as packing material in boxes when gifting things or shipping things
• Need to start a fire? Newspaper is the old faithful when it comes to tinder material. Now that newspaper is less common paper grocery bags or paper packing material should work almost, if not quite, as well

Small Mailing Boxes

• Fold the lid flaps into the box on the inside. Use to organize items by type in your home habitat and to corral clutter on tables, dressers, bedside tables, in closets, and so on
• Do the same thing and make an Eat Me First box for the fridge

Paper Bags, Grocery or Sandwich

• Paper Bag Organizers at AuntPeaches.com, awesome idea. It seems that instead of folding the paper inward she kinda rolls it outward for each fold.
• Cover up a tool handle and tennis ball contraption (see Wood and Bamboo Upcycling) with one of them plus a rubber band or some string. Or, skip the tennis ball and just use the contraption as is. For getting cobwebs out of ceiling corners
• They will compost. Rip out any staples, put them right in there. Or, use instead of landscape fabric, much like cardboard. Top that with rocks, or even mulch, and you're good to go. Come to think of it, I need to see if shredded grocery bags topped with something heavy to hold it down would work as a decent straw substitute for mulching my outdoor potted plants at some point.
• Good fire starters
• Can be made into Wreaths (tutorial at Crafty Little Gnome) or used like that as a wreath base
• Measure cabinets, cupboards, and/or drawers first, if possible. Then measure and cut grocery bags to size, and tape them down with tape loops, or stick them down with blue-tac or something. Cupboard liners.
• Double or triple up some, or skip that, fold down the sides to reinforce it somewhat, then put a plastic bag in it. Car trash can. Put it in the backseat on the right side and you won't need to worry as much about it making its way beneath the gas pedal or something. Before making a long trip, try to remember to replace the plastic bag. A big cardboard box lined with a big trash bag is better for longer trips.
• Free practice material for any artist of any age, for any medium. Use whatever hasn't been printed on. Take high quality pictures of it and you can even sell those online as digital downloads for print.
• Tape together a bunch of this to cover a kid's table for a gathering such as Thanksgiving, hand them crayons and watch chaos ensue

Toilet paper rolls

• I'm pretty sure that this Instructable by berserk was the original idea for the toilet roll organizer for cables posted on the Internet before everyone else copypasted it.
• Save these up either in a paper grocery bag, which is also flammable, or in the plastic bag the toilet paper came in, and use them as fire starters. They can be used as is or filled with other flammable stuff such as super dry leaves, shredded paper without colored ink or gloss, crumpled newspaper, dryer lint, dry straw and twigs, candle wax from a burned out candle, Vaseline, etc. Although no fire is that eco-friendly and you can hardly call burning dryer lint and candle wax "clean" and perfect for the environment it's still less nasty than lighter fluid, which I have an irrational hatred of

Wrapping Paper Tubes, added 1/29/24

• Make these into rain sticks: get several layers of duct tape and cover one end. Then add a handful of gravel, really old beans or lentils, stale rice, dehydrated cherry pits, or something like that. Cover the other end with more duct tape. Decorate the outside.

Cardboard Boxes As Cardboard Boxes

• Choose the size you need. First reinforce them. Fold over the bottoms in the same direction each time and gently ease the last corner under while bending it as little as possible. This reinforces them greatly. Now duct tape over that in a cross on the outside of the box. Then fill them. Then label them. Then, if you so choose, decorate their outsides with wrapping paper. Stack them only with great caution. It’s been my experience that this reduces their overall lifespan by a year or two.
• Use a couple as recycling boxes and donation boxes, extremely helpful for reducing clutter in the home. Keep these by the front and back door. Replace with plastic boxes or natural baskets in time, if you can.
• Store any sort of thing in these that needs to breathe in terms of its humidity content and air exchange; anything that would not do well in a plastic airtight storage container such as extra out-of-season comforters or pillows or something like that
• Store out of season holiday decorations in one of these
• If you need to, store outdoor type stuff in general in these, particularly things like shears, pruners, trowels, bags of fertilizer, etc. that would otherwise live on the floor (argh)
• Do the same thing with books; generally speaking leaving books on the floor can damage the books due to moisture damage, dirt etc.

Cardboard Boxes As Raw Material

• Bestest kid fort building material ever.
• Build an indoor play house with kids
• Build a cardboard airplane with kids
• Build a cardboard maze with kids, for Halloween
• Build a cardboard castle with kids
• Make a wreath base, either by cutting a 2d donut shape, or going a little overboard by stacking progressively smaller donut shapes over the wreath, then optionally flipping it over and doing the same thing to get a 3d donut shape
• Can't afford to buy materials for raised beds? Reuse cardboard boxes. Stack a couple layers of cardboard box over the Earth. Add a bunch of potting soil and some fertilizer, rig up a sprinkler system of some kind, ideally one that's on a timer because if you can't do that then you'll have to shlep out there and water yourself twice a week or way more (and in Texas or similar that's a nightmare), plant things, water them in, and mulch heavily with the best cedar mulch you can over all that except the plants. Pull the mulch back a couple times a season, like maybe once every 2-3 months, and add a couple inches worth more potting soil and some extra granular fertilizer. My favorite fertilizers are composted manure and Espoma granular organic fertilizer btw, favorite potting soil is Pro-Mix. I wish it was cheaper. In my experience, cheaper doesn't work!
• You can use the cardboard-potting soil-mulch method to plant very drought resistant native wild plants around the perimeter of any yard or garden to help pollinators, but still keep your lawn. You choose how much perimeter you'd like to devote to this method.
• No wheelbarrow for garden work? No tarp or sheet either? Use a flattened cardboard box, or a few, and drag it around with one flap as the dragging apparatus.
• Cat condo and cat maze building materials
• Use to demonstrate every last one of Euclid’s propositions. In fact it’s in some cases better, since Euclid used sticks to draw in dirt!
• Use to teach math class, especially geometry and making Platonic solids
• Use to make temporary or reusable molds for soap and candles in almost any shape you can imagine. Line with wax paper to make it more likely you can re-use the molds.
• If it's really starting to get into bad shape, then if it hasn't been painted on or chemical'd, take out any staples and take off all tape and everything else that won'd biodegrade, rip it up into palm-size pieces or smaller and throw it right into a compost pile as "browns"
• Use instead of landscape fabric to deter weeds, underneath gravel. It’ll break down over time; landscape fabric won’t. Also use this to line wooden raised beds to deter weeds
• Costume creation material
• Material for masks
• Theater set material
• Build miniature models of inventions you come up with yourself, with these
• Practice art skills on this, to avoid buying expensive supplies
• Cut out shape templates for artwork and designs, such as perfect circles, five-pointed stars, moons, or what have you
• Use as quick way to adjust furniture so it doesn’t wobble as much (temporary fix)
• Use as quick way to make a doorstop; fold, wedge, yay
• Make sheaths for yard tools like shears, loppers, and so on; duct tape or staple these into shape and cut off the excess
• Use as a cutting mat for sewing, gunpla, quilting, or anything like that
• Makes a surprisingly effective ironing board. Use a flattened large box, ideally on a table at hip height. If you're concerned about any ink or dyes from the box somehow making its way onto your clothing, cover it with a fitted sheet or some flat sheetlike cloth or other, and if needed duct tape it to the back of the box. Or use aluminum foil as a cover. I haven't noticed any problems from such things though.
• Use to help start a fire in the wind, rain, or other adverse conditions (which is pretty much all the time); use the cardboard to block the wind, possibly having someone help you hold it while you try to light the kindling

Cardboard Egg Cartons

• One Crazy House fantastic list for egg carton reuse
• Compost!
• Fill with toilet paper roll shreds, maybe some vaseline, maybe some newspaper or shredded paper. Close the lids. Firestarters.
• Use a nail to punch holes in the bottom of each egg cup. Fill with potting soil or good garden dirt (preferred!). If you're paranoid about damping-off like I am and did not use garden soil with its natural soil flora to help the plants get off to a good start, bake these at 200 F for about an hour and let them cool completely. Then, plant seeds in there, but leave the whole thing outdoors to help prevent damping-off. Water slavishly for a couple of weeks until the true leaves appear, something like two or three times a day while trying to avoid watering late in the day, then cut apart the cartons and plant each little plant in a prepared plant pot or grow bed. Water well. Then after the first touch-and-go couple of weeks, add a couple inches of straw or cedar mulch around each plant, carefully ensuring it's about an inch away from the stem of each to prevent rot.

Pringles cans

• Use as soap molds
• Use as molds for pillar candles, though you'd have to line them with wax paper or something first
• Use for re-gifting things like cookies, crackers, or other flat snacks (to close friends or family only who do not mind the ick factor). You can certainly redecorate these as you see fit.
• Stash individually wrapped small snacks and candy in these and throw a couple in a car, duffel bag, and pantry to have snacks on hand at all times

Milk cartons, almond milk cartons, soy milk cartons, juice cartons etc.

• Wallet from Instructables
• Can be made into soap molds. Or, candle molds.

Miscellaneous images from the Internet

Upcycling

Home