The rubbish people give us

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 25 January 2011 in green | 12 comments

Colette from the Permaculture Cottage blog mentioned yesterday that she returned from a visit to see her mum with jam jars, newspaper and “other bits and bobs for recycling”.

We collect “rubbish” from friends and family too – we brought back a box full of trash from visiting my mum & dad in Southport in November, and over the last month or so, we’ve been given all sorts of things to reuse, such as:

• Screw top bottles from our party-hearty neighbour (he uses our glass recycling bin as overflow for his own smaller bin so he’s bringing them around one way or another) – John will use these for his homebrew wine when he finally bottles it up
• Some old (chip board) shelving units from the same neighbour – will become shelving in our garage-ette
• Glass jars from Strowger – he brings some nearly every week, the star – used for my marmalade and lemon curding antics over the weekend
• Egg boxes from John’s mum and John’s brother & sister-in-law
• Plastic food tubs from John’s mum
• Newspapers from John’s dad – old newspapers for starting our woodburner or lining the chicken coop to make it easier to clean
• Wood from John’s dad for burning (although I do save the best bits for making stuff with)
• An old wine rack from John’s dad – which will also be used when John bottles up his wine

I was also going to get a going-to-the-tip kitchen cabinet from our next-door-but-one neighbours (to turn into a cold smoking cabinet) but John’s dad got their first — you win some, you lose some ;)

How to make a piggy bank/money box

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 5 October 2010 in green, making, meta | 1 comment

Over on Recycle This today, I’ve asked:

What can I reuse or recycle to make a moneybox/piggy bank?

As I say in the post over there, my first project needing a moneybox is to retrospectively pay for the automatic chicken pophole door we bought last week. But I’d also like other piggybanks to set aside money for/from other projects – I find seeing money building up physically in a pot has considerably more motivation impact than when it’s building up symbolically in numbers on a bank statement.

So any suggestions on what I can do?

Fixing runny/solid jam and reusing marrow & squash leaves

Posted by louisa on Friday 20 August 2010 in green | 0 comments

Just a quick heads up that over on Recycle This, we’ve had a few relevant posts this week.

Yesterday, I asked how to fix jam that was too runny or too solid – and lots of other jam related reuse/recycle questions.

And today I’m asking about reuses for marrow & squash leaves, other than just heave-hoing them into the compost. They’re so giant and tough that they seem like they might have other uses… we’ll see what people suggest.

If you’ve got any answers to either question, head over to Recycle This and tell us all about it :)