Re-Use In The Kitchen

3 meals a day, snacks, desserts, prep, cleaning ... I spend alot of time in the kitchen. I think it's also the area where I waste the most. Food, paper, plastic ...

I got pretty excited though, when I started to see some things I could re-use.

Aluminum Foil                   
Crunch up leftover foil into a ball and use to make taco bowls. Even better, after you've made the taco bowls, keep the ball for next time!

• Wipe and re-use. Yes, I'm serious. Wrap other foods with it. You've wiped it ... it's okay. Just wouldn't re-use something that was used for raw meat.
• Crafts. I wiped and re-used foil to make a star topper for our tree. The kids love it. They can make their own ornaments. If they're too young to cut and wrap foil around a cardboard tree, let them glue colorful shapes to it.

Cereal Bags

• I learned this one from my mother-in-law. She used a cereal box to separate hamburger patties. Brilliant. I never thought of it as free wax paper before! Now I do. Great for wax paper needs - unbaked cookies, freezer wrap ... I just wouldn't use it in the oven or microwave :)

Boxes
-Kleenex, Mac & Cheese, all kinds of boxes can be cut and used to sort and separate.  

• Utensil drawer - sort your cutlery or cram it behind your cutlery tray to prevent it from sliding around.
• Movie Drawer - Our movie drawer opens just enough that it's impractical to store movies in the back 1/3 of the drawer. I use a pepsi box to fill that space so that my movies don't slide around, and I don't have to fuss with unreachables.

• Kids' store - since infancy, they prefer boxes to real toys, don't they? Weirdos.  ... just kidding! :)  My kids love their store full of egg cartons, margarine boxes, milk cartons, etc. We line them up on a bookshelf and shop with baskets and cloth bags just like grown-ups!

Hope you find these tips helpful. I sure do!


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