Don’t throw that away! There are a lot of useful containers in our homes every day, many that we toss into the trash or recycling bin without thinking about what that container could be used for next. I have a box full of empty egg cartons and toilet paper rolls taking up space in my basement right now, waiting for their reincarnation.
In full use around the house already, though, are quite a few tissue boxes that have been put to use in new ways. They are helpful to me every day, and I spent no extra money to organize our things with them, since we would have purchased the tissues anyway. I am sure one or more of these recycled, budget-friendly storage solutions will help you, too.
1 Reusable plastic shopping bag dispenser
Whenever I can, I take my cloth grocery bags to the store and use those, both for the environment, and to save our home from being overrun by plastic bags. Nevertheless, we still bring plastic shopping bags into our home at times. And those plastic bags sure are handy to have in the home to re-use as small garbage bags, tote bags to take food containers back to grandma’s house, and plenty more. But storing them can be messy and an eyesore. This is the solution. Just shove them into a used tissue box, one by one, and then pull out one by one as you are ready to use them. It’s neat and easy. I keep at least one box of plastic bags in the cabinets under every sink in our house and in the pantry, too.
2 Seasoning packet storage
This is a simple way that I organize my pantry and spice cabinet and keep seasoning and yeast packets easy to access, for free. I just cut the top off the tissue box to open it up. It’s the perfect size for most of the spice packets that I buy to fit neatly inside.
3 Used tissue trash receptacle
This isn’t something I’d want to keep around the house every day. But during those times when someone in my family is sick and wiping our noses many times during the day, this is a lot more efficient than walking a dirty tissue to the garbage can every five seconds. We just pull a tissue out of a regular tissue box, blow our noses, then pop the dirty tissue right into an empty tissue box. Keep that box close by, and fill it up during the day. Then dump it in the trash all at once. This is especially helpful for my toddler son, so that he has a spot to put his used tissues, rather than them ending up thrown on the floor right next to wherever he used it. It’s much more fun for a little boy to stuff it into a box!
4 Toys and art supplies organization
I cut off the top of the tissue boxes for this storage solution. This works for crayons, markers, anything you can fit inside and will help your shelf or drawer to stay organized in the midst of toy mayhem. For most of these storage solutions, I like to use the small size tissue boxes, but I use a large size one in a drawer to keep small toys corralled, too.
5 Baby fabric pulling game
Cut up a few scraps of fabric, an old shirt, a blanket, whatever you have. Then stuff them down into the tissue box, and let baby pull them out one by one. I bet he would like to push them back into the box, too. Easy. Fun. Recyclable.
I am always on the lookout for ways to re-use items around the home. How do you re-use tissue boxes in your home?
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