There are tons of one-time-use items that get thrown away immediately after they're used. But in many of these cases, these items don't need to be thrown away or recycled just yet. Take a look at some clever ways to repurpose/reuse common disposable products:
Butter Wrappers: instead of throwing your wrappers away once the sticks of butter are gone, save them in a sandwich bag to use the next time you need to grease a baking tray, dish or pan.
Plastic Yogurt Containers: you can use small plastic yogurt cups as a place to start seeds. If you've got the bigger containers, wash them out and use them to store leftovers like chicken stock and soups.
Plastic Bags from Newspapers: just like these are used to protect paper from the elements, you can save them to protect other things from your wet umbrellas. When you have to take a wet umbrella indoors, use one of these bags (that's easy to store in a purse) to store the umbrella in for the time being.
Aluminum Foil: since foil is so durable, you can easily clean it with a sponge and some soap in most cases. Then just dry flat, fold it up and use again. Also:
fold it several times and cut with scissors - it will really sharpen them up. You can also use it as a paint texture applicator, and you can restore the sheen to steel and chrome by rubbing the metal with foil.
Laundry Detergent Caps: use these as scoops for pet food, ice melt, cat litter, or even as something for the kids to play and dig with in the sandbox.
