I remember visiting my grandparents as a child and they saved EVERYTHING. Grandpa saved string and twine while Grandma saved all the buttons off the clothes they no longer wore. Grandma had this little shoebox full of buttons she had collected over the years. They were avid recyclers. When I was young, I thought it was silly to recycle things – after all, I had unlimited money and could buy anything I wanted. If it broke I simply threw it away and bought a new one. I wasn’t born in the depression years, so I didn’t need to save everything!

Those arrogant ideas changed once I became a mother. I quickly learned how to save my money by recycling many items; clothes, blankets, crayons, paper items, magazines, shoelaces, rubber bands off the newspaper, notebooks, screws, baby food jars, glass jars, coffee cans, boxes, plastic bags, little pill bottles and much more!

Saving money was a nice benefit from recycling and two-fold. First, I didn’t have to buy new items that we could use and secondly, it gave my children something to do rather than watch television all the time.

Here’s some things we did/still do to recycle our stuff;

I entertained the children and encouraged their imagination by making decoupages using any little item that we could glue on the paper or cardboard box.

We made new comforters for each child placing the old worn out blanket inside a new sheet and some material of their choice for the top. (My kids loved those so much that as they grew up and moved out, the comforters went with them!)

My eggshells get sprinkled over the flower garden after they dry and are crushed.

Coffee grounds go in one of those old coffee containers until full, then emptied into the ground in the yard to enrich the soil for a beautiful flower garden.

Cherry jam filled those baby jars and glass jars – we sold the jams for $1 each! (The cherries were free from the neighbor’s tree)

Magazines provided the pictures for our cards and calendars.

All the junk mail we receive helps start our fires in the fireplace!

Medicine bottles are perfect for sorting your coin collection.

Paper gets used on both sides in the printer. I keep a stack of reusable paper.

Today, I continue to recycle anything and everything because it helps to keep our landfills free of items that can be reused and it saves me money. Not only do we recycle metal items and the aluminum cans, but also I found an online group of people called Freecycle.org There is a group in almost every town across America so check out your city and start recycling your unwanted items.