Reuse And Recycle Cardboard Boxes In Your House

Cardboard is found in every home and is usually thrown away in the trash. Believe it or not, you can actually use this cardboard in many ways to make it useful in the house and reduce the amount of trash that goes to our landfill. Here are a few ideas on how to reuse cardboard in your house.

photo credit: SixRevisions

Make Building Blocks For Children

We all receive gifts from friends and family and you will usually find some small boxes in packages that are used to pack smaller items. You can use these small boxes to make some fun and colorful building blocks for your kids. Close these boxes to make sure there are no open sides. You can then use colored paper, paint and color on them to make them decorative and colorful and use as building blocks or stackables that kids love to play with.

Your kids will love these cardboard made building boxes as they are light in weight and easy for them to move them with their tiny hands. If you have some big boxes from large gifts then you can make the decorating part a fun activity too. Sit with your children and let their imagination flow in turning these large boxes into playhouses. You can use markers, paints and construction paper to build these playhouses. Your kids will have a ton of fun building their own playhouses.

Make Interesting Puzzles

If you have ever gone down the toys aisle at a Target, Wal-Mart or Babies R Us store, you would have see a ton of puzzles being sold for kids of different ages. Guess what these puzzles are made from? Yes, they are made from cardboard. So why not reuse the cardboard in your house to make these kind of puzzles? You can find a ton of resources on the web that will provide free patterns for puzzles and software to make your own pattern. All you will need to make these puzzles is a box cutter or craft knife, paint,  cardboard and some decorations.

Store Cardboard Boxes For Later Use

If you have the space, you should store cardboard boxes for use in the future. You will thank yourself when its time to gift wrap those gifts during Christmas. One easy way to store cardboard boxes is to flatten them along their folded edges. This way they become very compact and can be stacked on one another for storage.

Make A Bed For Your Pet

Cardboards make good beds for cats and dogs (if your dog does not like chewing up on cardboard). Cover up the cardboard with some non-toxic and pet-safe paint and your kitty will take up a liking to its new bed immediately. You can make your pet’s bed more comfy by adding some padding (like  folded towels) inside the box. You will be amazed at how fast your pets will like and make use of their new cardboards beds.

If your pets dirties its cardboard box, you can get rid of it. After all its just cardboard and make a whole new cardboard bed in no time.

Support For Photos

If you need to frame a printed photo or need to provide some support and reinforcement for home printed photos, use cardboard. Cut a piece of cardboard so that its a tad larger than the actual photo size. You can then paste printed photos on this piece of cardboard. Go ahead and frame it or make a collage.

Composting Unneeded Cardboard

Guess who likes to eat cardboard for a meal? The answer is Composting worms. If you are into composting, then you probably know that red wigglers ( composting worms) just love cardboard. Worms can just live on cardboard for days together. They will chew it up and turn your cardboard into fine “Black Gold” worm castings that are rich in all kind of nutrients that plants need.

If you do not have composting worms and just use a regular composter, you can also toss this cardboard into your regular backyard compost bin to let mother nature break it down into compost. Bacteria and other microorganisms will break it down into some fine compost to be used in your vegetable garden.