Frugal Living Tips: Another Use for Plastic Lids

I recently read a story about a women who grew up in the depression era and stockpiled all of the plastic lids she got throughout the years from margerine tins, long gone tupperware, and disposable plastic containers. The theme of this article was clearing out the clutter from your house. This women simply did not want to part with these lids, it was the one “clutter” element in her house she had to hold on to.

This old woman got me thinking, what can you do with all of thse leftover lids so I decided to put a list together of creative uses for an otherwise boring item. I mean how many times an I going through my kitchen drawer to find that I have hundreds of lids, and no containers that they belong to. There has to be another use for these lids. Here are ten basic suggestions for things you can do with plastic lids.

1. Leftover lids are great entertainment for children. Save several of them and put a different color finger paint in each. Grab some paper and have some finger painting fun.

2. Used the plastic lid as a coaster in an emergency. Better yet give your kids the plastic lid to decorate. They can paint on it, and voila, you have an artistic homemade coaster that you can reuse! What a conversation starter.

3. Use the plastic lid under the legs of heavy furniture to ensure that they do not scratch the floor.

4. Did you lose your sink stopper? You can take a lid from a smaller size margerine bin, place it rim down, and problem solved!

5. Don’t you hate it when your jelly jars somehow manage to leak jelly onto that freshly cleaned refridgerator shelf. Next time you put a sticky jelly jar bak in the fridge grab that plastic lid you were going to throw out and place it between your newly cleaned shelf and that jar of rasberry jam. Problem solved.

6. Use a larger plastic lid as a water catcher underneath household plants.

7. Are you making spagetti? Don’t you hate how the sauce from that stirring spoon gets all over the stove and countertop. Rest your spoon on top of an old plastic lid and keep that counter clean.

8. Getting creative with the kids and painting. Plastic lids make a great resting place for paintbrushes not in use.

9. Babies love to bang things, give them a rounded plastic lid and watch them spend an hour or so having fun.

10. Don’t like any of the above ideas? Gather up all of those plastic lids and take them to your local recycling facility. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.