Kitchens offer many opportunities to repurpose and repurpose and today I hope to inspire you with some ideas that can save money too.
Brown paper bags, while reusable, recyclable, and compostable, can also be a help in the kitchen. Cut a clean paper bag so that it lies flat, inside side up, on a large cooling rack. Place freshly baked cookies on paper to cool; the paper will absorb excess grease and the used paper bag will still be compostable.
Both plastic bags and aluminum foil can be reused multiple times before being recycled; hand wash, dry and store until needed. Once they have been in contact with meat, discard them; recycling centers don’t want them either. Once a large plastic bag leaks or the zipper fails or something like that, they can be cut to form a sheet. This can be used as a sheet for cooking and craft projects or as a temporary cover for starting garden seeds. Alternatively, if the sheet is very clean, you can use it instead of wax paper for freezing purposes, such as separating meat or vegetable patties. And did you know that waxed paper is compostable?
Speaking of waxed paper, consider washing waxed paper cereal, cookie, or cracker box liners. Once the wax paper ‘bag’ is completely dry, use a sharp pair of scissors and cut away the seam and any ragged edges so you have a clean sheet. At this point, you may want to go ahead and cut the sheet into 3″ square pieces. They do not need to be perfect squares. You may have other uses that require 4″ squares, or you may want to store a few full sheets. also. Store it in a self-sealing zippered plastic bag in the cupboard where you have muffin tins and rolls of aluminum foil or plastic wrap. Store clean aluminum sheets in the same way.
Having the squares or sheets on hand, ready to use when you need them, stretches your budget a bit more because you’ll have to buy fewer boxes of foil, plastic wrap, and waxed paper. Picture in your mind all the boxes, little metal strips to tear the sheets off the roll, the cardboard roll itself, and all the time shopping around to get these various rolls of items in your closet. By reusing them, you get a lot less packaging, less stuff to buy, less waste, and less time at the grocery store. Reuse really pays us back for the effort we put in.
