Unconventional Uses for Conventional Products

As a Homemade Mother, I am constantly looking for ways to streamline my life.  Stuff isn’t good for our home, and it isn’t good for the planet, either.  Getting by on less really is so refreshing.  I hate clutter, so I’m always bringing unused items to Goodwill or selling things on Ebay.  I do my best to keep crappy little plastic toys out of the house. But, one of the easiest things I do to keep stuff at a minimum is finding secondary uses for common household items.

If you need some inspiration, here are some of my unconventional uses for conventional products:

We were given a pastry scraper for our wedding, but I can say with 100% certainty that I have never once scraped a pastry with it.  However, I used it on a daily basis to

quickly scrape goopy messes (like oatmeal) off the floor

and swiftly transfer a pile of cut vegetables from the wooden cutting board to the soup pot.

Most of the time when we enjoy a pizza, we pick it up from Piece, our favorite spot in the city.  However, we still use a pizza cutter quite often to

slice up a quesadilla for the kids’ lunch

and remove crusts from sandwiches.

My immersion blender is one of my favorite and most essential kitchen tools.  Most often, it is used to blend soups (Evie loves my vegetable broccoli soup), but I use it every day to mix up fresh and easy homemade baby food for Vivian.  I would never encourage anyone to buy an appliance specifically for making baby food because an immersion blender is small, inexpensive and perfectly capable of creating delicious food for little ones.

Every kitchen needs dinner plates, but no kitchen needs plastic wrap.  Rather than relying on disposable food storage solutions, I came up with my own: Take a bowl. Put food into it. Put a dinner plate on top. Store in the fridge. I promise the world will not end and your food will be just fine.

I am a big cloth diapering advocate.  I have a nice stash of cloth diapers, and I love using Chinese pre-folds (the “old fashioned” cloth diaper) for cleaning.  They work great with my homemade glass cleaner, and I love using them to mop the floors. I put the kids to work, and they think its their lucky day!

What are some of your unconventional uses for everyday products?

 

 

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4 Comments for this entry

  1. Rachel says:

    LOL I’ve done all those except the pastry scraper is a Pamper Chef scraper, use that thing for everything! And I use a pizza cutter for cutting pancakes for the kids. MUCH faster then trying to use a knife. Diapers why yes they are a great thing for many uses!!!!!!
    Love the blog 🙂

  2. Rachel says:

    Oh and yes the plates! I learned that from my mom. Can NOT stand plastic wrap, it never works!!! Different sized plates work on certain bowls. And even my dear husband has figured it out now 🙂

  3. Kris says:

    I use kitchen shears to cut food into bite-sized pieces for my daughter. Works like a charm! And I also used my immersion blender for blending formula in one big batch on a daily basis.

  4. Susan says:

    I love your ideas, especially about the clothe diapers. We are always running short on good cleaning rags. I have used plates on top of pies to stack pies in the fridge, thus saving space. Thanks!

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