Living Waste Free: Reusing Our Plastic for Plastic Free July

July 23, 2018 /

So I’m not by any means plastic free yet but I do try to do some waste reduction – we do the easy stuff or what we can with having three so little. Simple things like get a CSA every year to reduce our packaged food, use reusable cups/shopping bags when we go shopping and we try to reuse the packaging we do get as much as possible. Not much, but its all about baby steps right!? So in honor of plastic free July and in trying to keep a few things out of the landfills/oceans I thought I would share a couple of our favorite recycled toys!

 

The first one is an old pill container from my prenatal vitamins 🙂 . I had let my little ones paint the outside – which was a fun activity on its own – and then threw a couple of bells taken off Christmas packaging inside to make a great shaker! If not bells any small hard items will do – beer bottle caps, soda tabs, small rocks etc. Just make sure the babies can’t get any of it out – while this bottle had a pretty good child safety seal anyways I put a small amount of crazy glue on the rim before closing it just to make sure!

 

 

When my son gave up his bottles (and we didn’t know we were getting another little one!) I hated the idea of just throwing them all out. It seemed like such a waste so I decided I would turn a couple of them into toys.

I cleaned/cut up some old plastic drinking straws and put them in the bottle before supergluing the cap on (I did throw out the nipple). It’s a great shaker and fun sensory experience watching all the straws go round. Plus now that they are a little older we can talk about all the different colors we see and start learning them!

For the second one I saved some caps from the puree pouches we used when traveling and washed them, dried them and glued them shut in as well (again so no little ones could get them out and choke). The babies loved experimenting between the two bottles to hear loud and quiet sounds. They also made a fun game of trying to get all the pieces from the bottle to the cap and back again.

 

 

 

This next one was a plastic water bottle although any plastic bottle would do – we filled it with about an inch of clear Elmer’s glue and added some sparkles. I let the babies point and choose which colors! Then poured warm water over it, as you shake it the glue slows down the sparkles making a fun sensory bottle that the babies love to watch! Almost like a snow globe without the glass. It’s also been great for my toddler as a sensory break bottle. 

 

Okay, so these are all fun to shake, but what toddler doesn’t love putting things in and taking them out over and over again? For my little man we took a paper towel tube and some pompoms to make this next toy. We painters taped it to the wall and put a small bowl underneath to catch the pompoms. Then had hours of fun placing the pompoms in the tube! We even added a toilet paper roll to give some different depths. Great for working on those fine motor skills and it kept him wholly entertained the entire time I was making lunch for at least a week!

 

 

 

 

Another fun one that we had was an old hot chocolate container. We cut a small hole in the top much like a piggy bank and used some ripped up fabric from clothes that were too stained to even be donated after the babes outgrew them. I put strips of the fabric in (some tied together to make long pieces) and the kids had a blast trying to pull them through the top! They’ll even sometimes use it in pretend play when they need to change their baby doll’s diaper since its sort of like pulling out wipes. Don’t mind the grungy look of this one – we never decorated it, although we are really into stickers right now so that just might be our next project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you liked these be sure to check out my Entertainment post or share your own ideas in the comments below!

 

 

 

Living Waste Free: Steps in a Long Journey
Our Very Hungry Caterpillar: The End!

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