8 Brilliant Ways To Use An Old Laundry Detergent Lid Instead Of Tossing It

If you use liquid laundry detergent, you've probably had this thought before: This cap is built like a tank, and there has to be something I can do with it before it hits the recycling bin. And of course there are many ideas out there. People are so committed to the "reuse" part of the "reduce, reuse, recycle" paradigm that it gets almost half as much search interest as "recycle." But the question is, are pincushions, seedling pots, drawer organizers, and mixing cups really good (re)uses for a laundry detergent cap? In the right hands, definitely.

Let's be honest: Sometimes waste reuse ideas don't make a lot of sense. For example, reusing a detergent cap as a pencil sharpener by gluing a pencil sharpener into it seems unnecessary. You had a pencil sharpener already — now you have one jammed into a bit of stray recycling. But it's also easy to pooh-pooh ideas without thinking them through. Someone with specific ergonomic needs might really benefit from having a larger, rounder sharpener to grip.

Ultimately, laundry detergent caps are often great raw materials for a wide range of projects, both practical and otherwise. They're incredibly sturdy cups with an interesting shape. Some have measurements. Most have flat tops and are happy to sit upright ... or perhaps "downright" is the more accurate term. Let's see what we can dream up for reusing them.

Plant propagation can get away from you faster than you can say "tomato suckers." Try to grow all the clones from pruning a single indeterminate tomato plant sometime, and you'll see what we mean. You're gonna need a bigger house. Well-washed laundry detergent caps — especially a bunch of a uniform size — are perfect for cuttings, starting seeds, or potting up seedlings from a tray of sprouts. For anything involving soil or a soilless mix, you'll want to put a drain hole or two in each cap to keep things from getting waterlogged.

It might not be a good idea to use laundry detergent caps as actual cookie cutters. They're not food-safe, and many have concerns about chemicals lingering in them. But they do make sturdy cookie and biscuit cutters for shaping Play-Doh, and they should also work well for modeling clay and the like. This is one case where a variety of cap sizes might be helpful, so ask around to acquire some different caps from friends.

Laundry detergent caps don't necessarily have any benefit over other containers when it comes to using them to organize drawers except that you have them, so they're a free alternative to the various drawer organizers sold in stores. It's often a good idea to glue the caps to a bit of spare hardboard or something similar to keep them from being upended when drawers are opened and closed. Think about your drawers and which might benefit from a little sorting ... junk drawers, craft or hobby drawers with small parts, office supply drawers, and many others.

If the trend toward powder and sheet detergents continues, the entire cap-dependent gnome-snowman industrial complex will collapse like a flimsy craft Santa Claus. In addition to the usual flower pots, we've seen flowers, various Christmas crafts, and the world's most blinged-out button holder made from liquid detergent caps. The cap usually provides the basic structure, which is covered with some kind of crafty material, which is then adorned with some other kind of crafty material and substances. Crafts are a mystery, but free structure is understood by all.

The pincushion falls within the craft category because of the way the finished project is all cute and thematic. It's also undeniably useful and a fairly simple project to boot. Functionally, you're filling the cap with cotton balls and covering it with felt. The crafting mind sees the utility of that and says, "With 45 minutes and some hot glue, I can turn that into a fake cupcake." You do you, crafty people. It is actually pretty charming, and with any luck, it won't attract the playful attention of cats the way those cursed strawberry pincushions do.

These festive little boots make great small gifts, stocking-stuffer style. (Remember the time before ads convinced you that stocking stuffers should cost $175 each?) They're made from detergent caps (the foot) and toilet paper rolls (for the upper shaft), along with a bunch of materials and five hours of labor. Because they're shoe-like, you can probably use them for non-holiday events, like baby shower gifts, or you could put a little Jumpman on there to celebrate the new Air Jordans, but our lawyers definitely did not advise you to do that. Or, you can use the feet for this guy!

If you have the right sort of materials on hand, this cute angel ornament can pretty much be made freestyle. The detergent cap forms the base, and a properly painted styrofoam or wooden ball brings the angelic piece. Leave off the wings and hanger, and it's a passable doll. Make a bunch of them, and you have a choir!

Kids need motivation to keep art markers, colored pencils, and dry-erase markers together. Without some sort of elaborate and fun container, a certain percentage (like, 60 percent) of them will disappear with each use. But give kids a few cats decoupaged onto a tube with shiny end caps, and they might have as much fun removing and replacing the markers as they do actually drawing with them.