Repurposing old kitchen items

(These aren’t repurposed, but they are cute, and they are in my kitchen. Plus, I needed a photo at the top of the post, so there’s that.)

If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know that I love to find new uses for old stuff. Heck, I wrote a whole ebook about ways to breathe new life into old clothes, and my enthusiasm for this is certainly not limited to clothes.

While I’m currently trying very hard to only buy kitchen items that will stand the test of time (Ideally, I’d like to not have any old kitchen items to repurpose!), I’ve got kitchen stuff from Mr. FG’s bachelorhood and from the early years of our marriage that are wearing out.

So, I replace them with high-quality stuff by reading the equipment reviews from Cook’s Illustrated (the reviews are seriously worth the price of admission) and then I try to think of alternate uses for the old equipment.

Here are a few ways that’s worked out at my house.

This old, worn-out nonstick pot from Mr. FG’s bachelor days holds all of our Magnetix toys.

The great thing about it is that the magnets stick to the pot, so if you turn it upside down, it makes a great spot to build things.

Of course, you all know about my brand-spankin’ new ladle, which I am deeply in love with. Well, the worn-out one it replaced has found a new home in the bathtub, along with another spoon from that same bachelor set. Sonia and Zoe are very pleased.

Because when you make bubble soup in the tub, you always need something to stir it with and something to serve it with. 😉

When I arranged the shelves in our fridge, I ended up with one extra, and it happened to be the perfect size to hold our watercolor paints.

In a variation on a theme, this is an ice cube container that’s from my parents’ old fridge. I used to use it to hold ice cubes in our old fridge, but our new-ish fridge came with an ice cube container.

So, now this one holds Joshua’s pencils and markers.

This 1/3 cup measuring cup used to have a handle on it, but it broke clean off one day. Fortunately, 1/3 cup is exactly the amount of oatmeal you need to make a single serving, so now this handle-less cup just stays in the oatmeal bin. It makes mixing up a bowl of oatmeal very convenient.

You all are well aware of my love for Pyrex. But back when I got married, Pyrex didn’t seem to make the lovely containers that they do now, so I had Rubbermaid plastic containers. I don’t need them for food storage at this point, but I’m here to tell you that the rectangular ones make very, very lovely spice holders.

I did this when I organized my kitchen cabinets last year, and it’s still the best change I made during that process. I’ve got them grouped by type (sweet spices, Italian spices, Southwest spices), and it’s so, so easy to find what I need now without making a big mess.

Highly recommend this!

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Have you ever found a new use for an old kitchen item? Do share!
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