Eco Friendly Home Projects

Dear readers, this blog will no longer be updated.  All contents will be moved to: upcycleliving.blogspot.com Please update your link, and we hope to see you again soon  😊 It's that time of the year again - you're right - time to get busy preparing for Christmas! And what can be more fun than getting the tree up? As usual, the rules here is to have nothing (or very little) bought. Everything must be old, used, or recycled. We had a great success last year with our CD Christmas tree , and the CDs were then stored away for their future use in God-knows-what; maybe rebuild the same tree, who knows? But this year we're going to be away for the holiday so we'll just have something really simple and doesn't require much work. As I was going through my craft boxes, I found this stack of beautiful glossy cardboard that used to be the body of some Christmas crackers we used last year (yes I actually saved those bits). Was initially thinking of making some p

Bought a pair of oven gloves last year, which can't withstand a single wash - the inside was some sort of fluff that started coming off. So lesson learnt: must only get oven gloves that are fully fabric made. Anyways, being the hogger that I am, throwing away a rather new pair of (non-functioning) oven gloves still bothers me. So I've turned them into a pair of mini Christmas stockings, as they are red and green and look Christmasy. The magic wand I used here is a 1.5-inch needle and some magical red threads :-) Here are the oven gloves-turned-Christmas stockings: Here is what they looked like before: Being taken apart for cutting: Nothing's wasted!

We like throwing small dinner parties and enjoy some home cooked food and nice wines - with proper crockery and cutlery - NO disposable ones! But having to keep washing up and drying wine glasses is a pain, especially when everyone seems to get their wine glasses mixed up and decided to get a fresh one. If only we can have something to individualise each wine glass, but obviously not buy putting a horrible looking sticker label over the glass. When I first saw this brilliant product at a department store, I knew that's what I need to add to our wine accessories - some wine glass charms! But they aren't cheap; in fact, they are really expensive! Minimum RM50 for a box of 6 or 8 charms, and that's all you can get: just the 6 or 8 different designs. That's when I decided to make our own customised wine glass charms. I started collating everything I need: old pendants, old earrings, beads from some accessories came as unwanted gifts; and bought a bag of wine glass charm hoo

No matter how hard we try to buy everything in the least packaging, we somehow still end up with quite a bit that we can't avoid. These net packaging came with some of the potatoes and onions that we bought from our local store, when we had absolutely no choice but to get them. Over time, we've collected quite a few and here's what I've done with them instead of throwing them away: 1. After cleaning thoroughly, fold the net opening out- and downward. 2. Keep folding down, as if rolling down a sock. 3. When fold till the end, turn it up-side-down and we'll get what looks like an apple. I learned to do this from my sister who brought the craft home from her preschool one day years ago. It is extremely easy and fun to do, and they are now in my 6 year-old niece's toy fruit basket :-) (which she would then create a story around whilst playing).

Bin liners / bin bags are one of the most ridiculous household products sold to consumers: something that you buy just to throw away! I can't agree with that, especially when it is absolutely unnecessary. Some people wonder how I survive not buying a single bin liner, yet not taking the plastic bags given by vendors to use as rubbish bags. The answer is: easy! We get plastic bags from packaging alone, and most of them can't be avoided; for instance, bread wrapper bags. We'll try to use up any wrapper bags our food comes in: bread, oat, flour, rice, etc, as long as they are not too fragile or easily torn. We still get the odd plastic bags whenever we can't avoid it, but the key is to moderate and reduce consumption as much as we can. Life isn't what consumerism tell us to have, we don't have to buy bin liners just because the label says that it is for the bin. We can create our own lifestyle without depending on what's sold in the shops :-)