Frugal Inspiration

This weekend, my mom showed me how she recycles pallets originally used to ship fresh fruit—as storage for her Christmas ornaments. Isn’t that a great idea? The boxes are padded to protect produce during transport, and include little cardboard dividers that can be adjusted to accommodate objects of various sizes. They’re perfect for storing her fragile decorations.

Donnie and I don’t have any of these boxes at our house, which is fine, because we don’t have many Christmas ornaments, either—certainly none as fancy as my mom’s! We don’t usually buy produce in large quantities from farmer’s markets, and we’ve never received a gift of fresh fruit in the mail (which is how my mom got her pallets). Nevertheless, I enjoyed seeing how my mom made good use of the raw materials available to her, rather than spending money on manufactured storage containers. I'm always greatly encouraged by others’ stories of resourceful recycling—even if I can’t recreate their ideas myself, I’m inspired to look at my own “garbage” in new ways.

How have you used items you would normally throw away in new, creative, frugal ways? Make my day by sharing your inspiring stories in the comments!