14 reasons you’ll never throw empty paper rolls away again >
If you don’t have a bidet, you probably go through a lot of toilet paper rolls in your home. Instead of simply recycling them or using them for compost, there are numerous practical ways to make use of these humble cardboard tubes. Here are 14 creative ideas to get the most out of your toilet paper rolls:
1. Seed Starter Pots
Hang on to a few toilet paper rolls to make little biodegradable seed pots for starting seeds in spring.
Simply cut a few slits in the bottom and fold them up to create a container of sorts, fill with soil, and carefully place your seeds within.
Once the seedlings are ready to go outside, you can plant the cardboard tubes directly in the soil.
2. Insect Hotel Filler
Building a bug hotel near the garden gives beneficial insects a place to overwinter and lay their eggs come spring.
Bees, ladybugs, lacewings, spiders, wasps, butterflies, moths, and more, are frequent guest of the bug hotel.
When the frame has been built, it needs to be filled with natural materials like sticks, pine cones, wood shavings, hollow reeds, lichen, and the like, to create “rooms” for different insect species.
One easy to source filler is toilet paper rolls, stacked with hollow ends facing out.
3. Bird Feeder
Smeared with peanut butter and rolled in birdseed, toilet paper tubes are transformed into a quick and easy bird feeder.
Hang them directly on the branch, like so. Or make a few holes in the top and bottom of the tube to hang with string or ribbon and then add sticks as a perch below,
4. Fire Starter
Newspaper, dryer lint, and toilet paper tubes make for an excellent eco-friendly kindling to get fires blazing quickly.
To make, stuff toilet paper rolls loosely with dryer lint. Fill the roll halfway and add a few drips of melted wax (this will help slow the burning process and allow time for the wood to catch fire).
Finish stuffing the roll with lint and then roll the tube up in newspaper, tucking the paper ends into the tube.
When ready to use, place the fire starter at the base of the fire and add small twigs in a teepee formation over the roll. Light the fire starter and gradually feed the fire with larger and thicker pieces of wood until it’s roaring.
