The post in which I confess my recycling addiction.

I think I have a problem. Here's my sad tale.

On a recent trip to the supermarket, I purposely selected the Wegmans brand BBQ sauce not because it would surely be the best thing to use on our pork chops but, rather, because the bottle was cute. And those two 4-packs of mini-Frizzante European sodas? Apparently, the fact that the said carbonated beverage is packaged in cute curvy bottles is a good enough reason to buy a drink that, otherwise, rarely enters our fridge. Please hold while I ask my almost-pharmacist husband if there is a medicine for curing such bizarre and irrational decision-making.

~~~~~~~Insert some elevator music here~~~~~~~

Bad news: no pill. But if there is one, he says it will come in a glass bottle. Way to fuel the addiction, honey.

Anyway, I am not ashamed to admit some of my favorite curb items to scout for on an infrequent basis are cool bottles and jars. Not being drinkers, and since my supermarket problem isn't so uncontrollable that I am unwittingly compelled to buy expensive alcohol,we don't get many unique bottles through our doors. My solution? Trick Rick into going for walks with me on Wednesday nights. No, it is not a coincidence that Thursday morning is when garbage is collected. I am like a girl on Halloween, happily skipping around filling her sack of goodies. Sometimes I even dress up. No, wait, that was Rick. He wore a disguise so as to not be recognized by our neighbors. What can I say? He clearly doesn't see the value in my glass collection.

So what is the value in my collection, you might ask? After, of course, cleaning the bottles thoroughly, I have used pretty bottles and jars around the house in the following decorative and functional ways.


1. For a vase. My wonderful friend from high school, Michelle, recently came to visit with her husband and they brought a sweet bouquet of sunflowers that is featured at the top of this post. Don't they look adorable in this jar?

2. To organize toiletries. We needed all of these things at our easy disposal, but did not like how they were just sitting in their boxes/bags on the open shelf. The use of the jars make the whole display much more appealing. Bonus points if you can figure out what these common jars used to hold before I converted them into home storage...

3. As new candle holders. I combined an old Yankee Candle jar, a votive holder, and some fun glassy stones for a brand new candle.

4. To display sweet sentiments. This dish with flare used to be a candle holder. I cleaned it out and it now is a reminder of some of our 6-28-08 wedding mementos (our guests, in lieu of a guestbook, were asked to write down little snippets of advice on small pieces of cardstock).One of my favorites is in here: "Never let the honeymoon end."

5. In decorative clusters. I took three street-wrangled bottles with different heights and colors, and slightly different looks, and presto--a shelf arrangement is born.

6. On a shelf ladder. Hey, it's functioning as a shelf! I love the beachy feel that these small spray-painted bottles give to the worn ladder.

7. To water plants. I keep this eye-catching martini bottle next to our date palm. Seeing it there reminds me to water the plant as needed (and I need all the help I can get), and it's a lot more attractive than a watering can or plastic container.

8. As beverage carafes or containers. The aforementioned mini-Frizzante bottles were recently used when we had some family members over. We filled them with lemonade for a sweet surprise.This large curvy one is a nice water carafe, and looks elegant on the table.

 9. To wrangle and display lively craft items. I filled one votive holder with colorful buttons and used some of those buttons to dress up this old-jar-turned-pencil-holder.


My favorite thing about all of these is that they are absolutely F-R-E-E, especially if you get them from someone else. They can easily be moved around for different purposes, and can be placed back in the recycling bin if they no longer have a good use.





 And here is a story about how I store my bottles:

Me: Hey, guess what I did today?
Rick: What?
Me: (after making him guess) I cleaned out the kitchen cabinets!
Rick: Great! They needed it. (peers into the cabinet I am proudly pointing at and sees this:)

Rick: Oh...how nice...
Me: :-D


So how about you? Anyone else out there have a recycled bottle addiction? Do tell.