6 Simple Household Items with Tons of Practical DIY Uses

Who doesn’t like creative little do it yourself projects? It may seem like a daunting task for those who are a bit lazy or feel that it would take too much time to gather and buy all the necessary materials for beautiful crafts to be made. 

However, when you break it down, it doesn’t take a whole lot of skill to create some decent decorations and fairly useful things – and you will eventually become very good at it with a bit of practice – and the materials used don’t have to be all that fancy to begin with. 

In fact, you probably have a whole bunch of very basic household items that can be used in a number of fun and useful DIY projects. In this article, we will look at some of the most versatile items that have plenty of great DIY uses, and which you can find in just about any home.

1. Office supplies 

Everyone needs some basic office supplies around the home. Whether you actually need them for work or find an occasional use for them, when you are doing your taxes for instance, there are always some paper clips, sticky notes, rubber bands, pens and pencils lying around. These can be used in some unique ways, ranging from utilitarian to stylish. 

You can create jewelry or decorations from multi-colored paperclips and rubber bands, spruce up file folders with some decorative paper and ribbons or make great little gift boxes out of them, make paperclip bookmarks, fun little figures or models by gluing together pencils and even beautiful coffee filter decorations.

2. Mason Jars 

Jars are fairly easy to come by, and more often than not, you end up stuck with a whole bunch of them just as a result of your regular grocery shopping. There is a good side to this though – they can be re-purposed in huge number of ways. 

You can make jack-o-lanterns, regular lanterns, scented candles, potpourri, cute vases, snow globes (well, snow jars in any case), classy liquid soap dispensers, drinking glasses with straw holes in the lid, piggy banks and a host of cute and creative decorations. You can do just about anything you think off with these.

3. Bubble wrap 

As soon as we unwrap something, we usually proceed to pop the bubble wrap for a few minutes as a form of soothing meditation. However, if you can overcome that overwhelming desire to pop it and actually save up some bubble wrap, or just buy some extra so you can pop it and still have some left overs for crafting, there’s a bunch of stuff you can use it for. 

It’s great for insulation and padding, so anything from insulated bags and egg packaging to protective padding in your kids’ knight or superhero costumes is a valid use for it.

4. PVC pipes 

PVC pipes are cheap and widely available, and I’ll bet you have a length of PVC piping of different diameters somewhere in your garage right now. Not only can they be used for obvious home improvement projects, but they can be made into storage for a variety of small items, turned into cool children’s toys, flower pots, wine racks, or used for decorative purposes. You can cut them up, shape them and color them – there is a lot of creative freedom involved.

5. Old clothes 

Donating your old clothes is a noble cause, but sometimes your old wardrobe is so worn out that it can barely be of any use for anybody. Instead of throwing old clothes away, you can cut it up and utilize it as decorative material or even patch together a fun costume from different items. 

For example, old jeans can become great book and notebook cover material, they can be turned into new items like shorts or bags, they can be used to make a stuffed animal, and even as rugs or bed covers. You can find tons of similar uses for just about any old clothing item you have.

6. White vinegar, baking soda, salt and tooth paste 

With all this crafting going on in your house, you are bound to make a bit of a mess. Worry not my friend, white vinegar, baking soda and other common little household items are there to help you clean up. These items can be used for a variety of cleaning applications – from cleaning up spills and removing stains, to unclogging drains and soaking up odors.

It pays to be creative, so dig around your home and look for these and other similar items and find ways of putting them to some good use.