chool will be over before you know it, and with it, our kids will be hanging out at home! I don’t know about your kiddos, but mine LOVE to come home on the last day of school with backpacks stuffed full of useless papers, notebooks, and broken crayons. Looking for a way to reuse all of that junk? Look no further!
There are TONS of things to do with old and broken crayons! For starters, you can melt them together to form new crayons, or you can donate any broken ones to Crazy Crayons. They’re a terrific organization that uses old pieces of crayons to form new ones!
If your kiddo’s backpacks are salvageable, give them a good scrub down before putting them away for next year. Be sure to let the bag air dry! If the pack has certainly seen better days, you can donate it, or reuse it in one of these great ways.
Did you kids come home with a slew of old workbooks? Don’t just throw them away! Textbooks should be recycled whenever possible! If you’d rather see your old textbook go to a better cause, you can send them to Textbook Recycle. They actually put old and unfinished (depending on the quality, of course) textbooks back into circulation.
Don’t just toss those writing utensils! Sit down and test everything to see if it’s in working function or not. Replace any dry pens around the house, and be sure to stick a few of them in your purse!
If you’ve got tons of pencils (colored or not!) laying around in the depths of a backpack, you can reuse those too! Use them to make jewelry. This tutorial from Design Mom will walk you through the process!
Combine partially used crayons with your unfinished glue sticks to create an awesome set of new crayons. The DIY only takes an hour to complete, and is virtually free if you reuse all your old supplies!
