Fun Fact: Interesting Uses for Egg Cartons

Use for storing and organizing

With a dozen handy compartments, egg cartons are a great way to store and organize small items. Here are some ideas to get you going. You're sure to come up with more of your own.

1. Instead of emptying the coins in your pocket into a jar for later sorting, cut off a four-section piece of an egg carton and leave it on your dresser. Sort your quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies as you pull them out of your pockets. (Dump pennies in a larger container, such as a jar, or put them in a piggy bank.)
2. Organize buttons, safety pins, threads, bobbins, and fasteners on your sewing table.
3. Organize tacks, small nuts and bolts, and screws.
4. Keep small Christmas ornaments from being crushed in handy, stackable egg cartons.

Start a fire

Fill a cardboard egg carton with briquettes (and a bit of leftover candle wax if it's handy), place in your barbecue grill, and light. Egg cartons can also be filled with tinder, such as small bits of wood and paper, and used as a fire starter in a fireplace or a wood stove.

Make ice

Making a bunch of ice for a picnic or party? Use the bottom halves of clean polystyrene egg cartons as auxiliary ice trays.

Reinforce a trash bag

Yuck! You pull the plastic trash bag out of the kitchen trash container and smelly gunk drips out! Next time, put an opened empty egg carton at the bottom of the trash bag to prevent tears and punctures.

Create shippable homemade goodies

Here's a great way to brighten the day of a soldier, student, or any faraway friend or loved one. Cover an egg carton with bright wrapping paper. Line the individual cells with candy wrappers. Nestle homemade treats inside each. Include the carton in your next care package or birthday gift, and rest assured the treats will arrive intact.

“Extraordinary Uses For Ordinary Things” from The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.