There are tons of one-time-use items that get thrown away immediately after they’re used. But in many of these cases, these items don’t need to be thrown away or recycled just yet. Take a look at some clever ways to repurpose/reuse common disposable products:

1. Butter Wrappers: instead of throwing your wrappers away once the sticks of butter are gone, save them in a sandwich bag to use the next time you need to grease a baking tray, dish or pan.
2. Plastic Yogurt Containers: you can use small plastic yogurt cups as a place to start seeds. If you’ve got the bigger containers, wash them out and use them to store leftovers like chicken stock and soups.
3. Plastic Bags from Newspapers: just like these are used to protect paper from the elements, you can save them to protect other things from your wet umbrellas. When you have to take a wet umbrella indoors, use one of these bags (that’s easy to store in a purse) to store the umbrella in for the time being.
4. Aluminum Foil: since foil is so durable, you can easily clean it with a sponge and some soap in most cases. Then just dry flat, fold it up and use again. Also:
   

   fold it several times and cut with scissors – it will really sharpen them up. You can also use it as a paint texture applicator, and you can restore the sheen to steel and chrome by rubbing the metal with foil.

5. Laundry Detergent Caps: use these as scoops for pet food, ice melt, cat litter, or even as something for the kids to play and dig with in the sandbox.

Find many more frugal ideas over at Wise Bread’s 21 Disposable Products You Can Reuse.