Pots and pans wouldn’t be much without the lids that come with them. It might seem like a silly thing, but it’s much more difficult to boil water or even allow food to simmer without a lid to contain some of that heat. And an essential part of any pot or pan lid is the handle; this is the crucial piece that keeps you from getting burned by the steaming hot surface. So if your pots and pan lids are missing their handles, you’ve just entered some potentially dangerous cooking territory. If your lids are broken like this, you’d have to throw them away, right? Wrong! With this simple DIY, you can not only fix your lids, but you can also give them a stylish upgrade! It’s a completely free project and it will make your pot and pan lids usable once more.

You only need three simple materials to get a functional pot or pan lid! Most likely, you have all of them hanging around the house right now. If not, they’re easy to get a hold of and relatively inexpensive (one item comes at a slightly higher cost, but it’s one we think you’ll be willing to pay.)

Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

Materials

• Wine cork
• Screwdriver
• Screw
• Washer

Instructions

1. Place your cork on one of the empty holes on the top of your lid. Try to center it as best you can.
2. Flip the lid over so it’s balancing on the cork; feel free to grab the lid by the cork to keep pressure on it instead of balancing it.
3. Put your washer around the hole and prep your screw.
4. Take your screw and screwdriver and work the screw into the cork, continuing to apply pressure to the cork.

By simply replacing your handle with a regular wine cork, you’ve created a soft, heat-resistant new handle that looks stylish, too! Not only that, but it was most likely free to revive your lid – if you had to buy anything, it was probably a bottle of wine so you could scavenge the cork. We’re willing to bet that you’re not too upset with that investment.

This DIY does depend a lot on HOW your lid handle broke. In some circumstances, you may have to remove lingering screws or even pieces of the broken handle from the lid. Naturally, those are steps that would take place before the outlined instructions above.

But once all is said and done, you’ll have a new handle that you can easily grab (even when your hands are wet) and won’t burn you! Best of all, the DIY cork handle is also dishwasher-safe, so you don’t have to clean your upgraded lids in some new, bizarre way.

Your new cork handle is going to look so great, you might want to replace all your other boring lid handles with this hack! This is also a great way to use up some wine corks if you like to stockpile them like I do.

What do you think of this creative DIY? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.