The Simple Way You Can Repurpose Your Milk Container

Whether it's made from dairy, oat, or soy, milk is a staple in many people's fridges. It's important to store your milk properly to ensure the longest shelf life possible. While dairy milk tends to have a particularly short lifespan, all types of milk eventually go bad. If your milk has curdled or smells sour, you should get rid of both the milk and the carton, but if you've simply used up all your milk, you can actually rinse out that container and give it a new life. 

Taste of Home has plenty of ideas when it comes to repurposing and reusing household items, and yes, that includes your empty milk containers. According to Taste of Home, you can use a pair of sharp scissors to cut off the bottom of a half-gallon milk container (keep the screw cap on!) and voila, you've got a scoop. If you're not confident in your scissor skills, the site recommends drawing a line on the container to help guide your cutting. This works best with a plastic milk container, and we think this is perfect if you're scooping something that's tough to clean, like dirt — the publication also notes it can be good for scooping pet food. If you only have gallon jugs on hand, you'll just end up with a larger scoop.

If you and your family go through a gallon of milk every week, you might need more ideas than just a milk container scoop; there's only so many of those you can keep around the house. Thankfully, The Family Handyman has more ideas to repurpose milk jugs and other plastic containers. Some of our favorites are using a milk carton as a paint tray, putting a milk carton in your garden to protect plants from getting eaten, or transforming a bottle of laundry detergent into a watering can, which you could also do with an empty jug of milk. Taste of Home also notes that if you remove the cap from your DIY milk bottle scoop, it turns into a funnel! If you're still eager for ideas, you can also search Pinterest to find inspiration for crafts that start with milk cartons.

Milk jugs aren't the only plastic item you can use again and again. There's so much in your kitchen that you can reuse — saving takeout containers, for example, can be a great way to cut down on plastic and save some money on Tupperware. But there are some things you should know about reusing your plastic deli containers. Namely, keep them out of the microwave.