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The winter vacation festivities have come and gone. But after the inevitable baking, entertaining, giving, and receiving related to the season, do you discover you’ve gotten various leftover aluminum pie pans?
The excellent news, as chances are you’ll already know, is that aluminum pans are recyclable. But earlier than you toss them within the recycling bin, you would possibly wish to see if you may get extra use out of them. Here are just a few reuse and upcycling concepts — from the sensible to the artful — for these previous aluminum pans.
1. Feed the Birds — and Squirrels
Birds, squirrels, and different wildlife are likely to have hassle discovering meals through the chilly winter months. Give again to the pleasant critters in your yard by making a low-cost feeder from an aluminum pie pan.
Simply place the pan on a flat floor open air, weigh it down with a rock from the yard and fill it with the birdseed of your selection. Your feathered pals will thanks — maybe with a chirp or two — if the squirrels don’t eat all of it first.
2. Use Pie Pans for Crafts
Aluminum pans are good for crafting, particularly with younger youngsters. Use them as palettes for paints. Or retailer your beads, glitters, and glues in them whereas engaged on a undertaking with the children.
After craft time, merely wash your pan nicely with heat water and dry it. Then, you possibly can both put it aside for future crafts or place it within the recycling bin.
3. Deck the Halls
If you wish to get a little bit rustic together with your adorning, take a lesson from the ages. In the previous, folks crafted holiday ornaments from previous cans and scrap tinplate. With a bit of labor and creativity, you possibly can craft your individual traditional-style ornaments. All you’ll want is aluminum pans and some fundamental instruments to get the job completed.
4. Keep Candles From Making a Mess
Pillar candles are likely to drip, and an enormous mess positively ruins the ambiance. Save your surfaces by inserting an aluminum pie pan underneath your candles earlier than lighting them.
If you’re involved that an aluminum pan could conflict together with your décor, merely lower out the underside utilizing heavy-duty scissors and toss the perimeters within the recycling bin. The flat aluminum circle will likely be much less conspicuous however will nonetheless defend your tables from dripping wax.
5. Feed Fido On the Go
Since they’re light-weight however pretty sturdy, aluminum pie pans are good for on-the-go pet dishes.
Save them together with your outside gear and use them for meals and water bowls in your subsequent tenting journey, picnic, or seashore tour.
6. Make Picture Frames
SFGate.com contributor Mary Love suggests utilizing pie pans as alternative picture frames or frames for displaying your youngster’s artwork. Simply paint the plate with craft paint, lower a circle from a photograph, and glue it into place. Glue a magnet on the again to show the image in your fridge.
7. Reduce the Mess While Cooking
Networx.com author Sayward Rebhal suggests utilizing previous pie pans as baskets for grilling veggies. To forestall your greens from falling into the coals, merely poke just a few holes in aluminum pan, fill it together with your veggies, and put the entire thing on the grill.
An aluminum pan with small holes can also be nice for lowering messes whereas frying meals on the range. If you’re coping with a number of oil spatter, merely place the pie pan over your meals within the frying pan to guard your self and your kitchen from scorching cooking oil.
8. Cookout Tools
Try utilizing previous aluminum pans to guard your arms when toasting meals on a stick over a hearth throughout an outside cookout.
Simply punch two holes in reverse sides of a pan. Then slide the stick you’ll use for toasting your marshmallows or scorching canines by the holes. The aluminum will likely be at one finish of the stick and you’ll spear your meals on the opposite finish. The aluminum creates a warmth protect in your hand when you maintain your meals over the fireplace or coals.
9. Garden Planter
Although this isn’t a reuse thought for pie-sized pans, we thought we’d embody it as you might also have some bigger aluminum pans you’d wish to reuse earlier than you recycle them.
The contributors at ThriftyFun.org counsel utilizing an previous aluminum roasting or loaf pan as a planter for the garden. These bigger pans can maintain a number of seed pots once you’re beginning your seedlings within the spring. They’ll maintain water, and with their greater edges, the pans can preserve your seedlings upright and secure.
Editor’s be aware: Originally printed on November 27, 2013, this text was up to date in November 2024.
