9 Extraordinary Uses of Egg Cartons

With a dozen handy compartments, egg cartons are a natural for storing and organizing small items. Here are some ideas to get you going. You’re sure to come up with more of your own. Here are 9 extraordinary ideas to use egg cartons.

1. Instead of emptying all that loose change 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 or in a handy spot somewhere else. Sort your quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies as you pull them out of your pockets. (Dump dollars in a larger container, such as a jar, or put them in a piggy bank.)

2. Organize buttons, safety pins, threads, sewing-machine bobbins, and fasteners on your sewing table.

3. Organize washers, tacks, small nuts and bolts, and screws on your workbench. Or use cartons to keep disassembled parts in sequence.

4. Keep small Christmas ornaments from being crushed in stackable egg cartons, with individual ornaments stored in their own compartment.

5. Start seedlings

An egg carton can become the perfect nursery for your seeds. (Use a cardboard egg carton, not a polystyrene one.) Fill each cell in the carton with soil and plant a few seeds in each one. Once the seeds have sprouted, divide the carton into individual cells and plant, cardboard cells and all.

6. Make ice

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

7. Reinforce a garbage bag

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

8. Golf ball caddy

An egg carton in your golf bag is a great way to keep golf balls that have been cleaned ready for teeing off.

9. 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, and light. Egg cartons can also be filled with kindling, such as small bits of wood and paper, and used as a fire starter in a fireplace or a woodstove.