Reuse old printer paper

By: Posted On: 2020-07-27

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Image by 41330 from Pixabay

 

During the pandemic lockdown, I had a lot of time sitting around my home office thinking. It occurred to me how much paper we waste by only using one side of it. With some more thought, I came up with a number of ways you could use the backside of that piece of paper and not just for notes or to color on. First, it's worth noting that some printers, such as mine, have a setting to tell it to print ‘double-sided’ which means on both sides of the paper. A cool side-effect of double-sided printing is that it will cut down on the amount of paper you use. Here are a few other ideas to think about...

  • Let your younger children draw on it, or use it for scrap paper for a homework assignment.
  • Cut it up in smaller squares and use it for notes.
  • Wad it up and save it for the fireplace in the wintertime as firestarter material.

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Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay

  • If you have a paper shredder, recycle the old printouts of personal data into ribbons. Use the shredded paper as packing material instead. It’s more environmentally friendly than foam packing peanuts and gets some throwaway paper outside of your house. Shredded paper works exceptionally well as a cavity filler when shipping small, fragile items.
  • Shredded paper also works well as bedding for small pets like mice, hamsters, and guinea pigs. It is an excellent alternative to straw and other bedding materials, and it is a hypo-allergenic option for families and pets that are allergic to sawdust or straw.
  • You can also use it to put under craft projects to protect your tables

 

 

  • A good use for old paper is most certainly the making of paper airplanes. Most of us have tried this with a scrap sheet of paper, but have we been doing it, right?

 

  • Maybe you have a Halloween party to go to, or you are doing a skit with a part that needs claws for one of the characters...These claws look like wolves' claws. They’re made to go over each finger. If you color them, then they start to look real.

 

  • And now that you have already made your paper claws, you might as well make a paper mask. Reusing scrap paper, no matter whether it's from your old school papers or a printer is ideal for creating an excellent paper mask. Follow the YouTube guide above for some instructions.

 

 

  • If you want to work a little harder, you can make a paper gun that shoots…….paper wads. 😉 Grab some tape and look at the picture and/or take a look above at the YouTube guide.

 

If you have any more ideas on how to use used printer paper, leave a comment in the comment section below, and share it with all of us!


 
 

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