12 Things to Reuse Around: Your Home to Save Money

Reusing items is such an easy way to save money and live a more eco-friendly life! From old t-shirts and pasta jars to beeswax wraps and wool dryer balls, there are so many ways to cut back on what you buy. Let’s look at 12 things to reuse around your home to save money!

Living a frugal, thrifty life is a huge value of mine, and it certainly helps with our household budget!

We've been working on saving money as long as we've been married, and we have found quite a few simple ways to do it.

Of course, going DIY instead of buying new products is always a major way we practice frugality. You can read more about that in our post, 21 Things we Stopped Buying and Started Making Instead!

But reusing what we have on hand is another great way to save, and it’s arguably even easier.

A lot of what we reuse turns up while we're cleaning out a room, so we keep this list close by whenever we work through our summer declutter checklist.

Let’s dive into the 12 things you can reuse around your home to save money!

Why Focus on Reusing?

Save money: Saving money is always a goal in the back of our mind as we work around the house. Instead of always buying new products, reusing what you have can cut costs each time, which adds up to big savings.
Reduce waste: In your efforts to live a sustainable, eco-friendly life, you might find yourself trying to reduce waste. Reusing ‘single-use’ items and choosing reusable options whenever possible helps keep trash out of the landfill.
Flex your creativity: We always find it so fun to challenge myself to be more thrifty. Sometimes it takes a bit of creativity to find something around the house instead of ordering on Amazon, or to come up with a use for a common trash item. You’ll be glad when you flex that creative muscle, and it pays off!

12 Things to Reuse to Save Money

Glass Jars for Storage and Organizing

How many times have you used a jar of pasta sauce, then thrown the glass jar in the trash or recycling? You can save money on pantry and fridge storage by washing and reusing those jars!

They work just as well as a brand new mason jar or food storage container, but they come for free with your canned goods. Use them in the fridge to store soup, broth, or homemade yogurt, and use them in the pantry to organize dry goods such as flour or sugar.

Beeswax Wraps for Covering Food

A homemade beeswax wrap covering a crock in a kitchen.

Homemade beeswax wraps are a small investment that can save you big. By using beeswax wraps to cover and wrap food, we save so much money on cling wrap, foil, and plastic zip-top bags. Not to mention, they save so much waste from the landfill!

You can buy beeswax wraps, but they are quite expensive. We find homemade to be a much better option; you only need scraps of fabric and some beeswax.

Old T-shirts

A spray bottle of window wash on a white cleaning rag.

Why spend on paper towels and fancy cleaning cloths when you can use old t-shirts instead?!

Whenever a shirt has too many stains or holes to wear, we cut the sleeves and seams off and use the remaining pieces for DIY reusable cleaning wipes, homemade dryer sheets, or throughout the house as we clean different surfaces.

If you find yourself with ratty towels or wash cloths, this is also a great use for those!

Citrus Peels for Simmer Pots

Looking down into a pot of stovetop potpourri.

Make your home smell lovely and give your food scraps a second life by making a simmer pot.

By adding citrus peels, used cinnamon sticks, shriveled cranberries, and other inedible food scraps to a pot of simmering water, you can infuse the air with a wonderful aroma for several hours!

Need another use for your citrus peels? You can make an infused vinegar by adding them to a jar with white vinegar for a few weeks. Once strained, use it to make homemade all purpose cleaner!

Reuse Food Containers

Besides pasta sauce jars, you can repurpose a lot of food storage containers that most people toss! Yogurt containers, salad dressing bottles, and plastic takeout boxes are easy to wash and use again instead of buying lots of reusable food storage containers.

They’re also useful for non-food storage — try using them for craft supplies, homemade powder laundry detergent, and other odds and ends around the house.

Coffee Grounds for Exfoliating Scrubs

A jar of coffee ground exfoliating scrub.

Exfoliating regularly with body scrubs is an easy way to keep your skin feeling fresh and healthy! You don’t need to run to the store for a body scrub — you can make one with used coffee grounds that would otherwise be trash. Homemade coffee scrub can be mixed up in a couple of minutes, and it feels luxurious to use.

Apple Scraps for Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar

A jar of homemade apple cider vinegar with apples next to it.

Have you ever made an apple pie and wondered how to avoid wasting the peels and cores of the apples? You can put them to good use and save money on groceries by making your own homemade apple cider vinegar!

All you need is apple scraps, water, and sugar, plus a little patience while it ferments. Apple cider vinegar is great to have on hand for cooking, natural cleaning, and homemade hair care (like an easy apple cider vinegar hair rinse).

Leftover Soap Ends for Rebatch Soap

Rebatch soap bars on a linen towel with twine wrapped around them.

Tiny bits and ends of soap certainly don’t need to go to the trash! Instead, you can save them up and make a beautiful homemade rebatch soap bar to give them a second life. Rebatching soap is easier than it seems and well worth the effort — you essentially get a free batch of soap!

If you make homemade soap, you may get a lot of soap ends from when you cut the bars. Even if you don’t make soap, you can save the small pieces at the end of every soap bar and dip your toes into soapmaking with this easy rebatch recipe!

Fabric Scraps

Three beeswax wraps hanging off a wooden drying rack.

Fabric scraps are endlessly useful, especially in a thrifty, eco-friendly home. Our favorite way to use them is to make beeswax wraps, as we mentioned above.

But they are also valuable to use as jar covers, reusable wipes, and to decorate homemade gifts (like our 18 homemade Christmas gift ideas). Wrapping a bar of homemade tallow soap in a piece of scrap fabric, for instance, is a great alternative to wrapping paper.

Mason Jars for Homemade Candles

Three mason jar candles on a white table with dried lavender;

Mason jars are endlessly useful, but our favorite way to repurpose them is with homemade candles. Not only do you save money on store-bought candles, but you get to customize your very own beautiful candle with your choice of wax, fragrance, and fun add-ins. You can make a DIY coffee candle, a dried flower jar candle, or a homemade beeswax candle. They also make excellent gifts!

Wool Dryer Balls

Buy wool dryer balls once, and they’ll last nearly forever! We love using wool dryer balls as an alternative to dryer sheets.

You can scent your dryer balls with herbs to give your clothes a touch of fragrance without spending anything.

Among their many benefits (see thetop 10 benefits of wool dryer balls), they are said to help your clothes dry faster, which will provide additional savings on electricity!

Vegetable Scraps and Meat Bones for Broth

Bone broth and instant pot on white table.

If you’re tossing your bones and veggie scraps and buying cartons of broth, you’re missing out on a delicious money-saving opportunity!

Add your carrot peels, onion peels, celery leaves, and other veggie scraps to a bag in the freezer. You can do the same with any meat bones, and when the bags are full, use the bones and vegetable scraps to make homemade Instant Pot bone broth. It’ll taste way better than store-bought and save you a ton of money!

In Conclusion

We hope you feel inspired to reuse what you have to save money and live a more sustainable life! Once you get started, you’ll be on the hunt for more ways to reuse — it’s just that addicting.

Let me know in the comments what we missed! What do you like to reuse around your house to save money?