Do you eat a lot of eggs? Are you looking for creative uses for egg cartons around the house? You have come to the right place! I have become quite the queen of upcycling and reusing egg cartons is incredibly helpful in many ways. I thought I’d share a few ways to upcycle egg cartons and help you reduce your carbon footprint.
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10 Uses for Egg Cartons Once You Eat All the Eggs!
Breakfast for dinner is a huge hit in my house (thankfully!) and omelets, quiche, and breakfast casseroles are all quick weeknight meals that everyone enjoys. Of course, that means I am left with an awful lot of egg cartons at the end of the month!
Like these creative uses for egg cartons? Here are more upcycling tips:
- Recycling Old Clothing Gives New Life to Old Clothes
- DIY Business Card Holder and Other Uses For Altoids Tins
- How to Repurpose Spice Jars In Unique Ways
As I strive to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible, I came up with a few creative ways to reuse cardboard egg cartons before tossing them into the recycling bin. Here are just a few ways to use egg cartons once you eat up all the eggs! (I am including a few affiliate links for things you might find useful!)
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It’s a Unique Holiday Storage Idea
When packing away holiday ornaments and other decorations, use an egg carton to help organize and prevent breakage. Small bulbs will fit in each egg holder. You might want to add a rubber band around the outside to help keep the old egg cartons closed better.
Use Egg Cartons as Shipping material
Instead of buying bubble wrap or using packing peanuts, fill the empty space in your shipping box with torn up egg cartons. They are light weight and are a great way to protect breakables during shipping.
Give old egg cartons to chicken owning friends!
One of my favorite uses for egg cartons here in my house is to give them to my local farmer! Owning your own chickens is becoming a popular hobby and people who own chickens have lots of eggs that need holding. Maybe you will luck out and they will share some eggs with you!
Use egg cartons for gardening
If you are an avid gardener, there are tons of creative uses for egg cartons in your life. Starting seedlings in an egg carton is a frugal way to start your garden. Add a small amount of potting soil into each cup of your cardboard egg carton. Add one or two seeds (depending on the type of plant you are growing) and water gently. Place the carton in a sunny location to sprout. Make sure you put the egg carton on a non-porous surface to prevent water damage.
Once the weather warms up, cut the individual cups out of the carton and plant them in the garden, cup and all! The egg carton is biodegradable. By planting the entire egg carton cup, you reduce the chance of damaging the plant and give it a bit of added nutrients once the egg carton starts to degrade.
Make a Homemade Bird Feeder:
Remove the flat cover of a cardboard egg carton and use a hole-puncher to make a hole in each corner. Use strings to hang the carton from a tree branch and fill all of the cups with bird seeds. Sit back and enjoy watching the bird’s take full advantage of their new dining table! You will have to place this somewhere that is relatively covered or you will end up with rain water filling your egg carton. Check out these egg carton bird feeders on Pinterest for inspiration.
Upcycle egg cartons to organize your junk drawer:
One of the best ways to organize a junk drawer is to put egg cartons in it! Use the small egg holding areas to hold things like pins, paper clips, coins, etc. Use the larger, unsegmented area to hold scissors or a few pens and pencils.
Make Egg Carton Art Projects:
This is one of my favorite uses for egg cartons! They are a great addition to the art closet. For a fun craft, cut three to four cups out of the carton leaving them connected together in a strip and grab your child’s paint set. Turn the carton upside down and let your child decorate them as they see fit. Add a pair of googly eyes and a pipe cleaner antenna and you have a cute little caterpillar. The possibilities are endless!
You can also use egg cartons as a great paint holder. Just fill each cup with a different color paint and let your child enjoy a little bit of unstructured artistic fun. Check out these other fun things to do with egg cartons for more craft ideas.
Need creative uses for egg cartons? Feed a worm farm!
If you are a gardener then you understand how vital worms are to a healthy crop. Start a worm farm in your garden and use cardboard egg cartons as worm food or bedding. If the soil mix is too wet, add dry egg carton pieces. If it is too dry, dunk them in water before adding to the soil. Buy a premade worm farm on Amazon and feed kitchen scraps and paper waste to your worms!
Keep your refrigerator cleaner:
An egg carton condiment caddy is one of my favorite creative uses for egg cartons! Place the bottom portion of your egg carton on the shelf of your refrigerator door. Place condiment containers upside down in the container. This keeps the condiments from spilling all over the door of your fridge if they leak.
Make DIY Fire Starters
Add a little bit of wax and some dryer lint, and you have an easy fire starter for camping! Check out this other easy fire starter DIY that I made.
What do you do with your old egg cartons?
Did you find this post helpful? Try this one!
What to do with old muffin tins
Diane is a professional blogger and nationally certified pharmacy technician at Good Pill Pharmacy. She earned her BS in Microbiology at the University of New Hampshire and has worked in cancer research, academics, and biotechnology. Concern over the growing incidence of human disease and the birth of her children led her to begin living a more natural life. She quickly realized that the information she was learning along the way could be beneficial to many others and started blogging and freelance writing to share this knowledge with others. Learn more about her HERE.
We always have way too many egg cartons in the house!
We use them for starter seeds too. Nice thing is if you have the paper-based ones, you can cut them and plant the whole thing!
We go through 5-6 dozen eggs every month, so we could essentially have a lot of empty egg cartons. I love the ideas of using them for the kids’ art projects and ornament storage!
they are incredibly useful…and if you have too many, recycling is always a great last choice!
I love using egg cartons as seed starters! Such a great way to reuse and save money!
Great ideas! We always use our egg cartons for crafts, especially paint. It is perfect!
These are all fantastic uses for egg cartons, great thinking. I appreciate you sharing this!
I really like the plant holder idea, the box breaks down really nicely into different compartments, and it environmentally safe too! Also, the fire starter idea is definitely one I will be using on my next campout.
I save them for crafts, but hadn’t considered the other uses for them. Never throwing one away ever again!
glad I could help!
I use them to keep my earrings organized. I place it in my dresser drawer.
I like the other ideas too!
That is a great idea! I made this homemade earring holder for my daughter but yours is much easier! https://www.turningclockback.com/upcycled-cheese-grater-homemade-earring-holder/