We LOVE a load of rubbish!

An uncle of mine used to collect rubbish. No, he didn’t live in squalor. But he did actually collect rubbish. Collect rubbish?! What on earth does that mean? Well, he used to save old crisp packets, chocolate bar wrappers, washing powder labels, frozen food boxes and just about anything else one would typically throw away. He would then clean them and make them into rather beautiful collages. 

Having recently seen them again, decades after they were first made, they do two things rather brilliantly: firstly, they are a great time capsule of yesteryear’s packaging (Snickers used to be called Marathon??). Secondly, they are very aesthetically pleasing. Picture it: a 1980s KitKat wrapper pasted next to an old lid from a huge tin of Quality Street.

All of this carefully crafted rubbish got me thinking, why don’t we do more of it? Saving rubbish, that is. Stuff that we would usually chuck or recycle. I think this is a particularly good thing to do if you have children and are looking for something cheap and cheerful to keep them occupied. Let’s face it, the summer holidays are fast approaching and that means two things are certain: 1) the kids are gonna have time on their hands and 2) many of the options to keep them busy are not cheap! 

So, why not challenge them to make something out of nothing. Rubbish can be used to make just about anything in the miniature world: swords, cars, aeroplanes or even a toy theatre! It will keep them happily occupied whilst inspiring their imagination and challenging their creativity. 

So, what to not throw away? There are the obvious things that one would usually recycle: cereal boxes, jam jars or the cardboard centre of old loo/kitchen roll etc. But what about the stuff that you wouldn’t think twice about chucking, like a Dairy Milk wrapper or the label from a tin of baked beans? 

All of this rubbish can, generally speaking, be split into two categories: structural and decorative.

The firmer stuff can be used for the building part. Everything else can be used to embellish a finished product to offer an exciting aesthetic. 

Here’s a couple of examples…

A space rocket… 

Easy peasy… Take a Pringles tube, cut out some triangles from a serial packet and stick them on as the wings. Then get a load of soft plastic wrappers and decorate your space rocket until it is covered in supermarket branding. Sounds bizarre. But it will look FAB! 

What about something slightly more practical?…

A piggy bank!! An old Coca Cola bottle is ideal for this. Cut a small slit in the top for posting coins/cash. Then decorate away! You could gather together as much pink/red branding as possible to create a collage of old wrappers, which will eventually resemble a pig. Paint on a couple of eyes and voilà - you have a piggy bank! The fun part comes when you eventually slice her open to retrieve the hard earned savings!

It really is easier than you think! So give it a go: save up a week’s worth of rubbish, give it to the kids and let rip! It will keep them occupied, get them thinking creatively and will develop their awareness of repurposing things or ‘up-cycling’. 

Who said rubbish was rubbish?