What is Valentine’s Day if you don’t get chocolates? However, when you are done eating them (and enjoying yourself in your comfortable and stretchy bamboo yoga pants), what do you do with the box? The most important thing to remember is to not throw the box away! There are several ways you can reuse your Valentine’s Day candy boxes!
- Decorations. You can cut the heart shaped top piece off and frame it. Next year, you can hang this picture up for Valentine’s Day! This is something you can use year after year.
- Trinket Box. You can use the entire box to hold your trinkets. You can even decorate the outside of the box to more of your liking with markers, ribbons, etc.
- Gift Box. Instead of having to buy gift bags or gift wrap, you can put a gift into your Valentine’s Day candy box. These boxes usually give a good amount of protection and often are very pretty.
- Regift the box with homemade candy. You can easily save the box for next year and refill it with homemade chocolates (which you can either made from scratch or buy from your local gourmet food store like Whole Foods). The plastic inserts can be used with this project too! You can then regift the box to a loved one.
- Use it as a Valentine. If you cut the top of the heart shaped box off, you can use that as a Valentine to give to others. You just flip the piece over so the decorated part faces down, and you can write a message to your loved one. You can decorate the front more too!
- Craft Organizer. You can use the tray inside to sort beads, buttons, charms, etc. It is also a great place to store these items!
- Paint Organizer. The plastic inserts that you often find inside of these boxes can be used as trays for mixing different colors of paint. When finished, you can wash them and reuse them again next time!
- Toys. If you have children, this may make a great toy for them. My daughter uses an old Valentine’s Day candy box to store her My Little Pony’s accessories. It is also great for any role playing they do (my kids like to play mailman and deliver it to one another), and it is great to use if they have a play kitchen!
- Props. Check with your local schools and theaters. They can often use props for plays that they are putting on.
- Bank. First, glue the box shut. Then cut a slit into the top of each one of the heart lobes, and you have a bank that you can use year round!
We can avoid throwing away thousands of cardboard and paper heart shaped Valentine’s Day chocolate boxes. Hopefully our list has given you some great ideas of how to recycle them and make them useful once more!
What do you with your old Valentine’s Day candy boxes?
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These are great ideas! Here’s our take on chocolate for the day.
http://womensvoicesforchange.org/chocolate-yes-or-no.htm
My mother never threw anything away if it could contain toys or small items. My old doll house furniture is in a pretty gold box with gold bow – heck, it’s only 50 years old! This rubbed off on me and I have every box, cookie tin and container ever given to me – maybe it’s time to move on… when a whole cupboard is devoted to empty boxes – lol!
Great ideas!
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