Reuse & upcycle: water bottle to pencil holder

 

Ok, after the pants and the pillowcases, I'm still in closet cleaning mode, hoping to either find new uses for things that have been stored for a long time or to just toss them and reduce clutter.

I could not, however, bring myself to throw away this water bottle.

It was the first water bottle we purchased when my daughter went to pre-school, but either the plastic was poor quality or it degraded with time (or both) and a couple of months ago we noticed the water acquired a plastic taste after being in the bottle for a few hours. We bought a new water bottle and put this one aside.

After some brainstorming, I finally found a way to reuse it. First, I cut the top half of the bottle, and then punched several holes around the (new) rim, at regular intervals.

 

 Once this was done, I crocheted around the rim, inserting the hook in each of the holes successively.

 

After a first row of single crochet I added a second row for a bit of flair (four sc in one hole, slip stitch in the next hole and so forth).

And the water bottle was turned into a cute pencil holder:

Here it is already in use at my daughter's "work" desk: 

This shows that most things can be reused or upcycled if you put your imagination to work. And that sometimes the simple ideas are truly the brightest ones.

So, what items do you have in your closets that could really use a second life?