Winter Crafts You Can Create from Disinfecting Wipe Canisters

Baby wipes have been popular for many years and for years suggestions were shared for reusing those rectangular plastic boxes. Parents and teachers have been filling them with crayons and other craft supplies and small toys for years. Savvy moms and dads used them in creative ways from packing toiletries for travel to storing nuts, bolts and screws in them in the workshop.

Today wipes aren't just for babies. Several manufacturers including Lysol are making cleaning cloth wipes, or disinfecting wipes for kitchens, bathrooms and classrooms. Instead of rectangular plastic boxes, most cleaning wipes are coming in plastic canisters of various sizes from those about the size of a Pringle's chips can to those that are about the size of the Quaker Oatmeal boxes. Many are marked as recyclable but even better we can repurpose them into practical and fanciful winter crafts or even reuse them to help organize our crafting supplies in some clever ways.

Since these cleaning wipe canisters are plastic and not cardboard, they don't make great homemade drums like the countless homemade drums made from Quaker Oatmeal boxes. On the other hand, they do lend themselves to some of the same ideas and a few winter crafts that can be created with them because they are plastic. Let's begin with one of those.

Holiday Flower Vases

These canisters are great for upcycling into pairs or trios of holiday vases. Since they are plastic, they will hold the water and you cover them to be matching, coordinated or completely different depending on how you plan to place them through your home. Think of them as cheap Christmas party decorations.

To cover the canisters in holiday flair you can use cloth napkins or scraps of fabric. I've used dark red cloth napkins and of course since these are temporary vases my napkins aren't damaged in any way. I've also cut up an old plaid tablecloth that had become tattered and reused it to wrap my holiday flower vases.

You don't need a glue gun, staple gun or anything complicated. You're simply going to center the vase on the fabric, pull it up and tuck it inside. That's it. Now you can tug and straighten if you want something polished or allow it be bunched and gathered for a more casual look. Add fresh greenery and some sprigs of holly and you're ready with one super easy, green and inexpensive Christmas decoration.

You could of course use paper or cellophane wrap like they do with the potted plants sold for the holidays.

Snowman Paintbrush or Colored Pencil Holder

My daughter was rummaging around for a new way to store her growing paintbrush collection. She decided on a disinfecting wipe canister from the recycling bin and we found the label was easy to completely remove. It is wrapped and only glued on the seam with no stuck on paper to remove. She commented that the white canister with the orange top reminded her of a snowman and two button eyes, a few stickers and a pompom for the hat later, we had created an easy winter craft that she can use to store paintbrushes or colored pencils and it looks cute enough to leave sitting out on her desk. Of course in the spring, she could always turn it around and create a bunny on the other side.

SillyBandz, Hair Scrunchies or Head Band Holders

Once you start making things out of disinfecting wipe containers, the quest to reuse these canisters for winter crafts that are both cute and practical can become addictive.

With just a sheet of scrapbook paper and some stickers, a narrow canister can be decorated as a holder to place SillyBandz or hair scrunchies around.

A larger canister can be decorated to become a perfect landing pad for hair bands.

These are also fun homemade gifts kids can make for their friends for Christmas.

Repurposing Disinfecting Wipe Canisters to Hold Yarn for Knitters

For years people who knit or crochet have used two liter bottles to hold their yarn and keep it from getting tangled or rolling away while they are working. This required cutting the bottom off of a two liter soda bottle, putting the yarn inside, threading it through the spout and reattaching the bottom.

Large clean up wipe canisters are perfect for reusing to hold yarn because there's no cutting or reattaching required. The top pops off, the yarn is put inside and threaded through the opening that the clean up wipes are pulled through and you have another super easy repurposing project.

What are your ideas for repurposing wipe canisters?