newspaper

17 Ways to Use Old Newspaper

Mikey Rox — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 10:36:15 +0000

What should you do with the newspaper you’ve just read?

Recycle it, of course — but recycling doesn’t always mean tossing it into a bin so it can be reincarnated.

Before you send the funny pages — and every other section — to that big paper pile in the sky, consider using it for something else, like wrapping gifts, washing windows, preventing garden weeds, making origami sculptures, and so much more. (See also: 30 Uses for the Humble Cardboard Box)

1. Cleaning Windows

This seems totally counterintuitive, but a friend of mine recently told me that using newspaper to clean windows works better than a cloth in preventing streaks. Weird, right? Wouldn’t all that newsprint transfer to the glass? It certainly does on my hands. It seems, however, that the newspaper-window-washing Internet population agrees with my friend. For even better results, use a vinegar-and-water solution instead of a chemical cleaner like Windex.

2. Gift Wrap

In a pinch, newspaper works well for wrapping gifts. Most folks generally choose the comics because of the color and humor, but if the gift recipient is in, say, finance, why not use the business or money sections instead? The wrap will seem more thoughtful that way. If you’re super crafty, you can even make a newspaper bow to top it all off.

3. Book Covers

When I was a kid, my parents wouldn’t spring for store-bought book covers when newspaper worked just as well. I probably hated it back then, but now it seems kind of cool. To tell the books apart once they’re covered, use a section of the newspaper that represents each book. For instance, if you’re covering a science textbook, pick the tech section of the paper. Follow these easy instructions to make a newspaper book cover.

4. Disposable Table Cloths

When I’m from (Hello, Baltimore!), it’s a summertime ritual to buy (or catch) a bushel of crabs, steam them up, and dump the red devils on a newspaper-lined patio or porch table. If you’ve ever picked and eaten crabs before, you know how messy they can be (which is why I don’t do it; sorry, Baltimore). The newspaper serves a dual purpose for messy outdoor eating: a) it keeps your table clean, and b) it makes clean up a breeze because all you have to do is fold up the paper starting from the edges and dump it in the trash.

5. Packing Supplies

Bubble wrap and other paper packing supplies are expensive. Honestly, I don’t know why people purchase these things when there are probably plenty of materials lying around their own homes that will suffice in sending the package safely. Newspaper is lighter than bubble wrap too, which will reduce the shipping fees. To pack a box with loose or fragile contents, first wrap the items individually (if they’re breakable, then stuff the open space with crumpled up paper. Just make sure that everything is tight so there’s no opportunity for movement during transit.

6. Weed Blocker

Another tip from a friend that I had never heard of — if you have a garden and weeds are a problem, cover the bed with newspaper and water it to the saturation point. Once that’s done, cover the paper with organic matter, like compost or mulch. Eventually, the newspaper will smother the problematic weeds, and the organic matter will help your garden flourish.

7. Origami Sculptures

Who knew that there were so many ways to fold newspaper into useful things? My search revealed a star bracelet, a hat, boats, baskets, boxes — the list goes on. My favorite, however, was this newspaper pot for seedlings with step-by-step video instructions.

8. Paper Mache

We know what paper mache is, but do your kids? It seems like this craft activity, which uses newspaper, glue, flour, and water, is becoming a dying art. That’s a shame, because it’s so easy and fun! The sky really is the limit with paper mache, too; whatever you can think of, you can make. Like these paper-mache masks. Great for Halloween!

9. Current Event Collages

I made one of these many years ago, and the final product still hangs on the wall in my home. It couldn’t have been simpler. I saved the front pages of my favorite sections of USA Today over the course of a few weeks (you can use whatever newspaper you’d like; I just preferred the colors of USA Today), bought a 4-foot-by-2-foot canvas, arranged and lightly glued the sections on the canvas, then brushed on several coats of Modge Podge. Easy as that. The newsprint didn’t budge — and now I have a perfectly preserved time capsule/art piece to admire for years to come.

10. Picture Frames

Picture frames with pictures make excellent gifts — even more so if the picture frame is a handmade. To create a picture frame out of newspaper, all you’ll need to two sheets of paper (or the front and back pages of the newspaper), scissors, a ruler, tape, clear plastic from packaging, your favorite photo, and these 10-step frame instructions.

11. Fire Starter

By no means is this intended for you to start fires wherever you’d like. That’s called arson — and it’s illegal. If you’re going camping or starting a fire in a fireplace, however, it’s always good to have some newspaper on hand to give the fire an extra boost in case you can’t find kindling or the wood is a little damp.

12. Sell It On eBay

If you have a paper from a notable date in history, i.e. the election of President Obama, etc., put it up for sale. You’ll be surprised how many people collect historical editions of print publications and how much they’ll pay for it. You’ll get the highest bid when you list the paper while there’s still demand for it, but don’t discount its popularity many years down the road. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Hasn’t Hoarders taught you anything?

13. Shape Keeper

Ensure that your shoes and bags keep their shape by stuffing them with crumpled newspaper after each use.

14. Pantry Liner

Place newspaper under pantry items like potatoes and onions to keep the moisture — and bugs — away. Newspaper can be used to line other shelves in your pantry as well; if you spill something, just remove the paper and toss it out or recycle it.

15. Gift Basket Stuffing

Newspaper shreds are an excellent alternative to the very non-eco-friendly “grass” with which we line our Easter baskets. The shreds can be used as filling for other baskets as well. For example, if you’re gifting a food-themed basket, fill the bottom with strips from the circulars or cooking section.

16. Ripen Fruits

This wouldn’t work in my house since fruits tend to go bad before we eat them (we’re carb-aholics), but if you want to speed up the ripening process, simply wrap individual pieces in newspaper so you can eat them sooner.

17. Damage Protection

Don’t take any chances when using stain-prone products like paint or shoe polish. Put the paper down before you start your project to protect your goods. You’ll totally hate yourself when you make a mess that could have been prevented.

There are dozens more ways to recycle and reuse old newspaper. Let us know how your newspaper pulls double duty in the comments section below.

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This article is from Mikey Rox of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

4 Ways Reading the Newspaper Will Make You Rich and Famous

Elizabeth Lang — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:00:08 +0000

Last year, everyone proclaimed that print newspapers were dying. It turns out that fewer newspapers have gone under than some had predicted, but I don't think anyone is announcing that newspapers are thriving.

I'd like to see print newspapers make a comeback. I think that local and national newspapers play a crucial role in our society. But, more importantly for Wise Bread readers, there are a lot of ways reading a print newspaper will benefit you.

Save Time

I don't know about you, but I really dislike reading newspaper articles online. They are spread over several pages, each page taking an increasing amount of time to load. And each online page is covered with obnoxious ads. These two factors make it exceptionally difficult to skim articles and get a good idea of what's going on in the news in a short period of time. Sure, you can skim over some headlines on newspapers sites, but to get any depth to a story you have to click through and open it. In print, you can quickly glance over headlines, image captions, and read the lead-in to a story to get an idea of what it's about. I spend probably 20 minutes each morning reading my local paper, but if I read the equivalent number of stories online it would take me five times as long.

Save Money

My newspaper now lists something like "Save $250 in Coupons" at the top of the Sunday section. Coupon clipping saves me a few dollars each week, but I also save money by finding travel deals, theater deals, and cheap or free events. The Sunday circular ads are also a great way to comparison shop. I was recently shopping for a new stove and could look through the ads each week to see what was on sale at the stores in my area. (Have you ever tried to look at an ad circular online? You may still be waiting for it to load.) Most newspapers also have calendars in their weekly sections listing the special and free events taking place that week. For example, the Homes section makes it incredibly easy to check out any home repair workshops And in the Taste section, I frequently find beer and wine tastings.

Provoke Conversation

Unless you spend two hours a day reading news online, you're not going to be able to know the majority of happenings in your community. When you read a print paper and know what's going on, you are better prepared to make conversation with a variety of people, whether it's the owner of a company you're trying to get a job with or a person at a bar who might be your future spouse. This intelligent conversation leads to opportunities that can make you rich and famous.

Generate Money-Making Ideas

By following the news, you gain a glimpse into societal trends. Identifying these trends and then solving the problem that arises from the trend allows you to make money and help people. You don't have to come up with the "one brilliant idea." Instead, you just have to be able to fill a need or desire that some people have.

I know there are a lot of people who believe that paying attention to the news is a waste of time. However, it seems that most of these people are already rich and famous. Once you're rich and famous, you can hire someone to read the paper and tell you what's most important and relevant to your life. Until then, subscribe to your local print newspaper. Besides the greater good of having independent journalism, you'll save money and time, and grow your network and your business.

This article is from Elizabeth Lang of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Comics Curmudgeon: Filthy Rich Blogger Divulges Secrets to Wealth!

Andrea Karim — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:02:40 +0000

Do you remember when you were a kid, and you thought Garfield was funny? Maybe you shared his fear of spiders or intense love of lasagna? And then, as you got older, Garfield became increasingly less funny? And then one day, you realized that virtually none of the comic strips on the funny pages were funny at all?

Then you need to pay a visit to the Comics Curmudgeon. If you've never blown coffee through your nostrils while reading the Comics Curmudgeon's daily take on the funny pages, then you've never lived. I have very few web sites bookmarked on my browser, but Comics Curmudgeon is one of the few sites that I make a point of visiting every day. The Comics Curmudgeon has a loyal and fiercely intelligent group of readers, whose input can be found on any of the comments sections below blog posts.

Does that sound obsessive? It is. Comics Curmudgeon fans are an obsessive bunch.

Anyway, Josh Fruhlinger is the considerable brains and rippling brawn behind Comics Curmudgeon, and he graciously agreed to discuss his successful blogging career and financial philosophy with readers of Wise Bread. Enjoy!

---------------

When did you start the Comics Curmudgeon website, and what on Earth possessed you to do so?

I've been doing this blog since August of 2004. The short answer of why I started is that I used to sit at the breakfast table and make
snarky comments about the comics to my wife, and then say "I should start a blog where I do this." Eventually, she got sick of hearing me say it and forced me to actually do it.

I also wanted to have a venue that would force me to write a little something every day. I like writing but when I don't have a focus; it's hard to get motivated. I think the laser-beam focus of the blog, plus the daily nature of the comics, was a good combination for me.

How long did it take for the site to pick up steam?
Can you offer us any insight into your website's metrics? How many visitors do you have to the site on a daily basis?

I'll answer these two questions together. When I first started up, I sent a link out to a bunch of my friends, and I assumed pretty much that they would be the only ones reading it. I also sent out a link to an email humor list I used to write for, and posted a link in a comics newsgroup -- to this day, that's the only real publicity work I've ever initiated.

Pretty soon my traffic got a lot higher than I ever thought it would. By the end of 2004, I was getting hundreds of visitors a day, which even then struck me as kind of ludicrous. Traffic afterwards built steadily: my December 2005 visitors were nearly double my number of January 2005 visitors, and my December 2006 visitors were nearly double my January 2006 visitors.

Today I get on around 14,000 to 16,000 unique visitors on a typical weekday, and 10,000 to 12,000 on a typical Saturday or Sunday; of those, a little less than half are returning visitors. I'm still constantly bowled over by how by how many people read the site. I definitely feel like there's a dynamic in which I feel more responsibility for entertaining my readership the more readers I have, in some ways. At the beginning of 2006, I generally only commented on one comic a day; now I usually tackle four or five.

How much time do you spend working on the website every day?

More than I'd care to admit! It's hard to quantify because, in addition to the hour or so a day I spend actually writing (that's an average – occasionally it's a lot less, sometimes it's quite a bit more), you have to factor in the time I spend obsessively checking my stats and reading the hundreds of comments that come thundering into my e-mail client (every comment that goes up on the site gets e-mailed to me).

Do you love most of the comics that you read and analyze, or hate them? Or is it a love-hate thing?

Well, a while back there was this Simpsons episode where Homer is part of the Lollapalooza freak show, and one disaffected teen in the audience says to another "Yeah, that guy's cool," and the second disaffected teen says "Are you being sarcastic?" and the first one says "Oh, I don't even know anymore."

That's kind of how I feel some of the time. I love the comics, as an art form. I love the ritual of reading all of the comics, good and bad. There are a few comics that I genuinely love without irony; there are a few that I feel are only worthwhile because they provide fodder for my blog. And then there's a vast middle ground of comics that I wouldn't call myself a "fan" of but I enjoy reading them sometimes and making fun of them sometimes, and that I wouldn't want to stop reading.

The soap opera strips are a different category. I sort of assume that NOBODY takes these seriously, and I enjoy them for their overblown drama and oddness as I assume I'm supposed to. Not even the stereotypical old lady that we might imagine these soaps are written for can really engage them without any irony to speak of, right? I mean, one of the greatest jokes about Apartment 3-G of all time was made on the "Golden Girls" 20 years ago, for Pete's sake.

You're aware that many comic artists read your web site. Does that put any pressure on you to be kinder in your commentary, or do you care?

Honestly, sometimes it does, in my head, anyway, because everything I've read about comics artists seems to indicate that they're incredibly funny and gracious people, and I don't want to go out of my way to be mean to them. And in fact, in all my interactions with them, that's been borne out by my experience. That's why (and this distinction really only exists in my mind, I think) I almost never call out artists by name, except Jeff Keane, and he has his huge piles of money to console himself with. Speaking of which...

In addition to advertising revenue, you offer merchandise (based on previous Comics Curmudgeon posts and reader conversations), as well as beg for tips. Surely you must be rolling in the dough by now. I mean, like, naked. In big piles of cash. While laughing maniacally.

Ha ha ha (that was a rueful, rather than a maniacal, laugh), I wish. I don't think that even if I turned the money in my savings account into pennies I could swim in them, Scrooge McDuck style, even if the pool was pretty small.

For the first two years or so that I ran the blog, any ad or merch income I got was pretty much just a little bonus -- it certainly didn't match up with the amount of time I spent on it. In the last six months or so, I got a little more serious about figuring out how much my ad space is worth, and in that span of time I would say the blog has been supplying about 20 percent of my income.

I have no clear idea if that's something that can grow, or even if it's something sustainable. I'd love to make a living off of blogging, rather than doing my day job, which involves editing articles written by and for computer programmers, but I think that only happens to a select few people. Still, I never thought I'd even be making the amount I'm making now, so who knows.

Do you want to expand the site to include other snarky writers and lovers of all things funny-page, or do you prefer to have ultimate creative control? Or could you do both, where you hire a sweatshop full of snarky writers that ultimately bend to your will? As in, "More snark, mule!"?

Well, when I went on vacation at the end of January, for the first time I got a pinch hitter rather than just let the blog sit without updates for a week. It went pretty well -- Uncle Lumpy, a commentator I got to fill in for me, did a GREAT job -- but I'm enough of a control freak that I wouldn't want to make a habit out of it. I think I will for now stick with the idea of keeping it a one-man show for the most part, with guest bloggers when I go on vacation. And -- why lie? -- I'm a freelancer, my wife gets four week's paid vacation a year, and we don't have any kids, so we go on vacation a lot. There should be plenty of opportunities for guests to step up.

Do you consider yourself a savvy and frugal kind of guy (I have to ask this on a frugal blog), and if so, what's your most efficient way to save money?

Ha, I'm glad you asked! I don't know if I'd consider myself frugal, but I definitely have elaborate money management systems in place. I've been a real grown-up and in charge of my own finances for about ten years now but I've only had a regular job with a steady paycheck for two of those, so I've sort of had to figure out how to manage irregular cash flow. Basically, I advise that you keep your savings separate from your day-to-day spending money.

Put all the money you earn into a savings account; figure out, based on your budget and your expected income, what you need to live on, then give yourself an "allowance" of that amount at a set interval (I do it twice a month) out of your savings into your checking, and really try to live off of what's in your checking. That way you do pile up a little savings that you can use for bigger-ticket items, rather than just seeing what you have in your bank account and spending it.

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: