Reuse Those Bread Clips!

We try to have a ladies’ night every couple of weeks in our neighbourhood where we share ideas and get in a visit with one another to catch up on our lives. We alternate whose house it’s going to be at so that all we take get a turn. Last Thursday we were at Shirley’s house and she was serving Chardonnay and cheese. It wasn’t unusual to have wine at our get-togethers, but what was unusual was what Shirley was using as wine glass charms. They were bread clips!

Shirley had taken a bunch of ordinary  bread clips and used a hole punch to make the centre hole a bit bigger so it would slip around a wine glass stem easily. Then she spray painted them and wrote each of our initials on a charm along with gluing little beads and glitter to dress them up. It was such an ingenious little trick to reuse something so ordinary. She said she had been using them as gift tags for years on presents (by attaching them to the ribbon) and it came to her that they could be used in the same way to identify wine glasses at a gathering.

Well, that started the theme of the evening.... what had the rest of us used bread clips for besides re-closing the bread bag? It turns out there are number of different things that they can be used for.

I have to admit, the only thing I’ve ever used them for is cleaning the barbeque racks. They slip around the racks nicely and scrape off the gunk after you’re finished cooking. We have a little jar that I drop them into because it usually takes a couple each time to clean the grill.  Oh yes, and my uncle used one as a pick for his guitar if he couldn’t find his real one. He always said they worked just fine.

Other great ideas that the ladies shared was to use them to label cords in a powerbar. You know how you always have that mess of wires and cords that you never know what goes to what? You just write on a bread tag what the cord is for and slip it around the end of each plug.

My M.I.L. says she uses them to wrap up her yarn tails around to keep them out of the way when she’s knitting or crocheting something. She says they are also useful for marking your place on your knitting needles when you are working a pattern.

Judy says that she uses them to tag spare keys so she remembers what they are for and on her roll of packing tape to keep the end from disappearing. Helen admitted that she keeps one in her wallet for scratching lottery tickets with.

I supposed if you had enough of them, you could use them for bingo or rummoli  chips, and I could also see them around the spokes on a kid’s bike. The evening got me curious enough to look on the internet and see what else people have used bread tags for and this homemade abacus was one of the most interesting things I found.

http://almostunschoolers.blogspot.com/2011/01/cereal-box-and-bread-clip-counting.html

Second place has to go to this person for how they fixed their thong (flip flop) so that the toe thingy wouldn’t pull through the hole. http://imgur.com/OLRgZ