Last week our new phone book arrived. The book was sitting out by our mailbox and I immediately had some flashbacks to the old days when we were so excited about our new phone book arriving. When we were kids, the McDonald’s in our area would give a free hamburger to you if you turned your phone book into them. We would have family & friends save their phone books and we would haul in five of them so that we could all have a free hamburger. Those were the days!
I don’t know of any programs like this anymore, but there can still be some great uses for your old phone books…These are just a few creative ones that I came up with!
1) Use your phone book to do your crafts on. Open up the book and work on your projects (painting, glitter, or anything else that is messy). When your project is complete, just tear and dispose of the pages.
2) A phone book can be an instant booster seat. Stack one for a tall child or a few for the smaller kids. If you are ambitious, you could make a “ghetto booster seat” (this name was made by my husband). Cover the booster seat with the comics section of the paper or with vinyl to make an inexpensive seat for your child.
3) Tear pages out to use for packing material. This is a creative and free solution for all of those Ebay packages you are shipping!
4) The pages of the book can be used to wipe down windows. Use your favorite cleaning solution and wad the torn pieces to do a quick (lint free) swipe on the windows.
5) Do paper crafts using the phone book pages. Paper airplanes & origami can be done using the old pages. This is great for the children who like to continuously practice on new sheets of paper.
6) Old phone book pages can be a creative gift-wrapping solution. For example, wrapping phone cards or a gift card to a restaurant, pizza, books, massage, etc.. (pull that section of the phone book out for wrapping these gifts) is a free alternative to pricey gift wrap.
7) Stick the old phone book into your car for the unexpected calls. If you need to make a reservation, set up an appointment, or are looking for a particular business & are lost- just pull out the phone book to find the respective number. No need to call for information if it is right there in your car!
8) If all else fails, recycle the book. You will need to find out if your particular area recycles them and what days they take the books. Most areas have a specific week that you can put them in the bins for recycling.
Feel free to share any of your own ideas on things you can use your old phone book for by clicking on the comments button.