Our youngest is now three and a half years old. Next September he will join his big sisters at school. Having co-slept with our children, the cot is long gone, chopped up for firewood. The moses basket has been passed on to my sister for our nephew. The cloth nappies are in the process of being sold. It looks like the baby days are over.

For a while now, the compost situation in our kitchen has been far from satisfactory. We cook a lot from scratch in our house and most ordinary kitchen compost bins would need emptying every couple of days. Instead I’ve been using plastic bags to put the compost in under the kitchen sink. Plastic bags from fruit and vegetables, when it’s been unavoidable to buy packaged fruit and vegetables, or plastic bags from parcels that have arrived in the post, or packaging from bags of pasta or tortillas. Inevitably these bags have leaked or spilled over, making a mess.

My search resumed this week for a compost bin large enough to take all our kitchen compost waste, that I could empty about once a week. I found the solution closer to home than I thought I would – the old nappy bucket. It is large, has a close-fitting lid and a handle and is easy to clean. I haven’t had to spend a penny on it either.

My other repurposed baby items are the muslin cloths. As if these things weren’t versatile enough already (apart from mopping up baby sick, we’ve used them as a sun shade, thin blanket in hot weather, giant hankies, comforter, emergency towel and many other things), I’m now going to use them to replace kitchen roll. Our kitchen roll ran out last week and I don’t intend to buy any more. Instead the muslin cloths will become our kitchen ‘rags’ and will be washed with the towels.

What items have you repurposed? Has anything worked particularly well?