Ten Uses For Empty Cereal Boxes

Cereal boxes are great for housing your favourite breakfast sustenance, but what happens when the cereal is gone? Rather than give your kids a stomping toy and throwing it straight into the recycling, here are some fun ideas to re-use your empty cereal boxes.

Repurpose for Play?

Toy letterboxes, washing machines, clothes dryers, ovens and cupboard can be fashioned from boxes for the kids very own household appliances. Hours of fun to be had, and so simple to do.

Flash Cards

Cut out cards from cereal boxes and make into flash cards. Either draw the word, picture or number or cut a picture from a magazine and stick it onto the card.

Building Blocks

Cover the empty boxes with contact and give them to the kids to make forts or castles.

Cardboard Templates

Cut the boxes down to make quilting shapes. It makes it nice and easy to mark and cut out lots of pieces of fabric for those gorgeous patchwork quilts

Desktop Organiser

Remove the top flaps and cut the upper third off the box diagonally then cover with contact or nice paper and use for magazines, notebooks or loose papers

Painting and Drawing

Make an easily disposable paint pallet for the kids or cut shapes from the cardboard to use as stencils.

Gift or Luggage Tags

Open the box out flat, then draw and cut the size and shape tag that you would like. Cover with nice paper and decorate and write on the tag. Using a hole punch put a hole in the tag to hang it off your item. These are a great way to personalise on a budget.

Art and Craft

You can make a pretty cool Mask, Crown, Helmet, Gift Box, Robot, Rocket, Handbag or Dolls bed out of simple cereal boxes. Let those imaginations run wild!

School Projects

The humble cereal box is great for dioramas for school projects or for stages for puppet shows.

Home Decor

Cut out circles and cover them with contact for home-made coasters to protect your timber tables. Or cut the front and back of the box from the rest and cover in white paper. Let the kids decorate them then cover with clear contact for personalised placemats or wall hanging.

Clare Whitfield Chief Editor

Clare Whitfield is the Editor of Stay at Home Mum and a recognised voice in practical home management for Australian families. Based in the northern suburbs of Sydney, she balances editorial leadership with life as a stay at home mum to two school age children. Her background in home economics and more than a decade of experience in recipe development, family budgeting, and household systems inform her work.

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