I made this toy for Huck--out of necessity--when he was just sitting up and absolutely loved pulling tissues or wipes out of their boxes. Talk about a pain in the neck but I came up with an idea to keep me from going nuts and allow him the singular pleasure of pulling out tissue after tissue.
I might be pushing the definition a bit but I consider this fast, easy toy project "upcycling." That's a fancy terms for recycling something into a nicer more useful something instead of just disposing of it or even reusing it for its original purpose. In this case, I turned a tissue box into a baby toy.
I washed up a bunch of fun fabric scraps and fat quarters and then used pinking sheers to cut them into tissue-sized squares--the pinking will keep the fabric from fraying. Then I just I stuffed about 30 of them into an empty tissue box. Boom. Done.
It was a huge hit. A bigger hit than the real thing even because they were colorful! The next time I needed paper tissue from the store, I was sure to get one box that was really festive and cute and eventually upgraded from the first box.
Huck's a little older now and the original thrill of pulling out and stuffing back all the tissues over and over ad nauseam has worn off. He still uses the little scraps for other things though--blankets for little animals and people or to pretend to clean things.
But the reason I bring this all up now is that recently this toy has found a second life (or third or fourth, I guess) back to it's originally intended purpose. Lately we've been using them as...get this...tissues! Yep, it's like a little box of printed handkerchiefs. They simply go into the hamper when they're used instead of into the trash like the disposable tissues.
It's a great, simple toy that can serve many purposes and really last a pretty long time.
If you like this idea here's a little further reading on the adult version of reusable tissues I was inspired to whip up.
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