What to do with disposable chopsticks and old wooden spatulas? Some new trivets!

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We live in a disposable age; everything is highly disposable. Even most of the food outlets we go nowadays serve food in disposable plates and provide disposable cutlery. I love my sushi and these sushi bars are known for their disposable chopsticks. I had in the past used and disposed of many pairs of wooden and bamboo chopsticks, and am gutted about not being able to do anything about it.

Up until I found my personal travel chopsticks, I have collected a bundle of the disposable ones. I used to wrap them in used paper napkin, take them home, wash and rinse them, dry them properly (I place them over my portable oven so whenever I make a roast it will dry things up thoroughly) and - store them away.

One day I saw this wooden pot stand in a shop and that gave me some idea. I have some old wooden spatula that went sticky due to the built-up burnt on oil, so as usual I hogged on them for ages because I knew they would come in handy one day. I took two similar size ones and cut off the wide bit.

Using a proper saw would have been much easier but if you don't own one - like me - a penknife would do the trick. Just gotta be extra patient. When it's all done like below, you can bin the wide bit (at least now it's only half the spatula). I chopped it into small chips to mix in with my compost.

Once both the sticks are ready, arrange them in a parallel style.

Place the dry disposable chopsticks over the 2 base sticks, so that they have equal distance from each other.Once happy with the arrangement, take the first chopstick away and squeeze some strong glue (this is our leftover from repairing the parquet flooring) in its place, on both ends.

Place the chopstick back at its position and secure it. Repeat with the next chopstick and so forth. I did this so that the distance between every 2 chopsticks is remained.


Carefully scrape off any excessive glue that is visually unappealing and leave it to dry completely before use. Re-glue if necessary.

Voila! New pot stands!

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