My, what big racks you have...now let me use them

October 22, 2012 2:37 PM

I have 2 audio cassette racks that are now cassette-less. Looking for something to do with them around / in the house. Could I use them to grow plants? Any ideas welcome, unique, strange, crazy, stupid, they're all good.

One of them measures 20" x 11.5" x 2.5" divided into 4 columns, the other is 16.5" x 16" x 3" in 3 columns. Pic of them here.

Just wondering how / in what ways I can use them around the house.

One way I thought of is growing stuff in them, but I wonder if they'll be too shallow for any plants to take root (haha). If I had a playing card collection maybe I could use them to sort out the decks. But I can't think what else they could be good for, and I'd like some suggestions before I give up and chuck'em over to Goodwill.

posted by ditto75 to Grab Bag (4 answers total)

People make things out of cassettes or in the shape of cassettes (phone cases, wallets, change purses, soap, etc.). I might keep a few old cassettes that I couldn't part with in the upper left and use the other bays for the up-cycled/ironically-designed, actually usable item(s).
posted by Morrigan at 3:09 PM on October 22, 2012

You could grow some cacti/succulents, though the sections without drainage holes would need to be drilled. If you pick plants that are small and slow-growers they should last for years in that amount of root space.
posted by vegartanipla at 3:15 PM on October 22, 2012

Mini shelving units? You could cut some wooden blocks down to the size of a cassette to use as individual shelves, and then you could hang those cases on the wall (or place the whole thing on a larger shelf) to display various knick-knacks or doodads.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 4:15 PM on October 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

Spice racks
posted by txmon at 8:14 AM on October 23, 2012