Trash & Recycle Can Labels

When we lived in our apartment, there wasn’t really any option for recycling. Well, let me re-phrase that…there were recycle bins next to the trash compacter for the complex; but, within a day of the trash men coming, all of the 4 recycle cans would be full and there was no option but to throw everything into the compactor. So when we moved into our house, I made a point of recycling as much as we possibly could. However, we only had one trash can, which meant whenever we wanted to recycle something we had to go in the garage to throw it away. Talk about a pain in the rear!

One day when we were walking through Garden Ridge, I found two silver trash cans with dome-top lids that were perfect for our kitchen and recycling needs! Not to mention they were only $15 each, which from what I’ve seen around here lately is a steal! We snatched them up and brought them home. Because of our kitchen layout, we had to put the cans on opposite sides of the room; that was fine with me because I figured it would cut down on “can confusion”. I guess I didn’t figure people would be more confused than ever by the identical cans in two locations.

The only way I could think of to solve this confusion was to make signs indicating whether the can was Trash or Recycle. So I pulled out my handy-dandy colored vinyl pack that the hubby got for me, and started creating my adhesive labels. I designed a template for my Silhouette Cameo using Silhouette Studio, and cut out the labels on turquoise vinyl *googly-eye smile*.

After the labels were cut, I removed the outer vinyl leaving just the words on their backer paper. Then, using transfer paper I thoroughly applied the labels to their proper cans.

We haven’t had anyone over yet to take in the awesomeness of my can labels, but I am incredibly in love with them. I never thought something as simple as colorful trash and recycle can labels would cheer me up so much!