17 DIY Ways To Repurpose Styrofoam In Your Home Or Garden

Styrofoam is next to impossible to get rid of responsibly in many municipalities. So, you might be ready to sign up for the Styrofoam save-the-Earth squadron once you've learned that it can be repurposed. Styrofoam can indeed be recycled, but it's expensive and therefore often won't be taken away curbside along with tossed soda cans and used aluminum foil.

This has left crafty and resourceful folks with a good, if not challenging, problem — how do you reuse Styrofoam around the home and garden? There are some inventive solutions, like making arches in your doorways for a classier design. But there are many more ideas that require much less time and effort. Did you know you can use Styrofoam to make holiday decorations for the outside of the house? And bricks? And beds for your garden? These are all particularly affordable upcycles, especially considering that you, your neighbors, your friends, and your local merchants all need to find something to do with Styrofoam other than throwing it in the trash. What promise! What pleasure! The battle is on.

Although it can disintegrate when broken apart, Styrofoam is perfect for cutting into shapes, like the circles in this piece, a home decor accent that resembles an ancient flat jade bi disc standing on a base. Styrofoam takes well to water-based paints, such as acrylics, like those used here. Because Styrofoam is porous, it might take several coats to achieve the patina you want. Wait for each coat to dry before painting again. Think of all the objects you can create with Styrofoam and paint, including busts, bowls, and assorted baubles. 

If you fill a Styrofoam cooler with hay, it provides the ideal environment for storing potatoes, which should come in handy for homesteaders who are growing them or for those who like to save money buying the root vegetable in bulk. Make sure to poke holes into the sides of the cooler to allow air to come in, and cover the potatoes with a layer of hay, even with the lid removed as recommended. Depending on the temperature where you are storing them, potatoes can stay fresh for upwards of three months, so make sure to get those spuds in your meal rotations if you've got a lot of them.

Making a cube shelf out of Styrofoam is a good beginners project, since the math will be easy. Cut five sheets of Styrofoam into squares of the same size. Because you'll want the edges as straight as possible, cut with an X-Acto knife. Then, glue the pieces together. It's easy to create a stucco effect by covering the shelf in a mixture of two parts plaster of Paris, one part water, and 1 tablespoon of white glue. Sand down to play up the rustic look. Place a potted plant inside when all has dried.

Give a mirror a new look, or cover imperfections such as peeling paint, nicks, broken parts, or vintage wear and tear. This is such an easy upcycle that the hardest part will be getting a mirror, especially a large one, into and out of your workspace. Break up Styrofoam into random shapes or sizes for an industrial look, or cut the Styrofoam into very specific shapes. Glue them to the mirror's trim. Paint the pieces the same color as the trim for a three-dimensional architectural effect.

Here's one project to keep the kids entertained indoors, organize their home play areas, and maybe finally teach them to put the caps back on their marker tops. Take a block of Styrofoam and have them draw pictures on it with markers. And, now, for the real fun: You and the kids can stab the markers into the decorated foam to create an easy-peasy, memory-making, makeshift marker holder. If the holder falls apart after a couple of uses, just make another. This is a simple and fun way to get creative with a thick block of Styrofoam.

Here's a Michael Myers-approved repurpose — creating a graveyard for your front lawn. You can craft headstones and graveyard columns from Styrofoam. Cut the pieces to shapes and sizes you want. For instant gratification, use the fast-drying E6000 in a hot glue gun to affix bases and other parts (being sure to follow safety instructions). The glue gun can also be used to melt lines, cracks, and other creepy details onto the Styrofoam. Seal the pieces with latex primer, then paint. Shining an orange or green light on your faux cemetery will cause wolves to howl into the night.

Those who've wanted garden beds but didn't know where to start will want to try using Styrofoam coolers instead. You can place the coolers where you have space, and for those with problems kneeling or bending down, these containers are a great solution because they can go on a table or other raised surfaces. Cut holes in the bottoms of the containers and plant as usual. You might like this idea, but do think twice before adding packing materials to the bottom of planters: In forms like peanuts, Styrofoam does not encourage good drainage and can break down.

You can make bricks out of Styrofoam, but it requires using a machine. It's easier to make a faux brick wall, which can be used in the garden or inside the house. Take a large sheet of Styrofoam and mark lines for bricks. Score the lines with a rasp. Beat up the surface with marks and cuts, and go over the foam with a heat gun. Then, add several layers of watered-down paint and one rolled-on coat of a lighter color, finally wiping it all down to make the wall look aged. 

Thrift shops are loaded with unloved vases in every imaginable material, shape, and size. Find one that's seen better days and use Styrofoam for the ultimate upcycle. This project can give a vase all kinds of surprising looks. Glue Styrofoam shapes to the outside of a vase, and paint. Although you know acrylics work best on Styrofoam, some creators like the unusual surfaces left behind by spray paint, which disintegrates the material. If that's the look you're going for, use the effect to your advantage. The process will also work well with discarded plastic food containers.

Styrofoam can be turned into paint when mixed with a solvent such as acetone, which is commonly used in nail polish and varnish. When mixed, the paint is white but dries clear. A note of caution: When working with acetone, make sure you're in a well-ventilated area and use gloves because it can cause skin irritation. Some have mixed the substance with some oil paint to give it a color. Others have used liquid paint pigment, which you can purchase at a craft or art supply store.

A few extra supplies will be needed for this project, but most of them, like Styrofoam, you'll be saving from the landfills. Cut out a ball from a thick piece of Styrofoam, or glue together circular pieces to form a ball. This will become a sunflower pistil. Pierce the ball with a piece of dowel, which you will eventually put in the ground. Strips of plastic water bottles can become the petals. Then paint the piece any way you like, but consider using glow-in-the-dark paint on the Styrofoam so you can enjoy the flower at night.

Layer old Styrofoam coolers to create a stable surface. Try sketching some designs before you start your end table, getting inspired by the Styrofoam pieces you have. Scrap cardboard will help to fortify the piece. Then, glue everything together. Plaster of Paris will give the table a stucco texture. There are some who have tiled their tables, using a joint compound material on the Styrofoam surfaces as the base. Once you become comfortable working with Styrofoam and you think you want to take on a more challenging project, try DIYing a faux stone waterfall coffee table.

Here's an upcycle for another one of those rainy days when you're looking for something to do at home with preschoolers, and it will work with any odd piece of Styrofoam, but it works particularly well with long strips of the material. Stick pipe cleaners in multiple colors in a row. Place a bowl of beads of different colors next to the Styrofoam. Then, have the kids sort the beads on the pipe cleaners according to color, an activity to help with fine motor skills and color matching.

Remember when folks hoarded Styrofoam egg cartons during the pandemic hoping to sell them or start their own backyard chicken farm only to end up eventually throwing them all away? Here's a trick for reusing cartons, and it's great for artists, crafters, and other creatives: Store your small leftover amounts of paint in a Styrofoam egg carton. You'll need to keep the container in the refrigerator between projects. The egg carton must be clean, and you'll have to look at the paint's package to find out how long the paint can actually be kept out for.

With a little paint, a lot of skill at measuring, and some patience, you can turn Styrofoam pieces into elaborate picture frames fpr televisions in your house, although they can also be used on art and even mirrors. Use plain strips of foam painted your color of choice, or if you're artsy, carve with special tools to decorate them like moldings. After you sculpt the Styrofoam pieces, fill in any cracks, and glue them together, decorate the frame. It'll be light enough to hang on a TV screen.

Warning: Leaving this cake lamp around your house may induce sugar cravings. Using filler and paint, spackle a Styrofoam cake mold that comes with a hole in the middle (or make one from scrap pieces), creating the texture of icing. Add rainbow sprinkles to the outside that you can make from clay. Use piping bags (or makeshift plastic bags) with colorful watery paint to trim with faux icing. Place a lamp socket in the middle and use a flickering LED bulb that comes out the top to mimic a birthday candle. 

If the Amazon delivery person is a regular visitor to your home or you recently made a big purchase like a flat-screen TV, you'll likely have a lot of Styrofoam in various shapes and sizes, large and small, fitted to the products that were shipped in the boxes. These odd molded shapes make excellent catch-all keepers to use around the house, particularly in the kitchen, garage, and garden shed. You can store leaf bags, gardening tools, screws and nails, condiment packets, vitamin bottles, electronic chargers, and anything else around the house that needs to be wrangled.