10 Ways to Reuse Eggshells Around Your House - Practical Savings (2024)

10 Ways to Reuse Eggshells

This has been such a popular post that I decided to update it a bit and republish. We’re a fairly large family (7 people, soon to be 8 this summer) and even though we don’t eat eggs every day, we can go through a lot of eggs in one sitting. For years, I was just tossing them in our trash, not thinking about how I could reuse eggshells. until I started doing some toxic free pest for my rhubarb and I discovered that eggshells were not only a great way to keep pests like snails and slugs away, they are also very beneficial for the soil if you’re planting a garden. I was thrilled to find an easy, frugal, toxic-free option that allowed me to reuse eggshells.

Needless to say, I stopped throwing away all our shells and started saving them. That resulted in boxes and boxes of shells since I left them uncrushed. As we were decluttering the laundry room to make room for our 5-gallon storage unit, my husband brought the boxes down and started dumping the shells into a 5-gallon bucket. The kids, in turn, started crushing them (great way to keep hands busy, by the way).

I now store our eggshells in a 5-gallon bucket, where they are ready and waiting for spring to come and the fun but pesky snails and slugs to make their debut. I have had great success in saving my rhubarb by sprinkling a nice coating of shells around the base of my rhubarb and a few other plants every year.

10 Ways to Reuse Eggshells Share on X

10 waysto reuse your eggshells:

1. Composting: eggshells will add calcium and other minerals to your compost pile.
2. Pest Control in the Garden: this worked so well for us in our garden – the slugs left our plants alone, giving the seedlings a chance to grow.
3. Seedling Starters: Just add a little dirt to a mostly intact shell and plant a seed in it and just think, you can reuse your egg cartons to hold the starters – all biodegradable!
4. Abrasive Cleaner: Crush the shell and add to some soapy water to use on things like stainless steel sinks, pots, etc.
5. Drain Clearer: Finely crushed shells will help keep your drain clear.
6. Smoother Coffee: Adding crushed shells to your coffee grounds helps with the acidity in the *coffee.
7. Boiled Egg Water: After boiling eggs, use the water in your garden or around your plants to add calcium and help build up your soil.
8. Feed the Birds: Birds will love the shells (you can also feed them to your chickens, just crush them up first).
9. Gardens: Just like shells are good for composting and pest control, they are also good just to add to the soil around your tomatoes and peppers so even if you don’t have the insect/bug pests or compost pile, they are still good to add to your plants!
10. Crafts: You can try to keep the egg whole by blowing the white and yolk out (I remember watching my mom do this when I was little) or you can crush the shell to use for mosaic pieces.

*Remember: if using shells in something you will consume, only use boiled shells, otherwise you run the risk of a salmonella infection.

There are all kinds of ways to reuse eggshells! I wish I had discovered this years ago but now that I know, we’ve been saving our shells for months now and have quite the collection. Have you discovered other ways to use eggshells?

Looking for ideas to reuse other things that you might be tossing right now? Check out 7 Tips for Reusing Coffee Groundsas well as Growing Your Own Food, week 22 of the 52 Week Money Saving Challengefor some gardening tips.