Looking for more household stuff to reuse? Have you overlooked the bath soaps? Not the bath salts, of course. What about the kids’ crayons and oil pastels?

Bar soaps that have thinned and softened are often left alone to melt or thrown away. The shortened crayon sticks are abandoned or ignored, and they all eventually end up in the waste can.

These items are still useful. Collect the bits of bath soaps and dry first before storing inside a small jar. Gather all the color nubs in a small box. When you have enough bits and nubs to create into new soaps and new crayons, bring them all to the kitchen.

This project could be done with some kiddie help. Ask your kids to get some muffin cups made of aluminum from the kitchen cabinet; while you take out a muffin baking pan.

Let them fill each cup with soap bits until semi-full. Set these cups aside.

Do the same with the color and pastel nubs. Let those small fingers segregate the colors with the same shade. If there were not enough nubs to fill a cup, mix them with others to create a new color shade. For example, red nubs mixed with yellow nubs can turn into an orange crayon; or red and blue into violet; or yellow and blue into green. The kids will surely have a lot of fun learning about the color wheel.

Put all the aluminum cups in the muffin baking tray and place inside the oven. Bake in very low heat, about 200 degrees for several minutes or until the soap and crayons have melted nicely. Turn off the oven and let cool before taking out the muffin tray. Let the muffin-shaped bath soaps and crayons cool off for about 30 minutes. When completely hardened, you can remove the new soaps and crayons from the aluminum cups. Ask your kids to put the cups in a sealed plastic bag for reuse.

This procedure can also get those shortened candle sticks be melted and reused in new shapes. Do not forget to stick a short wick at the center of each muffin-shaped candle during the cooling period.