Now that you have decided to replace your vertical blinds with new ones, you may be wondering what you'll do with the old stuff once it has been taken down. Your service provider is probably willing to dispose of it if you're willing to pay a fee, but why not reuse the blinds in one or more of these do-it-yourself projects instead:

Trim Your Walls

Consider trimming the walls of bathrooms, bedrooms, or the family room with your leftover vertical blinds. Start by washing them with soap and water and once dry, use stencils to decorate them with paint. Then you can install the newly decorated trim along the top of your walls with the help of any of these options:

• Staples.
• Penny nails.
• Super glue.

All of these attachment methods will make it possible to easily take the trim down if you decide to change the style of your walls at a later time.

Frame Your Photos

Instead of using typical picture frames, why not kick things up a notch by decorating your vertical blinds and creating photo frames out of them? You can simply cut the blinds to size and then connect four pieces to each other using super glue to make your frames.

Just make sure that you cut each piece about a quarter inch longer than they need to be so you have the space to glue each end together. When it comes to decorating your new photo frames, try these ideas:

• Crumple up colored tissue paper and clue it on the surface of them.
• Use colored permanent markers to create designs on them.
• Create collage photo frames by pasting pictures from your favorite magazines, books, or calendars.

If you want to keep things subtle, just putting a fresh coat of paint on should be enough to spiff up your blinds and turn them into impressive frames for your home.

Make Faux Windows

You can make any room in your home look larger simply by creating a faux window on one of the walls within the space. The easiest way to do this is to clean off your old vertical blinds and then hang them on a frame installed on a wall that you'd like to have a window on. To make it look like natural light is coming through the window, just put a small lamp on a floating shelf behind the blinds and turn it on!

Create Some Coasters

A fun way to reuse your old vertical blinds is to make coasters for your coffee tables, side tables, and to keep in your kitchen in general. The material of the blinds will keep your cups from leaving rings on your tables without taking up a lot of space. They're easy to move around and easy to take care of too. If they get dirty, a quick wipe is all it takes to get them clean again. They're also dishwasher safe!

Put Together Planters

Houseplants filter the air and absorb dangerous chemicals such as formaldehyde and benzene, so it's a good idea to keep a couple in each room of your home. An affective way to decorate the plants' potted homes is to make pot covers for them out of your old vertical blinds. You can decorate them as you see fit and simply cut them to fit around the pots that each plant is in.

Attach the decorated blinds by gluing them to the surface of your pots. There are a variety of great plant options to choose from which will work hard to clean the air in your home:

• Spider plants.
• English ivy.
• Weeping figs.
• Rubber plants.

The lush green plants that are kept in your home will open things up a little, and may even help to relieve some stress.

Whether you choose to use one or all of these fun techniques to reuse your old vertical blinds, the one thing that's for sure is that you're saving the material from ending up in a landfill somewhere collecting dust. Click here for info about other ways to reuse vertical blinds.