A few months ago we ordered a few electronic components from a company called Mouser.com. Since then we’ve been receiving this lovely 2500+ page catalog in the mail.

At first we thought it wasn’t very smart for them to mail us this 5 lb. catalog in the mail each month, especially since we only spent about $15 online and probably will not need to buy anything from them again anytime soon.

Now that we’ve come up with some new creative uses for the Mouser Catalog however, we’ve actually started to look forward to seeing them dumped in the ditch below our mailbox. (A 2500+ page catalog does not fit in a standard sized mailbox!)

For one, this catalog makes a wonderful fire starter. Crumple up a few pages and it ignites faster than newspaper, giving you a nice cozy fire to snuggle up in front of. These catalogs also make great stepping stools for reaching those hard to reach top shelf items in the kitchen. It makes a great baby toy, as babies will sit and rip out the pages and tear them to tiny shreds. This is far more entertaining to them than rattles or silly things that make annoying noises.

The catalogs are also great for making paper airplanes and other papercrafts. We thought about wallpapering our bathroom and kitchen with the pages as well. (With 2500 11×8 sheets of paper, we’d probably have enough to also do a border in our bedrooms as well!) The catalogs are also useful for propping up unlevel chairs and tables. We are thinking after we get a few more we might actually build a couch and coffee table from the catalogs.

Have any other creative ideas for us to use for our Mouser Catalog?