A Clever Way to Repurpose an Unused Planter

Meg Asby
·2 min read
1
window sil full of fake plants
Credit: Sarah Crowley Credit: Sarah Crowley

I’m illogically optimistic about growing houseplants in my bedroom. I keep buying them at Trader Joe’s, and they keep dying because there is not enough light in my bedroom to sustain them. I’m left with a graveyard of plantless planters, because every time I buy a replacement, the new houseplant comes in yet another cute pot. Thanks to this TikTok, though, I now have a use for them — and just in time for allergy season.

Upcycle empty planters by turning them into tissue boxes. Simply wash the planter, fill it with tissues, and display it in your home — no watering required.

In this video, Megan Anderson (@creative.decors) transforms an empty planter into a tissue pot in one easy step: Anderson takes tissues from their original cardboard box and transfers them to a plant pot. It’s an almost effortless upcycle.

Tissue Pot Tips

If you plan to try this yourself, there are a few important tips to keep in mind.

  1. The pots need a good scrub to keep the tissues from smelling earthy.

  2. Don’t overfill. When I stuffed an entire boxful of tissues into one small planter, pulling a tissue from the pot involved lots of tearing (and swearing, if I’m honest). Once I reduced the number of tissues by half, the pot operated like a normal tissue box.

  3. Pay attention to how the tissues are oriented in their original container, and mimic the same placement in the planter. Essentially the rectangular stack of tissues should be folded short ends together, with the closed short side facing the opening of the planter.

Planter tissue box.
Credit: Meg Asby Credit: Meg Asby

Tissue pots are a great gift idea.

Because my planters keep multiplying, I have a large collection to supply tissue pots to my extended family, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. 

Would it be reasonable to go to the nursery and buy a plant to go inside these extra pots instead? Of course — but a trip to the nursery is like a trip to the post office. It seems easy, but it will never happen. A $6 Amazon order of tissues, however, is already done. 

Thanks to this hack, I am no longer guilty of serial plant slaughter. I’ve finally resigned myself to the fact that my bedroom is better suited to tissues than plants, and I am OK with that.