Designed to be decorated, this sturdy white cardboard playhouse is easy to assemble and folds flat to store away between play dates. It’s 100% recycled material, 100% biodegradable, and a portion of the proceeds go to UNICEF.

$49 at Modernseed.

The only thing as cool as a playhouse made of milk jugs is probably a cardboard castle that you can make yourself, then paint up in faux-stone effects to look like the real medieval thing!

How to build a cardboard castle:

First, get yourself 8 of those big cardboard boxes that refrigerators come in. Mr McGroovy (of www.mrmcgroovys.com) will tell you how to get your boxes for free, and even how to cut them down properly to bring home in a small car.

Then, you just follow the step-by-step instructions for cutting it out. There are plenty of clear illustrations to keep the project on track…

In fact, if you’ve ever put together an IKEA bookshelf from all those mysterious pieces, there’ll be no trick to building a castle from cardboard boxes!

Mr McGroovy was inspired by plans found in an old Boy’s Life magazine, back in February 1967 — and you’ll be inspired by Mr. McGroovy, if your inner child is allowed to have its way!

Back in October 2005, I wrote about a remarkable little kids’ playhouse made by recycling plastic milk jugs. At the time, I was so disappointed that I didn’t have any photographs of the playhouse to share.

But all that has changed, with an email that came in this week!

Scott and Andrea McNeill of Cornwall, Prince Edward Island, Canada — the imaginative parents who turned 840 plastic milk jugs into a unique playhouse for 2-year-old Karina — have been kind enough to send me some pictures, and have given permission to post them here for all to admire.

You can see why Karina calls the playhouse her “Milk Jug Castle” — and she looks like a real Princess in it, too!

Home and Garden can suggest 35 uses for plastic milk jugs, but a young family in Cornwall, Prince Edward Island, Canada, has just come up with another way to recycle milk jugs that beats any we’ve seen so far!

With the aid of a hot glue gun, Scott and Andrea McNeill turned 840 plastic milk jugs into a unique playhouse for their 2-year-old daughter, Karina.

The playhouse, constructed between the posts that support a high deck off the family’s house, is built of milk jugs “bricks” and decorated with flowers made from the colourful caps. Karina calls it her “castle” and obviously just loves it.

I only wish that I had a picture to post here — from the news story on television this evening, it looks like the cutest little house!
[update! we've got pictures!]

To make each “brick” takes two empty plastic milk jugs. Leave the cap on one, to help give it strength. Cut the top off the second jug so that it will slide down over the narrower end of the first jug, and what you have is a remarkably sturdy plastic building block. The possibilities are unlimited!

Scott McNeill says he has no idea whether the little playhouse he built can survive the coming Atlantic Canadian winter but, “if it doesn’t,” he says, “we’ll just have to drink more milk and make another one!”