Finding New Life for Pill Bottles

Anyone who spends any amount of time around me knows that I routinely cut off one barb on the treble hooks of every crankbait that I own. As a result, I usually can run my crankbaits over, under and through most stuff in the water without hanging them up very often.

Until recently, though, I never really had a good, safe way for disposing of all those little barbs I snip off. The solution hit me here a few weeks ago when I was dealing with another of my many cluster headaches. I just had emptied a pill bottle and was about to toss it in the trash when this thought hit me: Why not save that bottle and use it to hold all of those little barbs?

I soon came to realize that the bottle I had saved would hold many barbs, and that was after already having used it a number of times. Then, just the other day, I came across the even bigger pill container pictured here and decided to use it instead. With any luck, I figure this new container easily should last a couple years or maybe longer, given my current crankbait-buying trend.

The only caution I would offer anyone who chooses to duplicate this idea is to make sure the bottle full of hook barbs remains well out of reach of any inquisitive little children or pets that may inhabit the household.

This isn't one of my concoctions, but it's the same idea.

As I was putting this item together, I remembered another somewhat unusual use I had for plastic pill bottles many years ago during my tour of Navy duty in Adak, Alaska. My favorite hobby at the time, other than bowling, was hooking up component-stereo systems. And given the standard lack of supplies you had to deal with in that remote location, you quickly learned to improvise.

In my capacity as the administrative assistant for the local AFRTS station in Adak, I worked very closely with the engineers who kept the station on the air. Accordingly, I never had a problem finding Heathkit-style stereo jacks, but they never had any housing for the connection points. One of the engineers, a Navy TD, that I worked with, however, showed me that, by using the heated point of nothing more sophisticated than a screwdriver, you could create a nice hole in a plastic pill-bottle's bottom and its lid to house the jack and its attached wires.

With the help of a Navy corpsman buddy who lived across the street from me in the Navy housing area, I had a steady supply of pill bottles, so life indeed was good--as good, that is, as you could expect for a remote place like Adak. The only times I ever questioned just how good the life really was there was when we experienced another of the tremors that shook the island from time to time. Only people who have felt the ground move under their feet and/or watched pictures sway on the wall can appreciate what I'm talking about here.

But getting back to the subject at hand, the next time you start to toss an empty pill bottle, why not stop and consider whether you might have a good second use for it?