Five Gallon Ideas: A Blog Devoted to the Five Gallon Bucket

I’ve got a new favorite blog: Five Gallon Ideas which is, as you might have guessed, devoted to what to do with five gallon buckets. Incidentally, my favorite place to find five gallon buckets is behind bad bakeries–the sort that go through buckets of crappy frosting. My favorite use for five gallon buckets? Self Irrigating Pots, of course!

Let us know where you scavenge five gallon buckets and what you like to do with them.

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11 Comments

  1. Great idea for a blog!

    We make chicken waterers by drilling watering nipples into the bottoms and suspending them for our hens to drink from.

    We also make vermicomposters with these pails.

  2. The bakery in the grocery store handed them out all the time. Now, they don’t. Bakeries sell them. I used them for a dirty project and only have one left that could be used for food.

    Just a few of my uses:
    *40 lb bag of sand is dumped into one and kept on the porch so that I can de-ice the steps if they freeze in the winter.
    *Bag of lime stored in one.Diatomaceous earth in another.
    *Bottles of shampoo kept falling off a shelf, so I used a square 5 gal bucket to store them.
    *I have designed a snake trap to catch the snake that is eating hen eggs. Everyone said you cannot trap a snake. The guy at Lowe’s heard me explaining it, descended from the ladder where he was listening, and told me that he thought it really would work.
    *Mop bucket. I use a 3 gallon bucket and will never purchase a mop bucket again!
    *Catch water from the window ac and water plants.
    *Turn it upside down for temporary step stool. With the lid on, sit on it.
    *Store heavy plumbing tools that make my tool box too heavy.
    *Plant food

    Just a few!

  3. I keep flour in them, with the gamma seal lids, but my favorite use is homebrewing, of course. And, wait, you can scavenge buckets?! I’ve been paying for mine! Advice, please!

    • Hi Paige. As you’ve probably already read below, the best place to scavenge is behind bakeries and restaurants (buckets which held frosting or pickles or fat…) This kind of scavenging yields food grade buckets, which is really best for SWCs and food storage purposes. We don’t recommend buckets from around building sites or buckets from unknown sources because you just don’t know what was in them.

  4. I just heard about a guy who fixed his F150 Truck, all customized to be a camera car for The Industry by using one of Home Depot’s Homer buckets as an air intake manifold. It is the only thing on the rig that isn’t painted flat black. Now he says it has Harley Davidson colors. Which reminds me that I just saw someone riding a flat black Harley wearing all black leathers, and ORANGE CROCS on his feet. I know this is not a fashion blog, but I am guessing that Homer’s bucket sticking out of a matte pitch truck will have the same effect. Works though!

  5. We get ours from delis – they get pickles in them. When I worked at a restaurant people often came in and asked for them- so I dont think it would be a weird request most places. You can also find them stacked up by restaurant dumpsters.

  6. I get mine from a friend who’s a restaurant cook. I make wine and beer, and they’re perfect primaries. One (that started peeling inside, and made me worry about how well it was made) is retired, and lives beside the dryer to collect dryer lint.

  7. Hubby currently makes his rounds to the bakeries in the local grocery store to collect his buckets. Today he scored big with give 2 1/2 gallon and 8 5 gallon buckets. Mostly we use them for long term food storage.
    Blessings
    Diane

  8. 5 gallon buckets are great for a number of things around the house, beside the ones already mentioned. I use them in the garden to throw weeds in as I’m weeding, put scraps in for my chickens, scraps for the compost pile go in one and last but not least, and I know I’m not the only one that does this because I got the idea online, I use them as nest boxes in my chicken coop.Cut a lid to about 1/3 it’s original width and put back on the bucket, screw it to the wall, put some bedding material in it and the girls will use it!!! Some times 2 at a time! Really!!!

  9. My name is cassie, i work at a restaurant and we get a bucket of pickels almost every week, we have a 10 foot stack of buckets in the shed, was thinking of building a root seller for my mom,

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