Sliced lunchmeat, which we go through a lot of at our house, comes in plastic tubs with lids that we reuse for storing leftovers.
Also my wife likes to save and reuse the little plastic containers with the red lids that KFC sides come in. I guess in our house anyway these have replaced the 35 mm film canisters mentioned upthread. Great for paper clips, random nails, screws, picture-hanging hardware, etc.
I love those day by day pill containers. You can get them at the dollar store. Useful for beads and buttons and other things.
Pill bottles are neat, too.
Sounds like a great idea but JoeyP seems to be hoarding them all. He ate my Doritos too. 
The plastic tubes of mini M&Ms at the grocery store checkouts are the perfect size for keeping quarters for tolls, arcades, and laundromats.
I have a giant one of those at work. If I pull something out of it people give me the “jesus, you take a lot of pills” look and/or comment.
Then I show it to them, they’re not daily meds. It’s just a nice container for them. One of spots is filled with Tylenol, another has Tums in it etc. It’s a lot easier than keeping half a dozen pill bottles in my desk.
Also, it stopped people from stealing all my Tylenol since they’re not going to go into that and even if they did, they don’t know what anything is.
My last pair of Tevas came in a sturdy pull-out shoe box that works well as a bookshelf drawer for electronic chachkes.
Does baby food still come in those little glass bottles? Every garage I saw as a kid used them for screws, nails, etc. I’ve used those little plastic trays that frozen meals come in for project part storage. Not long term, but just to keep things at hand.
Another use for film canisters: perfect substitute for a shot glass when camping or partying in the parking lot before concerts.
Baby wipes containers are very popular for re-use. They’re sturdy plastic with a hinged lid that closes over a pop-through top. You can either use it for other pop-through top needs (twine, plastic bags, even some DIY baby toys) or take off the pop-through top and use it as a sturdy box with a hinged lid. Here’s an article from Reader’s Digest, even, with tips!
And, not for nothing, anyone who has kids under 10 or even is slightly friendly with someone who has kids under 10 will have at least one diaper box in their house. They’re sturdy, manageable (as in, if you fill them with books you can still lift them), often have handles, and one kid will go through so many. I don’t have kids but I have nieces under 10 so I’ve got a bunch of those boxes around the house. They’re also very noticeable - I walked past a friend’s garage yesterday and noticed one in there, and she doesn’t have kids either.
We save those, and the takeout containers from our local Thai and Chinese restaurants. The soup containers particularly are heavy gauge plastic and hold about a quart. They nest well, and do well in the dishwasher.
We also tend to hang on to glass jars- they come in handy if we make a homemade sauce of some kind.
Paging MangeTout
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I keep emergency medical supplies in an Altoids tin in my purse or pack: 1 day of critical Rx, ibuprofen, Benadryl, 30 SPF sport sunblock, packet, disinfectant wipe, antibiotic ointment packet, 2 bandages, slip of paper with critical medical info.
Coffee cans and jelly jars that could be reused as drinking glasses are other examples.
My parents buy whole cashews in a plastic jar containing 2.5lb from Costco and I see that my mother has reused many of those jars.
Really? I save quarters for my son to use at the laundromat, so I should definitely go get some M&Ms.
If that’s the one I think it is, it was originally marketed as one, here at least.
I have a few catering size mayo buckets, perfect for doing fishtank water changes. I got them from my old local bakery, which also gave me a huge olive jar, which is pretty much the right size for 1kg pasta minus one portion.
I also use toilet roll centres in my bee smoker, stuff several inside one and they burn quite a while; I used to save them all for pet mice, which love hiding in them then chewing them up.
We keep dog food in an old aquarium salt bucket - it’s got a gasket, so it’s air-tight and the food stays fresher than in the bag. Plus the dogs can’t tear into the bucket.
Ice cream too. We use them in the kitchen, e.g. for washing vegetables.
I have a pail from 2.5 kg Vegemite that I’ve washed (after eating all of the salty brown goodness, of course!) that I’m using as a change bucket.
I have several glass spice jars, jam jars, and even a couple of small caviar jars. They’re great for keeping spices in. One of the caviar jars is perfect for keeping three or four nutmegs in.
Does Sucrets still come in a tin? Do women still use bobby pins? When I was a kid both my mother and my sister used old Sucrets tins to store their bobby pins. I never knew until much later in life what a Sucret even was, I don’t remember seeing any new or partly used tins anywhere in the house. Just the old ones stuffed with bobby pins.
Some sugar free mints come in tins, but I don’t know if they’re the right size.
Re: the use of the M&M tubes for quarters, they are an excellent fit, but I ended up using a larger sugar-free gum container (either Eclipse or Ice Breakers, I don’t remember). It’s a lot bigger, I hide it in the center console and I can reach in and grab quarters without looking.
