Woman Shares Clever Toilet Paper Hack For Fall Decor: 'The Cutest Fall DIY I've Seen'

Pumpkin season is here! We're picking them from the patch, drinking them in lattes, and decorating every surface we can with them. Seasonal decor doesn't have to be a consumer free-for-all, either. Inventive Instagrammer Ahn Lin turned household lemons into lemonade by morphing empty toilet paper rolls into mini pumpkins. Under the handle @girlandtheword, she walks through the steps to concoct yarn-wrapped pumpkins from halved toilet paper rolls. Lin fashioned a collection of them into a garland strung on mini LED string lights to a charming effect. Commenters on her tutorial gave a virtual standing ovation, with @rowabi.interiors claiming, "It's the cutest fall DIY I've ever seen."

If it's adorable enough for a design firm to approve and applaud the idea, consider that the aesthetic green light to make your own! Reusing toilet paper rolls might give you the icks, and you're not totally wrong to feel this way. Bathroom surfaces are exposed to lots of nasty bacteria that's better not to spread beyond this space. There are a few ways to sanitize them before crafting, but if it's still a little too grody for you, swap them out for slices of paper towel rolls.

For these cheap and easy Halloween decorations you can DIY, gather up empty rolls, a glue gun, scissors, thick yarn in a few fall-y colors, polyester stuffing, and cinnamon sticks. You don't even need to buy stuffing. If you have thin plastic shopping bags or produce bags, use them instead. To turn your pumpkins into a garland, grab a set of string lights and thin wire, twine, or fishing line.

Before any crafting steps, sanitize the toilet paper rolls. Do this by heating them in an oven at 212 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. Place the tubes in an oven bag to contain all potential yuckiness and keep germs from spreading during the prep and the "baking" process. Alternately, wiping the surfaces with quick-drying 70% alcohol will do the trick without damaging the tube or heating up the house for half an hour. Once the tubes cool, cut them in half width-wise. If you're using paper towel rolls, cut them into 2-inch chunks.

Cut a generous length of yarn, send one end through the center of the tube and stuffing, and secure it to the inside of the tube with a bit of hot glue. Pull out a handful of stuffing, and form it into a donut shape. Place the stuffing inside the paper tube piece so that the center hole lines up with the open ends. Pass the yarn around the sides and through the middle of the tube until you've covered its exterior entirely. You can make the job a bit easier by using a thick ballpoint needle with the yarn.

Prep your cinnamon sticks to become 1½-inch long pumpkin stems by sawing through them slowly and gently with a serrated knife. Save any cutting casualties to simmer in water and make your home smell like fall! Affix the cinnamon stems to one end of the yarn-wrapped roll. Enjoy them as-is or tie them to cool-operating LED string lights.