Household Items That Can Be Used for Two Pound Dumbbells

Putting a gym together in your house can get costly, but the price tag doesn't have to curb your enthusiasm for getting fit at home. Look around the house and get a little creative. There are plenty of items that can be used for 2-pound dumbbells sitting on your shelves or waiting to be turned into compost. You should put them to work serving a second life as useful exercise equipment.

  1. Milk Jugs

    • Empty milk jugs make ideal dumbbells because they already have handles on them. All you need to do is fill them with sand, water, gravel or other weighty substance to create hand-held weights. Just place a jug on a kitchen scale and pour in the filling of your choice until it weighs 2 pounds. Take care to screw the cap on tightly to ensure the contents don't spill out during use.

    Canned Food

    • Head to the pantry when you need a pair of 2-pound dumbbells. There's bound to be loads of them on your shelves. Any 32-ounce can of food will work well as a 2-pound dumbbell. Cans that large can be difficult to hold if your hands are small, but that can be easily remedied. Just peel off a length of duct tape from a roll, lay your can on its side and wrap the tape around it. Overlap the tape to ensure a secure hold. Be sure to cut the tape long enough so a section gaps up off of the surface of the can to serve as a handle.

    Rice and Beans

    • Many food items can be usefully employed as dumbbells. For instance, 32-ounce bags of rice or dried beans are the perfect size to serve as 2 pound dumbbells. And because of the way they are packaged, they'll conform to your hands and won't need handles. If you've got open bags, you can avoid spilling beans and rice everywhere by pouring 2 pounds of the foodstuff into a clean sock and sewing the end closed.

    Magazines

    • If you find it hard to get rid of old magazines, maybe you were just holding onto them so you could fashion them into a set of dumbbells. Just pile a few of them onto a kitchen scale until the stack weighs 2 pounds, then secure them together by wrapping duct tape around them. Wrap three times (top, middle and bottom) width-wise and once height-wise. To make a handle, roll one more magazine up to create a telescope shape, leaving a hollow center, and secure it with tape. Thread a piece of cloth that measures 3 inches by 30 inches through the center of the rolled-up magazine, centering it on the cloth strip. Tie the ends of the strip around the stack of magazines and fix it into place with tape.