What Do I Do With Old Offerings?

As far as offerings and disposing of them. That’s gonna depend on your offering, and your practice. If you’ve got a houseplant you can pour most liquid offerings such as coffee, tea, water, and wine into the plant. Food offerings can be given to pets or eaten yourself depending on your practice and Please, PLEASE, PLEASE make sure that any offerings given to pets are OK for them to eat. I can give my dogs beef bones or little bits of meat on occasion as offerings to Haides, and it’s pretty cool since dogs are sacred to him. I tend to “share” most offerings to Dionysus, and eat them myself so I’m not wasting food. When I make food offerings to Persephone, I usually will make cookies or bread that I’ll give to other people (if you talk with your neighbors at all you can bring them a plate of cookies or something), you’re doing something that another person sees as nice and generous, while sacrificing something so that you aren’t partaking of it. Bonus points if you’re giving to a family who might be a bit tight on money. Some offerings, like flowers, shells, coins, ect….don’t have to be disposed of. Hang flowers upside down in a ventilated area for a couple weeks and you’ve got dried flowers that you can leave on your altar, place inside a jar for decoration, turn into tea (depending on the type and if they’re edible. Also, don’t use flowers that may have pesticides on them, and rinse or wash your flowers prior to drying them), you can take a needle and thread and string up dried flowers in garlands for decoration. Shells, coins, rocks, other little trinkets and offerings can be saved in much the same way. In using non edible, non perishable offerings you can actually collect them into an impacting altar piece.