This is a repeat of an earlier blog entry. I just wanted to say it again!

Here’s another thing about stuff you use once and throw away - it never adds any meaning to your life.

Objects that are in our lives over time come to have stories, emotions, memories attached to them, and because of this they enrich our lives.  We feel more grounded, more sure of our identity, when surrounded by things that we associate with events in our lives.  It gives us context.

Which is another reason to make and use cloth furoshiki.  And to teach your children how to make them too.

When you wrap a gift in paper it gets discarded, that’s it.  But when you wrap a gift in a beautiful piece of cloth, say at Christmas, chances are good that the recipient will wrap a gift in the same cloth the next Christmas, and you have the beginning of a shared family story, the story of that cloth’s life in your family.

Over a few years the family will start looking forward to seeing that cloth wrapping a gift under the tree again, and they will tell stories to each other about other gifts it wrapped, and the people who wrapped them.

So its not just because it saves money, and its not just because its better for the environment, that we should make furoshikis, its because its also good for the heart.

My tip for having less stuff to throw away for this month?  Don’t just reuse your own stuff, reuse your neighbor’s stuff too!

I know, its sounds loopy, but here is how it works where I live.  Every May on a specified date our town asks us to put out all the stuff we want to get rid of, and a few days later they pick it up.  Its the in between days that are the magic ones, like a giant treasure hunt for adults.  People peruse their neighbor’s piles of stuff and traipse home laden.  Many of us take the hunting further, hopping in our cars and trucks to drive to other neighborhoods as well.  Its fun.  We meet similar minded people over piles of treasure and joke and share with each other as we hunt.

We have done this for about nine years now, and look forward to it with a wish list in mind. You would be surprised how often we have found the things on our list!  Here are some:

Shovels, rakes, hoses, a sprinkler, tomato cages, corrugated plastic sheets, chicken wire, building plastic, a water barrel, and wheelbarrows for the garden. We rarely buy garden tools because it seems our neighbors like to upgrade theirs frequently!

Old kitchen pots, plates and bowls, a blender, rolls of newsprint, terry towels for rags, and utensils of many sorts for the dye room. This is proof that you never know what someone else will find useful!  I could buy dye room equipment, but old kitchen equipment works just as well, and it gives it a second life.

A 1960s dresser, a full wood bed frame, an antique lamp that needs to be rewired, a toilet apparently never installed, a nice small round occasional table unmarred, an antique trunk, and lots of interesting chairs!  The chairs usually need a work, but they are worth it.  In kitchen chairs we collected a ladder back, a press back and a very nice cane bottom.  I like to have an eclectic mix of kitchen chairs.

I guess I ought to mention at this point that we have a woodworking room in our basement, as well as a dyers studio.  We need a lot of work tables around here, solid ones.  A couple of years ago we brought home a very solidly built one, it turned out to be an examining table from a medical clinic. It has sliding doors over storage shelving, and, would you believe, built in wooden stirrups!  We thought we would hang tools in them!  We have also found full sheets of plywood, wood trim, saw horses, 2×3s, drainage pipe, pegboard, metal shelving, and a lot of ceramic tiles for the yard and house.

Did I say everything but the kitchen sink? Because we brought home those too, in fact we brought home two laundry tubs (now installed in the dye room) and this year a kitchen sink that may well be destined to be my new kitchen sink.

You would think, perhaps, that the quality of what people put out for this sort of pick up would be poor, or  too damaged to be worthwhile, but actually the quality is often good.  One reason is that people doing home renovations projects often put out the left over materials, which are still new.  Another reason is that people learn to save good pieces of furniture and appliances that they are replacing for the May swap and pick up. Of course it helps if you have learned how to look for materials that stand up to time and use.  We have a rule never to bring home anything made of composite woods or plastic (excepting building plastics for covering the tomatoes in the fall) because neither age well.

If more communities did this sort of neighborhood swap and clean up, perhaps people would become more discerning as shoppers.  It is easy to see what kind of products are being bought that don’t stand up to real life use as you drive around. The same things will show up in many piles.  After seeing this pattern for a few years, its easy to walk away from the similar item in this year’s store fliers!

I realize that as an artist, designer, and do it yourselfer I find more uses for more things than the average person might, but here’s the thing, even if the last thing you would ever do is drag home the neighbor’s used stuff, you could participate by putting stuff out.  Two good things would happen. You would be rid of stuff you didn’t want, and people like me would be happy to reuse and repurpose them for you.

Dontcha just love a win win?

Cheers,

Susan

Today I am cleaning house, and as I sort, separate and send things to various parts of the house for re use, I am thinking about the ways I use my house.

I’ve been expanding the vegetable garden this spring, and as you can guess from last months entry, I have tomato and onion starts sprouting in their newspaper rolled sprouting tubes in front of the kitchen window.  This too, has caused me to think about the way I use my house.

I expected to grow up to have a tidy house, a clean and pretty house.  Like in the magazines.  I did not expect to bring crumbly compost dirt rolled up in newspapers into my kitchen.  If I ever imagined I would start plants inside my house, I thought they would be in little plastic trays, and in sterilized dirt that comes in plastic bags.  I did not expect the stairs outside my sliding glass doors to end in a cabbage and onion patch, I thought it would end on nice clean cut grass, and my vegetables would enter the house double wrapped in plastics bags from the supermarket.

The use of plastics and the habits of consumerism, have made it possible for us to have very clean houses, so clean that we don’t think we should do things in them.   We don’t think we should use our houses.  How crazy is this?  Perhaps not all that crazy if you consider how much manufactured stuff we purchase in order to make our homes look and feel constantly clean and organized.  It works out pretty well for the manufacturers.

So here is my tip for using less disposable stuff this month. Embrace the idea that your house is for your use, and that its good if there is a disorganized closet or big box full of stuff that you are going to re purpose, and its good if there are rags drying on the edge of your tub because you ripped up an old tee shirt to use instead of buying paper towel, and its good if there is real dirt on your kitchen counter from the vegetables that came from your garden without a plastic bag.

You get the idea.

Cheers,

Susan

www.EarthHourCanada.org

Saturday, March 28, 2009, 8:30 pm

seems like a good idea

makes you think

Last fall we built some new vegetable garden beds and all winter I have waited for the time when I could start getting them ready to plant. I’m not that great at gardening, so I know that the garden I have seen in my minds eye as I stood in the window and watched those empty waiting beds is probably the best garden I will ever grow, but whats the good of it, if we can’t also dream?

recycled newspaper becomes seedling starters

Anyway, here is my tip for having less stuff to throw away this month. This one is hard to beat since it begins by reusing and ends with everything used completely up.

If you are starting your seeds early, and usually use purchased seedling starters, change up by making them from newspaper.  Rip the paper into even widths, about 3 or 4″ wide, and roll into tubes. (Use enough pages so that the rolls are quite thick. You can rip the through batches of pages stacked together) Place the tubes in a box so they are snugly held and can’t uncurl, then crumple more newspaper and stuff it firmly in the bottom of each tube.  Add garden soil and plant your seeds.

When its time to plant your seedlings, simply plant the entire newspaper tube.  This way the roots are not disturbed and the newspaper composts into the soil.

Its a win/win. You get rid of a lot of newspaper, the seedlings get an easier transplant and thrive better, and the garden gets a little extra compost.

PS I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m pretty sure if you want to make a plastic tent for the seedlings you could use a flat piece of garden plastic and furoshiki tie it.  Then, later you can untie it and use it in the garden for other things.  If any one tries this before I get to it, send me a photo.

It February.  Where I live that means the weather is deeply depressingly dull.  So the best thing about valentines, besides the stimulant effect of chocolate, is the energizing effect of all the bright red and pink foils and papers and bags!

I don’t want to give them up in the interest of the environment.

I crave reds, and shiny things, in February.  But neither do I want to be throwing away another ream of wrapping and packaging (remember Christmas?)

What to do?

I bought some satin fabric, and some fabric with a shiny thread in it, and these are some of what I came up with

5 knot fursohiki bag

This bag is made from a satin finish home decor fabric I bought in a regular sewing store, using the “5 knot bag” fursohiki wrapping technique.  When I am no longer charmed by it as a bag, I will untie, iron, and re wrap it to dress up a tired cushion and add some energy to a room. (You can see a photo of a cushion done this way, and directions for it in December 2008 blog entry)

red satin valentine furoshiki

This gift wrap is made using the “rabbit ear” furoshiki technique and leaving one end of the finished knot stick straight upward

This shiny pink gift wrap contains a liquor bottle and is made using the “top knot” fursohiki technique and adding a recycled plastic embellishment to the top.

I make my own bread, mostly because I can’t afford to buy the kind of bread I like to eat, but I can make it.  So here is a tip about bread making, before I get to my real point.  You can make enough dough for several loaves at a time and freeze it.  You do this after the first rising. Punch it down, shape it, then put it in the freezer. When you need a fresh loaf (or buns, or pizza shell) take your shaped dough out and let it thaw and rise. Bake. Double happiness. The house smells wonderful and you get fresh baked bread.

My repurpose tip in this?  Those dark brown jars that yeast come in.  I love these jars for keeping bulk herbs in.  The dark brown glass cuts the light and helps keep the herbs fresh.

If we can’t get rid of packaging, we can make buying decisions based on the reusable value of the packaging.

You can build a nice collection of matched storage containers by noticing the size and shape of the packaging of things you buy and use up regularly.  I have sometimes picked my brand of a product for the re purpose potential of the packaging.  For awhile I bought a brand of rice that came in a square container with a screw top lid. Now I have a nice matching set of containers for the grains and dried legumes which I buy bulk.

Its a win/win. I don’t pay for new kitchen storage canisters, the packaging of what I am buying doesn’t go in the landfill, and I feel I saved money on the rice because I am getting a kitchen canister included in the price.

cheers, Susan

As I said, it is my hope that we can share ideas about ways to change up from the use of disposables on this blog.

Remember, we are looking for ideas that are as easy to use, and that work as well, as the disposable thing we are replacing.  Our object is to stop having so much stuff to throw away, but we don’t want the solutions to cost more money or make more work than what they are replacing.

With the season of throw away wrapping paper, gifts that last a day, and all that cardboard and plastic packaging behind us, I can’t be the only one amazed at the amount of “garbage” that went out of the house in the last week of December.  What to do? What to do?

Some answers are small, like using a saucer to cover leftovers in the fridge. Instead of using throw away plastic wrap, put the leftovers in a bowl and place a saucer or plate over them.  If the leftovers are on a plate, turn a suitable size bowl upside down and use it to cover the leftovers on the plate.

This meets all our criteria: It is as fast to do as using plastic wrap, and it doesn’t add cost (in fact it saves money).  It doesn’t make more work (even without a dishwasher, the extra dish to wash is no more time consuming than getting out the wrap, using it, throwing it away after). And it does the job just as well.

You get the idea.  I hope you’ll add some tips/ideas and we can get a list started.

Don’t make me do this all alone!

Happy New Year all,

Susan

You could buy new Christmas theme cushions to liven up your room for the holidays, or you could reuse the ones you have now with some holiday fabric and a couple quick knots.

After Christmas the fabric pieces will be easy to fold up and store for next year- and if you want a new fabric print next year, then use them as gift wrapping instead.

Here are directions for making an easy cushion wrap:

Take your square of Christmas fabric and lay it out flat. Position it with one corner toward you (like a diamond).  Lay the cushion in the center of it with the cushion bottom edge toward you.  Take two opposite corners of the cloth and bring them together over the cushion. Tie in a square knot.  Lift the remaining two ends over the cushion. Pass both ends under the knot you have already tied and tie these two ends together in a square knot. This knot will be hidden.  Tidy the fabric and adjust the knots until you are pleased with the result.

Try kleenex box wrap and bowl wrap for more home decor holiday dressing up! You can download the kleenex box directions with a photo for free. Click on download patterns in the sidebar.

Cheers, Susan

You can buy beautiful Asian furoshiki wrapping cloths on the internet.

Or (or maybe and) you can recycle, reuse, repurpose, cloth into furoshiki wrappings.

Either way will be better for the environment than using ‘one time use and throw away’ wrapping products.

Here are some places to find cloth:

• Your closet. You may have a collection of scarves, these are perfect. I re-cut worn out sheets and pillowcases, also the backs of a shirts that are no longer being worn!  If the wrap is for temporary carrying (like taking a pie to a potluck) I’ll use a tea towel or table linen.
• Your local thrift shop. Look for square head scarves especially.  They are printed on both sides and often have borders in different colors. Look in their fabric yardage bin. Look for old (even vintage) tablecloths, often these will have hand embroidery.
• Your local sewing store will have a bargain bin. Watch for home decor fabrics and other unusual fabrics!
• Dollar stores. Watch for tea towels and large table napkins. this can be a good place to find cloth with shimmery threads in it, especially at holiday seasons.

Happy Hunting and reusing!

Susan