Intentional Re-purposing – Part 1

I’m not sure who started it but, some time between my teenage years and today I started hearing that little phrase: “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.”

I’ve gotten pretty good at recycling.  It doesn’t hurt that, in our town, you pay for garbage pick-up by the bag but recycling is free.

I’m learning about reducing, as those of you who read this blog know.  It’s a work in progress.  I grew up in the 1980′s for goodness sake!  Conspicuous Consumption and all that rot.  But I’m learning.

I almost never reuse.  When I wrote about baby food jars it got me thinking about that and I’m vowing here, before God and you WordPress witnesses, that I’m going to do better.  I figure recycling is better than filling giant holes in the earth with trash.  But it still requires gas for the trucks to move it to the processing plant and energy to process and…. so forth.  Reusing (or re-purposing) seems to be the Holy Grail of good stewardship.  My grandparents, who raised kids around the time of the Great Depression, were MASTERS of the art of re-purposing!  Somewhere along the line we lost our way.  I gave it a shot yesterday and managed, I think, to put several scraps of string and fabric, some clothespins, a cracker box, and a large piece of styrofoam to use.  All together these items may be JUST BARELY enough to fill a garbage bag so it’s not like I single-handedly stopped rain-forest destruction or anything.  But it’s a start. And like I have said before, if we all did just a few small things, wouldn’t it add up to something huge?

First I made myself a new bulletin board.  I’ve been wanting one for a while but the cork boards are ugly and covered ones are expensive.  So this is what I did:

This was left over from last year’s Halloween display. It’s 2 inch foam board.

I took my foam board and laid it on some fabric ALMOST big enough to wrap it the same way I would wrap a present.

Then I hot-glued across the top and bottom.  And folded the ends in – again like wrapping a present.

Add a piece of twine to hang it from.

The twine is kind of hard to see, but I just tied a loop on each end and hung it from a straight pin stuck in the foam.

Flip it over and I embellished it with 2 ribbons.  I simply held them in place on the top back of the board with straight pins pushed into the foam, then stretched them across and pinned again on the bottom back.

And I was all done.  Yippee!

All done!

Project #2 = displaying a few pictures.

We are terrible about throwing pictures in boxes without any sort of order to them.  When we grow old and die our kids are going to have mountains of nameless photos to sift through.  But I wanted to display at least a few of them, so I borrowed an idea I saw freshly pressed a week or two ago.

http://poshlittledesigns.com/2012/03/15/glamorous-glittery-clothespins-diy/

Except I wanted to use up items headed for the landfill (or recycling plant), so I adapted  the idea of glittery clothespins and made bows from little scraps of ribbon that I never really believed I would find a use for.  I tied them in bows and hot-glued them onto the pins.

Cutie little clippies!

Then I cut some scrap paper into rectangles and used it to back my photos.  I used another, longer, piece of ribbon (well, more like fancy string) as a “clothesline” and now my pictures are displayed!

Project #3 – cute fabric boxes

I saw some cute fabric-covered boxes.  But I am so broke right now I can’t afford to change my mind.  So I need to make my own.  Here is attempt #1, which came out pretty good, I think.

I started with a Cheeze-it box with one side cut out and a piece of fabric, again, just slightly smaller than I would use if I were going to wrap it like a present.

Then I wrapped the sides, hot-glueing the fabric to the inside of the box.

And the finished product….

I’d like to make lots more of these! Maybe some with lids or closing flaps.  I have some old t-shirts that I’m thinking might be cool to use because the logos would show.

I also have some ideas for milk jugs, soup cans and old long-sleeved dress shirts.  I’ll keep you posted.  What items do you give new life to?  Do share!

I Saved $100!

Have you seen those  oh-so-awesomely-cool hippie Mamas wearing their babies in crowded places?  They look so hip! So in tune with the needs of this tiny person that can’t yet manage to walk through the masses of humanity on their own.  It’s so much tidier than a stroller.  I want to be like them!

A note before I go on:  I have no desire to wear my baby all day every day.  He’s hot. And heavy.  And awfully wiggly.  But at an indoor rummage sale or a craft show with lots of fragile stuff lying about just BEGGING to be touched I really hate the gigantic limousine of a stroller that Chubby Hippie Baby and I usually enjoy.

So… I went on a search for a baby wrap.  I learned three things.

The first:  baby wraps are really expensive (by my cheap skate make-my-own-diapers-out-of-old shirts standards).  You can easily spend $50-100 on a pretty wrap.  If you try hard you can spend $500 or more!

The second: baby wraps are a giant rectangle of fabric. Sometimes there are slight additions to the fabric. There may be rings to tighten it or tags to center it.  But mostly, it’s just a big rectangle. A really expensive big rectangle.

The third: These things are comically difficult to use!  There are you tube videos that make it look so simple. Maybe it’s easier with a smaller baby.  Or maybe I just don’t have enough practice.  I don’t know.  But, upon learning that they are just a giant rectangle, I decided to enlist my daughter’s help in getting my very large 9 month old into a wrap.  30 minutes later we were both sitting in the middle of the living room floor weeping with laughter.  The baby just seemed rather bewildered and somewhat frustrated to be wrapped up in multiple yards of ugly puke-pink cotton.  (It was what I had on hand to experiment with).

OK. So, wearing my baby wasn’t off to a great start.  I did my go-to move.  I Googled “wear my baby,” and I learned about the Mei Tai.  This Asian style carrier is like a cross between my old Infantino soft-mold carrier that he no longer fits in and a totally cool hippie wrap.  It is, basically, a baby-sized rectangle with four very long straps.  You center baby in the rectangle and just wrap the STRAPS around yourself.  This is much easier!  Also much cooler.  As the first day of spring in MI this year was a global-warming-freaky 84 degrees out, cool is an important consideration.  It can be worn on the front or back.  I loved this as, sometimes I want my sweet boy face-to-face so I can visit with him but, sometimes, I need him on my back since he’s as heavy as a newborn elephant.

Babyhawk (
http://www.babyhawk.com
) is a popular brand of Mei Tai style carriers.  They are seriously super cool.  If you are not as cheap as me, save 2 hours of sewing and buy one of their products!  That said, if you think $109…. that’s right…. $109   (In my house that’s about a week of groceries, 1/2 of a month’s worth of electricity or 30 days of car insurance.  It’s a lot of dough!) is not too much to spend on a small rectangle with four long straps you should check out this fabulous tutorial:

http://24-7-365.blogspot.com/2010/06/tutorial-make-your-own-mei-tai.html

Alissa’s instructions are super easy to follow!  I used her pattern and did what I do.  I sort-of-kind-of in the fast, sloppy way I have of sewing, followed it.  I added some length to the straps because I’m a whole lotta hippie woman to wrap. I LOVE it!  It is super easy to use! I don’t get tired at all carrying CHB on my back. Putting him in the front is a little bit of work for me, but still far more comfy than the Infantino carrier.

All together it took me 2 baby naps and an episode of Yo! Gabba Gabba! (that’s how I measure  time  these days) to get it done.  Final cost for 2 yards of new fabric (I also used about 2 yards I already had) was about $9.  I saved $100!

Here’s my version of the Mei Tai.  (Alissa’s is much more professional. She is far craftier than this lazy hippie will ever be):