Having just come in from the boiling hot sun, covered in paint, red faced and exhausted I can’t say I’m feeling very positive about recycling at the moment! Recycling your paper, cans, plastic is child’s play compared to recycling your weatherboards. Taking them off carefully, denailing them, running them through the thicknesser again and again, sanding the edges and finally priming the boards. There have been days I have stood there with my ear muffs on, waiting for the wood to come through the thicknesser, dreaming of running down to the hardware store and buying brand new already primed weatherboards………………mmmmmm. However I am presently convincing myself that at the end it will all have been worth it and I will feel great at having saved all that wood!
Other recycled goods of course are not such hard work. The last month or so we have been trying in as many ways as we can to find alternatives when we need something.
- The cats adore their new ice-cream container water bowl. It may not be a designer bowl but it has been very popular with the temperatures soaring.
- Needing some more clothes to go back to work I popped in to Save Mart and found a lovely skirt and blouse. All up $15. You don’t always find what you are looking for but it’s worth dropping in every now and then. I prefer doing this than using Trade Me for clothes as then the clothes have to be wrapped up for posting.
- My mum needed a lighter coffee table that she could move around easily by herself. We had one so we did a trade. As a bonus her coffee table was a box with a lid so we get extra storage in the house.
- Containers that come from food we have prchased get stored and reused. Seemingly sales of adult lunchboxes are on the increase (Dominion post, 7/02/2009). What a waste of money! My recycled containers go to and from work with me each day.
- Our brown framed mirrors from our old house will next weekend get painted black to match the décor in our new house.