Repurposing #1

I am a huge fan of reuseing items. Whether you call it dumpster diving, recycling or the new term de jour, re-purposing, I call it good common sense. If I can make good use of something that has already seen a good life of use, or better yet, as is the case with this installment something that has not been used at all and is being discarded, I get a warm fuzzy happy feeling inside. Part of the reason for this is because I think it's a great thing to do, reusing that is, but honestly the biggest part is that it saves me a bunch of money of the course of a year. A lot of times I am able to do things around the house or the yard that I may not be able or willing to do if I had to pay for them. You can see a couple of examples of this HERE or HERE.

Earlier last week we were moving people around the office where I work. This became a good reason for cleaning out and going through a lot of the stuff that we had been collecting around the building. Some guys from our network support team asked me if they could throw some trash into the back of my truck so that we could bring it out to a dumpster, I said yes and that I'd be out

in a bit to move the truck. When I got there, I found that the "trash" was a bunch of the unused keyboards and new sets of computer speakers; they were literally still in their boxes. I couldn't allow them to go in the trash. I took the three boxes of "trash" and the 15 boxes of new speakers home and went through them. After sorting, I found in addition to the obviously useful keyboards and speakers, nearly a hundred old Cd's. After pulling the old CD out and the labels, I now have a box of good CD cases. something there's always a shortage of around our house since we usually buy them in spindles without cases. (Cheaper that way.) Amongst the Cd's were five full versions of Microsoft Word with Certificates and serial numbers. Now granted these are Word 97, they are not the most current versions. But there are a lot of people out there running older machines, or that have their kids running their old machines, that could potentially use this software; it will be donated to our local thrift store who's profits go to both local and global relief for people less fortunate. What of the keyboards and speakers you ask? Well, as with many of our children's schools, ours is always looking to be able to augment it's current computer equipment. I gave them the first chance at the equipment and they jumped at it. My kids will not be at they school for many more years, but I like knowing that classes after them may get to have some use from it.

What did all of this cost me? A little gas from work to home, and a little motivation and time. I find that when I keep my mind and my eyes open, I see so many opportunities to reuse and re-purpose so many things. Often, I find myself thinking "what could I use that for?" when I see something that I know is usable. It becomes a habit once you're able to get beyond the notion that if somebody had something or used something before you that it's no good, it's "trash". When simplifying life and trying to stretch a budget there are few things that can benefit a home or in this case a community like effective reuse.

There's been a lot of reuse opportunities around the house lately. Check in tomorrow for post #2. Till then...