Recycle materials - DIY shelf.

When things are no longer needed it is easy to throw them away. Send them to someone else to deal with. Get them stuck in the ground where they will live for thousands of years. Out of sight out of mind.

What is harder to do is to put those things to a new use. Harder, but not too hard. Re-use of things is environmentally sustainable. Instead of sending things to the tip the minute they become unusable, you can either fix them or put them to a new use.

In my household there was no longer use for a large bathroom shelf, it was old, it had been painted a few times to give it a sense of new life, but after years of using it it was decided that it was taking up too much room.

I claimed it as my own before it was chopped up and used as firewood; and with it I reshaped the timber so it would fit into a new space; I measured the space and the lengths of wood and cut them appropriately. Next using a belt sander I stripped back some of the colour creating a marbled colour effect and discovering the shelf's previous colour history. Bare, Red, Blue, and now marbled. Next, using some leftover screws I screwed the timber back together, replacing the old rusted nails and staples that were previously holding the shelf together.



There, my finished shelf; smaller, more practical and it didn't cost me a cent.

D.I.Y. in this sense is useful in a number of ways, environmental sustainability is just one of the benefits. Obviously the price is attractive; paying nothing for a shelf is incredible value and definitely beneficial for your financial state of being.

Another benefit is upskilling. By following your nose (in a safe manner) you will discover a range of skills and techniques that you will use throughout your D.I.Y. work. These skills can range from the use of power tools, to the designing of furniture, to cleaning up after yourself. Skills that improve ones character, and also skills that can be applicable for employment.

Another important aspect of Reusing items and D.I.Y. is the physical doing. Actually using your own initiative to take on a project, physically do it, seeing it through to the end, and using the completed piece is incredibly rewarding. There is a sense of achievement that is earned in doing. A sense of pride in telling other people 'Yeah, I did that'. In addition, this sense of achievement can be increased when the project has been undertaken as a collaboration, with friends, family or colleagues. Doing D.I.Y. encourages cultures of making and in turn more D.I.Y projects.

Sometimes when items such as clothing are on their way out towards the scrapheap they can be reused in the most creative of ways. For a white trailer trash party I created a costume out of two pairs of old ripped jeans, I sewed them up crudely and reshaped them as hillbilly dungarees. They looked atrocious. Needless to say, I fit right in.

Reuse of old things in such occasions as dress up party's when needed is a cheap alternative to buying more stuff that of course will end up in the trash,

What a party! The dungarees were made to last the night and they barely did that. So where does a worn denim monstrosity go? Into the bin and to the tip? Of course not. I tied them to a pole and used them as a torch for a bon-fire. Giving the denim one last good use before never seeing it again.