Reuse when you can

It's Clean Up Days here in Monroe, affectionately known as Trash to Treasure days around our house. Clean Up Days are two weeks, one for each half of town, where people can throw out almost anything, almost any quantity. Curbs can be piled high with things people are throwing out, items that often have lots of life left in them. In previous years, Luis has scavenged almost all of our outside toys, countless lawnmowers and weedwhackers that needed only a little work before we could sell them, and the other odd stuff we could use. On the weekends before the Clean Up Days, when people are putting their stuff out, you'll see trucks and vans rolling slowly through the streets, eyeing up everyone's trash. So far, people have picked up an ancient twin mattress set and a couple of plastic toys from our small trash pile. Our neighbors put out a roll of carpet padding; it was gone in less than 2 hours.

Luis is out trolling around right now. His goal is to make our chicken coop entirely from reused materials. I rather doubt he'll find two more sheets of 4x8' plywood, but he has found all the two by fours that we'll need, a roll of chicken wire, and the window screening. Go, honey, go!

On the theme of reusing, if you haven't heard of Freecycle, please check it out! http://www.freecycle.org It's email groups around the nation for passing along items that you no longer need but someone else could use. Everything must be given away free.

I'm debating reusing some more knitting too. :) I have a sweater I knit Isabella last year that is just too feminine to fee like I can keep it for Vincent. I have more of the yarn, so I think I'll frog it and reknit it into something else for her. Except this time I think I'll make it a size big so she can wear it for more than one winter!