8
REPURPOSE, RECYCLE, AND REUSE
Bishop Jake gets a gleam in his eye when he talks about the money that can be saved by finding new uses for everything under the sun—and he does mean everything.
“I’m a hound when it comes to poking around in the scrap yard,” he said, grinning. We were sitting around his picnic table on the front porch of his house, a gentle spring breeze wafting around us. Jake is a cattle farmer who has a woodworking business on the side. He makes rocking chairs, clocks, desks, hutches—“whatever people want, I can make.”
My family wandered to the barn to look at the animals, with Jake’s Chihuahua in hot pursuit. As always with my Amish friends, the vibe was totally relaxed. Although the mild-mannered bishop did get a little excited when he told me about that chicken plucker.
“Thirty-five years ago, I found a chicken plucker in the scrap yard,” he said. “It would have been $500 new, and I used it for years and years.”
He’s passed his keenness for reusing things down to his twelve children. “My son Levi saw a house about to be torn down in Big Rapids [Michigan, a small city about half an hour from the farm]. Levi asked if he could go in there before it was torn down, and ended up coming away with a lot of good materials. With the aluminum siding and copper plumbing, he removed it and took it to the scrap yard and made $1,000. Levi removed wood and even insulation from the old house, and saved between $5,000 and $10,000 on building his own house.”
I found out the Amish are habitual recyclers, even though they wouldn’t think of it in those terms. “They wouldn’t put out a recycling bin with cans and milk jugs, like we would,” said Banker Bill. “But they would go to much greater lengths to find a way to reuse those things than we would. It’s a way of being thrifty, to them.”
Banker Bill makes a good point, as always: the Amish are gloriously green, but incidentally so. As Dr. Kraybill put it, “The Amish are so far behind they are ahead.” They aren’t plugged in, so Plain entrepreneurs must adapt equipment and harness non-electrical power sources, such as hydraulic and wind power. Amish solar heating and energy-based businesses are picking up, according to Bishop Ephraim. And farmers tend to grow their crops naturally, if not always organically, and feed their cows grass. As with everything, frugality is at the root of their avid repurposing.
Maximum reuse is their goal. Levi’s project is very common. Crews of skilled Amish workers will reclaim large laminated beams before an old building is razed. They will remove and re-mill wood floors to use in their own construction projects. Even old brick and mortar from a doomed building is salvaged and used in the roadbed and under parking lots. Their mind-set is always “How can we get a second or even a third use out of this thing?” It’s inspiring, really, to hear stories of Amish resourcefulness and innovation. Sometimes, it’s the technological taboos—like no electricity—that encourage inventive recycling.
“A produce grower friend of mine maintains an air-conditioned, walk-in cooler on his farm, to store his produce while it is waiting to be picked up by the distributor,” said Erik Wesner. “The cooler is not some high-tech model specially designed for the purpose of keeping veggies cool, but a converted semitruck trailer, with a cooling unit rigged up inside. Does the job great—it’s chilly in there! (And a welcome respite after the summer heat of picking, I can say from experience.) And I’m sure it is much cheaper than had he bought a specially made cooling unit of some sort.”
My favorite story of Amish recycling? That would be from Andy, who taps his own maple syrup every year. A new maple syrup evaporator costs anywhere from $3,395 to $5,000, but Andy spent a sliver of that; while browsing junkyards, he found an old bed frame, a stainless steel tub, and pieces of corrugated steel, and cobbled them together to make a homemade evaporator. His cost: $300. “We also recycle five gallon buckets and use them for collecting sap,” he told me. “You can buy them, but typically, we don’t.”
Darn tootin’ you can buy those buckets, Andy, but they’ll cost you $8.50 each! If he reuses twenty buckets, that’s $170 saved. No wonder the Amish don’t “typically” buy what they can simply recycle. Recycling is so much cheaper!
I found out the Amish are habitual recyclers, even though they wouldn’t think of it in those terms.
Now, most of the grand-scale reclaiming projects I’ve mentioned so far would be way out of my league—but even small recycling endeavors can pay off, like Andy and his repur-posed buckets. If the Amish can re-mill wood and reclaim mortar—for heaven’s sake!—they can find new uses for nearly anything, and they do.
Mary and her family make rags out of clothes that aren’t wearable anymore; sometimes they weave rugs out of the rags and sell or barter them for top dollar. Lydia cuts up her husband’s old shirts and makes little ones for their tiny sons, instead of buying material. Naomi has her friend who owns a restaurant set aside empty glass gallon sweet pepper jars. “I use them for collecting milk, and they are perfect,” she said. “Five-quart ice cream buckets are also ideal for leftovers, or to bring a batch of cookies over to someone’s house.”
Ella Yoder saves gallon apple butter cans for gardening. “I cut off the tops and the bottoms of the cans, and use them to protect the lettuce and the cabbage, like Hotkaps do.”
Not being a gardener, I dashed home to Google “Hotkaps,” in case my dear readers are also not possessed of the green thumb. Just as Ella alluded, Hotkaps are used to protect tender plants from bad weather, and allow the gardener to get their tomatoes or their cucumbers rooted sooner. Their motto: “Warm clothes for wimpy veggies.” Their cost: $18.95 for 20.
Ella’s motto: “Free Warm Clothes for Wimpy Veggies.” Her cost: $0.
THE ARTIST SUPPLIES FORMERLY KNOWN AS GARBAGE
There’s nothing better on a rainy day than a simple project that will keep the youngsters occupied while mom takes a bubble bath (now, wouldn’t that be nice?). But seriously, when you’ve got a couple of young Cezannes running amok, it’s always prudent to have some activity on hand, especially when the DVD player is broken because someone put a waffle in it (true story). Because my ability to make crafts is somewhat limited, I look to my friends at FamilyFun magazine to help a girl out. So I was delighted to see their recent cover story: “Green Crafts: Recycled Projects that Cost Practically Nothing.” Here are some of my favorite (even I can do them) ideas. If you like them, check out familyfun.com for instructions:
• Plastic egg cartons, watered-down glue, colored tissue paper, and aluminum wire become an exquisite (really!) bouquet of butterflies, “especially charming swaying above a houseplant.”
• Bottle caps, packing tape, leftover sequins, rhinestones, beads and googly eyes, and magnets become gift-quality fridge magnets Grandma will go gaga for. (You’d pay $10 to $13 at the store for a set of six.)
• Toilet paper tubes, paint, and an old picture frame (or one picked up at the dollar store) are easily (really!) transformed into a very cute and also gift-able paper craft petal picture frame.
• Small plastic or glass jars, plain gelatin, and leftover glitter (and every parent nationwide has leftover glitter) add up to homemade, glittery hair gel. If you can make Jell-O, you can make this hair gel, I promise you! This was the hit of Phoebe’s last play date, and I’m sure her pal’s parents were simply overjoyed as well! But hey, it washes out, just like real hair gel.
• Medium plastic bottles (ones with a wide mouth work best), vegetable oil, food coloring, and effervescent antacid tablets (one per project!) become far-out lava lamps. Store-bought lava lamps use heat to propel the wax up through the liquid, but with these, the fizz from the antacid tablet triggers the frenetic action.
Waste Not
I’m fascinated with ways that creative people can remake stuff headed for the dump, not just into practical items, like homemade Hotkaps, but into truly beautiful, decorative, and wearable things. Companies like Maggie Bags divert countless yards of seat belt webbing, rejected by automakers for color variations, from the landfill; the result is ultrachic (and expensive) clutches, purses, backpacks, diaper bags, etc., ranging in price from $60 to $200. I totally want a seat belt tote bag, but must adhere to my newly Amish, don’t-eat-the marshmallow mind-set. Maybe someday . . . I do have cute picture frames made from rolled-up magazines and a darling coin purse made from used pop can tabs.
Here’s another example of how an Amish thrifty habit is so far out it’s in, because nothing is hipper these days than garbage turned into gold. Because, as Henry David Thoreau once said, “it’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
Reusing and reclaiming are all about developing the right vision, seeing beyond a thing’s previous function to its future glory. It’s also about not wasting a single scrap. “My son collects old pasteboard [cardboard] and takes it to a plant that uses it,” said Ella. “He makes no money from it, but he said, ‘Mamm, it’s ridiculous to burn this pasteboard if someone can use it. Why would you waste it?’”
That’s a good question: why do we waste so much, especially when finding another use for things could save us some money?
Check out how some frugal friends of mine in various shades of green have recycled and saved:
• Liane: “My husband is a builder so we save every piece of scrap wood we find around the yard from other projects, and throw it in the wood-burning stove in our basement to heat the house in the winter! Also, my kids and I cut up old, worn-out clothes and make outfits for Barbies, dolls, and stuffed animals—or give them to Dad for rags.”
• Devon: “I keep all empty containers for crafts for the kids. A big pile of fun shaped things, some glue, construction paper, stickers, and glitter and they are happy for a long time. Much better than store-bought toys!”
• Aubrey: “I have saved pieces of my kids’ old clothes, blankets, etc., and I am making each of them a quilt they will receive at their high school graduations, compiled of all their own old favorite clothes.”
• Tamira: “I reuse bread bags for doggy poop bags. I make blankets out of ripped jeans and save favorite T-shirts for a college quilt project for the kids.”
• Linda: “I make my own breadcrumbs by freezing stale bread, buns and biscuits, and end crusts; when I have enough I bake them again until all dried out, and run it all through the food processor.”
• Tabitha: “I just reuse lunch meat containers as ‘Tupperware.’” (Ah, yes, the age-old margarine/ lunch meat/potato salad/fill-in-the-blank containers, appropriated by the penny-pinching into Amish/ Mennonite/Dutch/ fill-in-the-blank-with-your-parsimonious-ethnic-group-of-choice “Tupperware.” A classic!)
• Erin: “I’ve made drapes out of a tablecloth, a dress out of a flat sheet, and a big quilted blanket out of eight of Calvin’s little flannel baby blankets. It’s perfect for use in the wagon or for picnics.”
• Natalie: “I turn legs of jeans into grocery bag holders with one hem and some elastic. And I’ve covered a bulletin board with the fabric from an old skirt of mine.”
• Keri: “I put paper that is printed on one side back into the printer so I can use the other side.”
• Catherine: “I am a HUGE fan of freecycle.org, and my fave reuse was the lady who picked up my old squishy swim noodles and used them as sword protectors!”
But wait—there’s more! As much as I appreciate the reuseit tips from these girls, it was Denise and Laurie who won the Thrifty Bonnet Award for ultimate repurposing:
• Denise: “I currently use old paper sacks and magazine pages to make greeting cards and fun stationery. I alter all kinds of jars and containers; tin cans are cute pencil holders but can also become fun little Easter baskets too. Old hardcover books that are falling apart are my favorite items to rescue, as I change them into scrapbooks and journals. The yellowing pages inside become fabulous background papers for note cards and paintings. Chipped teacups and sugar bowls have been turned into great little pots for plants, and for candle holders. A current pair of ripped-out jeans is going to be turned into pillow covers, and the back pocket will be the perfect place to keep the tooth until the tooth fairy arrives. Since I have two back pockets in good shape, I’ll be able to make a pillow for each of my boys.” (Tooth Fairy pillows, out of old jeans! Can you speak? Me neither.)
• Laurie: “My mom taught me how to crochet and knit, and with all the plastic bags from Wal-Mart or any grocery stores, we cut them up into long strips and crochet them into usable bags. These are great for book bags or for using at the beach for wet or sandy beach items. I also reuse yogurt containers with lids, as they are very useful containers for fresh freezer jams.” (Note: At ninety cents each for an 8-ounce freezer jam container, Laurie could save more than ten bucks if she filled a dozen saved yogurt containers.)
Reusing and reclaiming are all about developing the right vision, seeing beyond a thing’s previous function to its future glory.
And Laurie’s idea about making snappy tote bags out of plastic grocery bags really impressed me, as I have a major phobia about throwing out those things. I read an article once about how, not only do plastic bags take five hundred years to biodegrade, but if they end up in a waterway of some kind, they end up choking and killing tons of birds and fish. Having a vivid imagination, I immediately had a visual snapshot of a duck being throttled to death by a bag I had carelessly tossed in the trash. Therefore I have four hundred or so plastic bags at my house. Good to know there is a way to redeem them!
Green Mama
I knew my friend Tracy Bianchi, author of the fantastic book Green Mama, would have lots of practical, thrifty ideas for reusing and recycling, and she totally did. Her trash-to-treasure notions:
• “One of the best things we do is take empty ketchup and condiment bottles (some lotion and shampoo bottles work too) and rinse them out and turn them into squirt guns. They squeeze and squirt way better than most at the store and don’t break and leak as easily. Lots of trash turned into water war treasure!”
• “Old food containers, like sour cream or bigger food containers, we’ve reused to seed plants or to transfer plants and flowers we’ve grown to friends and neighbors.”
• “Tablecloths that are stained or shrunk and don’t fit anymore we’ve cut up to make cloth napkins, which works great, because then you don’t need paper napkins anymore. I am a lame, horrible non-sewer, so I have a friend who sews hems on them, or we just use them all frayed. Old T-shirts make good housecleaning rags. Also, old napkins or tablecloths can be stitched together to make a valance for your windows, obviously not for the best-dressed living room window, but in odd places like basements or laundry rooms, you can just take all this old fabric and turn it into a valance.”
• “Old tires can be great planters; they’re not super pretty, but fill them with dirt and—wow!—do they hold a lot of flowers and stuff! Used Popsicle sticks also make great markers for the garden; just take a Sharpie and write which food is planted where.”
Which of these reuse-it ideas sound doable to you?
Like Devon, I save lots of things—cardboard tubes, egg cartons, glass jars, plastic jars—in our two “arts and crafts” drawers. Have you seen the price of arts-and-craft supplies and kits lately? They range from $3 for the cheap-looking, tiny wood-painting projects to $12.99 for medium-sized kits and $20–$30 for deluxe projects. Using the supplies in the drawers first forces my kids to be more creative than they would have been with a store-bought kit. The only problem is, the drawers are bulging with supplies, which poses a question: where do you store all these things you’re going to reuse, reclaim, and recycle?
I finally started throwing things-to-be-reused-someday in a big box in the basement. I figure one day I’ll either think of something or the recycling plant will have thought of a way to recycle it.
We’ve also latched onto Tracy’s idea of using old dish soap squeeze bottles as water guns—big fun! And she’s right: store-bought water guns pale in comparison.
I had been saving tinfoil for crafts, too, until one of my choicest blogs, myfavoriteeverything.com, came up with a more practical use: “I was a firm lover of [dryer sheets] until I found that I could take aluminum foil, ball it up, and toss it in the dryer with the wet laundry. It removes static and never has to be changed. I’ve been using the same aluminum foil ball for over 6 months” (“More fun laundry tips . . . assuming laundry is fun,” May 19, 2010).
Dryer balls and dryer sheets both cost between six and seven dollars, but of course tinfoil rescued from lunch bags is free.
Thinking green, dryer sheets are also loaded with chemicals, and they coat our clothes with those same chemicals. How much better is it to throw a ball of repurposed tinfoil in the dryer and have it do almost the same job—albeit without the pretty fragrance—sans toxins?
Balling up the foil is a fun little “chore” to help the littlest member of your family to get involved too. In fact, once you get your family on board, everyone will be looking for ways to reuse junk of all kinds and turn it into something useful again.
Jake sure got a lot of use out of that chicken plucker, and Andy continues to churn out gallon jars of golden maple syrup from his scrap-yard maple syrup evaporator. I don’t need a chicken plucker, or an evaporator, but the principle of turning junk into functional, beneficial items that save money? Now, that I can use.