Gumboot pots and Paper chains

Want to make your house pretty without consuming more, find creative activities for children that don't involve buying more, and/or re-use some of the stuff around your house that is no longer wanted? Here are two ideas that do all three.

Gumboots! There are so many cool kids' ones around but, no matter how funky, they still wear out or (if you're lucky) kids grow out of them. What to do with all that rubber-plastic prettiness?

A few spring flower punnets and an hour of working together and we have had these decorating our entrance for the last two months.

Although we did buy potting mix, more than half the soil was made up of our own compost. (We have three compost tumblers and our guinea pigs contribute substantially to this enterprise!)

Five of these six gumboots drained sufficiently without any help; the sixth needed a couple of holes added. Summer has nearly killed them off now and direct sun has faded the gumboots significantly, but we may get second season out of them and meanwhile, it has been a lot more fun than just binning them.

Your children might not rip through gumboots at quite the rate we do, but if you have anyone small in your house you are certain to have a pile of kids' artwork mounting up. And old posters. Calendars. Wrapping paper. (Most people I suppose have junk mail or magazines, but we don't receive them here)

Eva got inspired to make paper chains for Christmas and it was a great use for the build-up of paper.

Because they were using their own old artworks and posters they were willing to 'repurpose' things that I had not been allowed to throw away (sneaky, huh?!).

Note the hole-punching above. If you have someone who loves hole-punching, its not a bad way to add interest to strips from old calendars while keeping those hole-punching-hands from less productive outcomes.

They both loved making the chains and I am happy to have our living room decorated by their creativity and enthusiasm.

Initial Time: Both of these activities took about an hour. That was part of the point. We have no TV and its school holidays again. Creative, engaging, sustainable activities are what we need plenty of here. (I last wrote specifically about this when Eva was quite small but if you search the labels below for 'free kids activities' there are also other places it has come up as she has got bigger)

Initial Cost: Gumboot pots: about $30 for seedlings and a bag of potting mix; Paper chains: a couple of dollars for a big box of staples.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: We will eventually have to take both these things down and they will ultimately end up in the recycling (chains) or the general rubbish (boots).

Impact: It is impossible to really calculate an impact for these activities and, to be honest, it would probably be quite small anyway. But both are little bits of a bigger picture: finding ways to reuse everything until it really is beyond use, rather than chucking it out after its first purpose; avoiding buying stuff to meet a need (and considering whether it is in fact a need at all); helping children to be creative; celebrating colour and beauty and natural things; finding the quality in our own creative effort rather than needing a professional or 'perfect' outcome (often with associated waste) in order to be happy; sharing activities together and working collaboratively on a combined project.

Using construction waste

In our neighbourhood demolition of old homes and construction of new is a part of the streetscape.

Both our children can pick the sound of an excavator munching into a house from blocks away. Skip bins seem to decorate every street. 

 

We are neither demolishing nor building, but we try to do our small bit to put at least some construction waste to better use. 

One recent project was the guinea pig cage - aka The Piggie Palace. 

 

The Piggie Palace is made largely from old floorboards, salvaged (by a friend) from a house under demolition.

Timber from the bin in front of the construction site two doors up has partly been stockpiled, and partly used to construct shelves and bench in Tyson's teeny shed. 

Meanwhile I used bricks salavaged from the same site to make a new sandpit. 

 

After setting my team to work emptying out the patch of garden that had become known as 'the digging hole', I gave it brick walls. 

Tyson later added a black plastic lining to the bottom and new clean sand completed the transformation.

Initial Time: Collecting and storing waste materials took varying amounts of time, from about twenty minutes to collect and stack some bricks to a half day expedition to retrieve and store salvaged floorboards and other timber from the shed of a friend who was moving into a smaller place. Using salvaged materials added a little time to the Piggie Palace, as floorboards had to be ripped to the right width, but generally 'waste' takes no more time to use than new stuff.

Initial Cost: zero for waste materials; most projects have required some additional purchases (eg. sand for the sandpit, fastenings for the Piggie Palace)

  

Ongoing time or cost commitment: For these projects, zero. The ongoing commitment is to use materials we have salvaged and stored (mostly timber). Some of this timber (that which is not treated) will be burnt in our fire drum through the cooler months.

 

Impact: According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, over 40% of the waste generated in Australia is construction and demolition waste. Most of it (over 80%) is concrete and bricks. Fortunately, there are efforts to recycle construction and demolition waste. In 2003 (the most recent statistics), 57% of this waste was recycled, compared with only 46% of total waste, meaning that 'only' 34% of landfill across the country was comprised of construction and demolition waste. Here in Perth, however, things are much worse, with only 21% of this form of waste recycled, making it 57% of our landfill (approximately 1.5 million of an annual 2.7 million tonnes of landfill). And even the national figures are not great when you consider that around 75% of this waste is 'clean excavated material, concrete, bricks and timber'. In New South Wales, this 75% is largely saved from landfill. The rest of us need to lift our game. (And perhaps we are. These are quite old figures. Something from 2012 apparently says WA has upped its recycling in this sector to 30-40%).

Bricks and concrete are supposedly easy and cost-effective to recycle, by grinding down for aggregate, which is used in things like low-grade roads and non-structural sub-bases. Timber is a little more difficult, as it requires manual labour to salvage good pieces, and for economic reasons most demolitions are heavily mechanised operations.

We did make sure to ask before skiving off home with a barrow of construction materials, as these could be a valuable resource, but in each case they were destined for landfill and no-one minded our salvage operations. The bits and pieces we have reused are a miniscule portion of what is being disposed of. But perhaps if more people started eying construction or demolition site skip bins as resources rather than waste gathering receptacles we could chip into the mountains of waste we are building up for our children.

 

Links: 

Four-minute video of construction waste recycling plant in Perth. You can also book a tour of the plant. (Thanks for the link M, for some reason your comment doesn't seem to be showing up)

House in Brighton UK made entirely out of waste materials. 

An episode of 'Josh's House' that particularly looks at construction and demolition waste, including a visit to a recycling plant for this material. (The program in general is all about Josh Byrne building two sustainable homes here in Perth in 2012-2013)

ABS article on waste in Australia, recycling trends, causes and impacts, and lots of statistics (of course, because its the ABS) 

Australian government publication with lots of information and case studies on recycling and reuse of construction and demolition waste 'across the supply chain'.

WA Waste Authority: oh so many information documents about construction and demolition waste.

Sustainabilty Victoria: 'How to minimise construction and demolition waste' with linked info articles

Environmental Protection Authority NSW: 'Disposing of household building waste' with documents for the beautifully named process of 'house deconstruction'.

Redecorate with what you already have

When our Big Boy recently moved out of his cot into a full-size bed, I wanted to remodel the space left in the children's bedroom. I determined to do this without purchasing any new items.

Our children's book collection had outgrown its various shelves and baskets around the house. I wanted to bring all the books together and make a lovely space. I wanted a space that made the books look inviting, at child-height, well lit, and that encouraged reading by having an attractive, comfy reading spot. 

We shifted things around to relocate two shelves that had been in other use. One of these is from Tyson's childhood, repainted with left-over black spray paint when it was moved inside about a year ago. Additional shelves and shelf dividers use strong, plain-coloured cardboard boxes.

The carpet piece was from the off-cuts pile at a local carpet store. The installers bring all their excess back to the store and it is piled outside, free to all takers. (Truly. I asked inside)

The 'reading box' is a wooden blanket box that belonged to Tyson's grandmother, for which I made a padded cover. The padding comprises pieces of foam glued together - primarily the end of a couple of long mattresses that we trimmed to fit into the camper trailer, plus some pieces from an old kitchen chair. 

This was cased within a large banner advertising a kindy event earlier in the year. The cover fabric was all in my box of odds & ends of fabric. Some of this was purchased ages ago from the off-cuts box at our wonderful local fabric store (previously used as dress-up scarves, teddy bedclothes, toy animal paddocks, dolls house furnishings, etc), some remained from projects years ago, including fabric from my wedding dress, and other bits were 'scraps' from the sewing table of a friend who recently finished a costume design course.

  

The bunting was a gift to us from that same friend, using her scraps. She also renovated the quilt on the lower bunk for me - a heritage item given to me for my first 'big bed' when I was three.

Initial Time: In all its stages, this took bits of time over more than a week. Half a day of moving stuff. Half a day of sewing. Time picking up carpets while taking Eva to a birthday party. Bits and pieces.

My trusty helper. He presses 'reverse' for me.

Initial Cost: Zero. Oh, except a donation to the friend who did quilt fixing and about $4 for a tube of glue. I tend to overlook the occasional costs of restocking materials, like glue, paint or sewing thread, that get used for multiple projects. For this project, nothing needed replacing except the glue.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Zero. And committing not to buy a throw cushion for the box (we have SO MANY throw cushions, but I have a weakness...)

Impact: The widespread appeal of shops that sell nothing but items to fit-out a home, especially decorative rather than functional fittings, is indicative of our culture's emphasis on purchasing more and more whenever changes are desired at home. A steady stream of advertising encourages us to desire changes. The abundant piles of household items on the verge at bulk rubbish collection, many in perfectly good condition, affirms the rate at which remodeling and replacing occurs. I love beautiful things, I enjoy creating lovely spaces and I am attracted to all the options for 'improving' our home. While I can't measure an exact impact of this action, resisting the urge to go and buy, and channeling it instead into finding ways to creatively re-use what we already had, feels like moving in the right direction for me.

Loft bed

June was Month of the Loft Bed.

If children's excitement could be linked to a battery, we would have been running off-grid all month. 

Tyson built this bed using mostly recycled materials found on verge collection. We gathered up an almost-complete single and queen bed frame. Some of the timber was too deteriorated to use. Other bits were joined together to make stronger posts and the dents and damage marks puttied away.

The sides from the queen bed were added to the single bed. Some additional new timber was also needed.

 

Tyson worked away at it for weeks, with some help and tool-loaning from his dad. As after five dry months it rained here nearly all of May, we re-purposed the carport (our only covered outdoor area) as a workspace.

Finally the bed moved inside, heralded with unbounded joy by its new occupant. 

And by her small accomplice, who learned to climb the ladder in about ten seconds flat.

This is a step for sustainable living on account of the recycled materials, but also as a way to use our existing space. It can be easy to see an overcrowded room and think it needs to be bigger. Or to anticipate two children big enough for their own big beds (not quite yet but coming soon) and assume they need two rooms. 

The loft bed has transformed a fairly ordinary room into a fantastic play space, with the under-bed area great for cubbies (with their own light!) and the increased floor space inviting more play in general. The lower bed (also an old verge-collection find) is not physically attached to the loft bed, to allow maximum flexibility as needs change. The ladder can also be easily moved, including going over the end if necessary.

Initial Time: Oh well. Lets just say a lot. Tyson has been full-time home dad the past few months and this was his main project, in between parenting, for weeks. Plus there were months of dreaming, thinking, planning, carefully watching the verge, bringing materials home, hiding a single bed frame under another single bed for six months while waiting for more, sketches, measurements...

Initial Cost: $200 for timber and assorted things like sand paper, screws, wood putty, etc. Especially for The Ladder (which is arguably the best bit of it all).

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Zero. While we could possibly have picked up a second-hand loft bed for around $200 on Gumtree etc, new beds like this cost $800-$1200, so it was a considerable saving.

Impact: Two beds saved from land fill, and equivalent timber, factory overheads, chemicals, transport etc saved from being made into a bed for us. The timber we bought was plantation pine, while many manufactured beds use rainforest timbers. One modest size bedroom has been made to feel bigger. And the joy... 

I'm also posting about it because I'm so darn proud of Tyson's efforts. And because Eva wants photos on the blog to show the bed to her beloved kindy teacher.

PS: I've added an extra photo of our boy playing in the winter sun to last month's post. For those of you in it for the photos.

No buy no waste toddler activities

Eva had a birthday in September (TWO! Unbelievable) and received lovingly purchased gifts, most of which were toys. Our family members and friends have taken seriously that we don’t want a house full of plastic and the gifts were sensitively selected with minimal packaging. Still, it got me thinking about how much stuff we buy and/or throw away to entertain little people. I am trying wherever possible to find ways to entertain and educate Eva with minimal or no purchase or disposal of stuff. Here are five ideas that have worked for us:

1.   Found Object Cubby Houses

 

I’m told by my mum that the purple rug has been with our family for over thirty years. Although it retired from active service as a bed cover many years back, it is a much cherished picnic blanket and cubby roof.

She is writing on the butt-end of a used-up notepad – apparently not to be thrown away until all clear surfaces have something added!

The washing machine box cubby is also good for recurring painting activities. Thus far I have not bought paint or brushes, on account of hoarding from past purchases when I was involved in work with teenagers and uni students, but I concede that paint & brushes are not strictly ‘no buy’ items. (Thanks to my sister for bringing her washing machine box across town for us to use – the box from the compost tumbler got left in the rain and collapsed)

2.   Lids and Buckets

It took about a month of putting aside plastic lids from juice and milk bottles to get this collection. Initially I intended to punch holes in them to make a threading game, and I have two old shoelaces (washed!) ready for this purpose if I get to making holes.

Or they were intended as a sorting game.

But on account of temporarily storing them in a plastic jug, they have become primarily used for making cuppas. The buckets (from honey) are the mugs. If I’m very lucky Eva will make me a cappuccino.

3.   Olive tin drums

 

These were just too good to pass by when our local continental store had a pile out to take for free. 

These drum sticks are lovely smooth polished cross pieces from a chair that broke, although good strong sticks from our eucalyptus are equally popular. I’m sure our neighbours regret the day we found these – they are strictly an outside toy! They also make quite good side tables for balancing drinks and food when we eat outside.

4.   Water painting on the fence

Water painting is the ultimate no-waste activity, as the pictures dry away and the surface can be reused over and over and over. Honey buckets again – what wonderful useful things!

 

 

5.   Stones, dirt, a bucket of water, a rag

Eva can entertain herself independently for sometimes over an hour with this activity. Stones get dug into the (empty) pot-plant, dug out again, washed, dried, made into piles, wrapped in parcels, thrown to the ‘ducklings’ that she assures me populate our courtyard. And they make a thoroughly satisfying ‘sploosh’ when dropped into water from any height. These nice smooth white stones are left over from an activity I ran ages ago, for which I purchased them, but stones found in the garden would be just as good if a handy hoard like this was not stored in my cupboard.

I try to encourage left-over water from both the last two activities to always go into a pot-plant so it gets used twice, and to limit how many times Eva is permitted to refill her container, so that she learns not to just tip it out.

Initial Time: Cubbies usually take abut ten minutes to set up (not counting painting the washing machine box, which has been an activity in itself); Lids took about a month to save a decent collection, but only involved having a container by the sink to drop them in instead of into the recycling bin; everything else was the same time as it would take to get a shop-purchased toy or activity off the shelf.

Initial Cost: Zero

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Zero for these items. My commitment to no buy no waste activities in general may at times require a little extra creative thinking and set-up time but I think no more than might be spent wandering shops looking for things to buy.

Impact: I can’t quantify this in any meaningful way (except for one washing machine box, about ten honey buckets and fifty or so plastic lids not going into the recycling) but I think it has a significant qualitative impact. Firstly, Eva is learning to be resourceful about play, and that things can have many uses after their first one is finished. I’ve also had adults visiting our house say ‘what a good idea!’ about some of the no buy no waste things we have tried, so I am hopeful that we are inspiring others to also have a go at creatively using what they have rather than throwing it away or buying something else.  A teacher friend remarked that it was good to see someone else eying the recycling bin as treasure rather than trash, as she uses all manner of ‘waste’ items in her classroom (and her husband I think is still a bit taken aback at what she collects up as ‘teaching resources’ – anyone have any of those spindles that bulk discs come on? She is a few short...) 

The impact is about shifting how I and Eva and hopefully others see things.