You want to re-use those?

No, I'm not suggesting that we use previously used medical instruments. These items were never used. The item on the left is a mouth guard for pulminary testing. The one on the right is a dropper. One of the ladies at the doctor's office where I do some work is a fan of re-using and recycling. When the office has an excess of a certain item, they usually throw the excess away, but since she and I have talked about this blog and are both more conscious of what we send to the landfill, she has left the excess items for me. A consistant example are the ice packs I mentioned in a previous post. Last week, she was in the office when I got there and pointed me to a rather large box filled with those mouth guards. She suggested that an artist might like to create a masterpiece of modern art or maybe someone could find a use for the filter in the middle of the device. She was convincing, so I now have a box of pulminary testing mouth guards in the back of my van.

Now what? Well, my youngest, Laura is in the art department at NGU, so she took one back to school with her the other day. I haven't heard anything back yet, but we shall see.

What I love about this is that I am challenged to rethink how I view the world around me. I don't just see the obvious, but look for the hidden or obscure. An empty 5 gallon wax bucket is no longer an old wax carrier, instead I see a flower pot, or traffic cone, or tool box. The empty 16oz plastic water bottles are not simply recycling bin fodder, but become incorporated into a flourescent light fixture curtesy of a design show on Bravo TV. Cardboard boxes relieved of their intial burden no longer seem destined for a trash bin, but thoughts of movers and Ebay fill my head. This is a great way to view the world. I encourage everyone to do this.

Let's start with the items I posted a picture of above. What can you see these being used as? Give me your ideas, no matter how outrageous they seem.

Then start suggesting other items and let's see if we can come up with alternate or second uses for them.

Let's challenge ourselves to switch from a disposable society to a re-usable society.