All together now...zzzz....
Dying to see the four waterfalls exhibition, the mechanics of which are fascinating. Anyone know if the scaffolding and materials they used were reclaimed? Would be even cooler.
Here's a link to Gothamist's write up.
This past holiday season, I got a little crafty with the office gifts. They had to be useful and cute, but I was on a budge. I hand sewed a new pack of Martha Stewart hand towels into drawstring pouches and stuffed each of them with a full set of utensils and a color-coordinating set of chopsticks from Pearl River Mart. The repurposed kitchen towel "pouch" doubles as a handy way to keep the utensils protected from dust and also dry them after washing.
Here's Sarah, one of the owners of my company as well as a recently-engaged friend from whom I seek wedding advice, posing with my gift. The spokesmodel irony was her own twist. What a natural!
After:
The result of about 3 hours of strategic tossing, reorganizing and repurposing, plus a half day of the cleaning person's time.
So I've attacked the first official repurposeful project, a modest kitchen makeover.
It will be interesting to see how many of the floor folks can keep it up to snuff, but it seems people appreciate the ability to use the kitchen again. The fact that we didn't have to re-buy a bunch of stuff (glasses, bowls and silverware) was great.
Here are some photos of the before and after.
Before:
A shared "floor" kitchen at our new office space, with 14 years of amassed junk from previous tenants and ongoing disregard by some current tenants for the concept of shared space.
What we did:
With the help of another tenant on the floor, this morning marks Part 1 of our kitchen makeover -- a clean sweep.
Among the finds:
- An old-ass box of Twinings tea bags with 2 tea bags inside
- A toaster from 1984
- 4 empty bottles of olive oil of varying virginity
- A brand-new wok, still in the box
- 2 bags of concrete (???)
- Piles of mismatched plates, bowls, silverware, glasses, etc...
We want to streamline the space to make it cleaner, more usable. We will purge stuff in order to maximize the usage of the good/quality stuff.
We reserved matching white, black and/or blue items and cast aside non-matching/old dishes/glasses to a 'holding box'. If no one claims this stuff, it's going to good will.
We reserved non-perishable spices/oils, pots and pans, appliances that looked like they could be use and consolidated things like teas, packaged sugars.
The cleaning lady will do a deep clean, after which we will return items back into proper designated places.
Stay tuned...
My fiance and I were maxing out our wall A/C unit to an ineffective, powerless state. Try sleeping through the night in a persistent New York heat wave. Questions arose as to whether it was time to buy a new one, but I was convinced that we could just clean out the filter. Per my dad's suggestion, Kevin brought the filter (which pops out easier than one might expect) into the bathtub and ran water over it whilst scrubbing (i.e. nylon brush) the dirt away. Make sure to let it air dry thoroughly before returning it to the unit. It's works like new, and without the effort of disposing of your old one, and buying a new one right at peak season.
