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Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Day 9 - Workman at the house

Today was a kind of cool day as I had a friend of a friend come over to see if he could fix our front door, which is way heavy and has been sagging over time. His name is Fred and he turned out to be a real craftsmen so it was fun seeing what he was doing. Having said that, I was a bit fearful  about all of the trash that might be created during the course of the project. So I took a deep breath and explained what I was up to.

I say I took a deep breath not because I was nervous about telling him what I was doing, but because when you've got a guy helping you out on an hourly rate who you really don't know, the last thing you want to do is strike up a conversation. The cool thing is that Fred kind of dug what I was doing (much to my surprise) and really went out of his way to create as little waste as possible and to save everything. As a result, other than a few bent nails (whoops, need to go back and list those, they are in my pocket and I forgot), and a small bit of packaging, there really wasn't much left over for me. He had a few scraps of wood and the wood that he had to pull off the jam (which was in great shape) and asked me if he could take it all because he always needs odds and ends in his shop. I told him as long as he used it and didn't dispose of it, that was cool, so it was all re-purposed.


Now mind you, this was a teeny job, but still, it was kind of cool to see him come on board and help out with everything.

Dave



1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Dave-
Your blog has got me thinking about the trash my family and I generate. I, like you, have kids and that increases the amount significantly.
During our last shop I chose to buy frozen juice over juice in a bottle. My husband argued that the production, packaging etc was more environmentally unfriendly (plus that fact that is is not recyclable) than a recyclable plastic bottle. Now we are evaluating everything we purchase.

Is there a site you can recommend that breaks this sort of thing down? Really in making our choices we need to consider everything from "source to sink".

Thanks! I'm enjoying your site. Thanks for getting all of us to think.

Jenny Nixon Carter
jennynixoncarter@gmail.com