If you look closely at my DNA, you’re likely to find the strands responsible for my gleaning, saving and salvaging instincts. Well, it certainly feels as if these traits are somehow innate, a hardwired, an unavoidable part of who I am.
I was given reason to reflect on this recently, wondering if I was, you know, taking the salvaging a bit a little too far. There I was, chopping up an old nappy mat so it would fit inside the wheelie bin. I removed the plastic cover, and found myself thinking: ‘Hey, that cardboard inside looks fine and clean. The kids could use that.’ Ten seconds later, they were drawing up a storm, and cutting out cardboard factories inspired by Richard Scarry stories.
Then I was about to throw one of those pretty looking, disposable tissue boxes into the recycling and a thought struck. I lopped off the top with the scissors, added a label, and used it to organise the medicines in our cupboard.
And, of course, there’s all the old print-outs that are cut up in a basket by the phone, ready to write shopping lists and notes on. The washed, attractive glass jars ready for our family cumquat and grapefruit marmalade-maker. The old toddler clothes refreshed for my daughter with new stencils and pretty material sewed over stains.
And outside my window, pot after pot of gleaned red geraniums, a baby bath of struggling marigold seedlings, a strange plant grown from the seeds offered by an elderly neighbour. And, my favourite, the salvaged trio of decaying sewing machine drawers, in a most glorious red, filled with radish seedlings (and I'm not sure what else).
My son seems to have this instinct too: as we stroll along the wilds next to the railway line, pretending to be archeologists, searching for interesting sticks, stones, and rolls of bark from the gums. He brings them home, he says, 'to study', but what he means is to bury them and dig them up again.
One thing I do know is that there's a certain pleasure in all this gleaning and salvaging. It isn’t done strictly out of necessity. I imagine it would be less enjoyable if it were. It was simply the done thing in my family: working with what's to hand, generation after generation. I know that my make-do-and-mend is a freely chosen one, which contrasts markedly to other times and places.
What do you do? Have you gleaned, scavenged, saved or salvaged anything recently?
My weakness is hard waste days. I can't help myself, I can always see new uses for old things. I have two old cast iron and wood garden chairs that I rescued. They were rusty, broken and covered in mank but they are now beautiful and carnation red. A coat of paint can cover many sins. I have also rescued cupboards, an old broken rusty singer sewing machine bottom which looks great as garden decorations, and a brazier among other things. Then there is the daily salvage. Like you, my plants are in old olive oil tins, baker tins, a peg bucket, coffee tins. I have a cupboard of jars many of which I use as vases. The list goes on. Even our eldest dog was a rescue. :)
ReplyDeleteRH: Carnation red garden chairs sound amazing.I'm with you about the power of paint. I'm also a sucker for hard rubbish collections, although these days I'm trying to wean myself: curiously looking, but not bringing anything home until I have 'projects' finished.
ReplyDelete