RECYCLING FOR PLEASURE Some of us have very repulsive habits, which disgust their fellow-men. As soon as certain people see a rubbish dumpster, there's no holding them: not only do they inspect the rubbish the way a child will examine a sweetshop. Often they are seen grabbling in the scraps as if they were hugely reduced goods at the sales. My younger brother and I were of that species. As young boys we used to examine the trash cans between our home and the school searching for treasures, or as we called them: "fijne dingen" (fine things). I still suffer from this aberration. Still, my cupboards are bulging with trash that may look interesting but is utterly useless. While observing our kitchen I one day found out that our barbecue oven occupied too much of our (scarce) kitchen space. It would be a nice solution if the device could be somewhat lifted, so that spices and kitchen utensils could be parked under it. The other day I was waiting for the tram close to a dumpster. And what did I see? Exactly the parts that could be used for making the kind of furniture needed to lift our barbecue oven. Shamelessly, I pulled the parts out and took them to my brother -- who is quite a capable carpenter. He did like the idea, especially when he heard I had found these parts in a dumpster. And in less than an hour he had made an absolutely unique structure: So I now have an extremely handy piece of furnture, at least half of which consists of trash -- something I would never have been able to find at IKEA. This weblog appeared in Dutch on 20 February 2005 on Internet site Overtom.nl.
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