The bottom line is that all things have value.

I am not much of a craftsman, but I like to build things.  I am also the son of parents who grew up during the Great Depression.  Marry these two conditions together and you get someone who builds functional and not always aesthetic pieces, but uses every single scrap of wood regardless of source.

How does this play out?  My bedside table, for example, was once part of a chicken coop floor.  But after a little bit of scraping and quite a bit of airing, I have a rock-sturdy table that could support a young elephant.  It is serviceable, but only something a mother or a tolerant wife would love.  

While my side table was a worthwhile project and a symbolic nod to conservationist Aldo Leopold who wrote his seminal work Sand County Almanac in a converted chicken shed, other folks are much more skilled and more deserving of recognition. 



One such person is Eberhard Eichner who works for The RE Store in Bellingham, Washington. Eberhard is heading up what is becoming known as the RE Vision Division at the recycling and reuse non-profit.  In short, he takes common and inexpensive items and turns them into functional—and sometimes whimsical—furniture and sculptural ornamentation.  In his mind bedsteads become benches and unused cabinet doors are reborn as a child’s toy box.  In his world—as it should be in ours—there is no concept of waste…only items waiting to become cherished art. 



These items and material reincarnations are important for themselves, but likely more influential for the thinking they engender.  They are the flashing lights that attract folks to the notion that materials can have less finite lives.  They help people make the jump in logic that if a louvered door can become part of a shelving unit then a pop bottle can live again as a deck board or a zippered pullover. 



Look for ways in your own life to repurpose and reuse things in expected and creative ways.  You will find rewards in this endeavor.  And the bottom line—and it is a bottom line in all respects—is that all things have value. What can you rebirth and reuse?