Zatera Ul

The city of St. Paul’s garbage/recycling/waste newsletters keep lamenting that about 25% of residential garbage collected is paper and cardboard that could have been recycled. That’s probably not too far off for us, even though we recycle newspapers and magazines and cardboard. The reason is that none of our three desks had a place to collect paper for recycling.

So recently I tried two designs for a paper collection container that could stand on the floor next to the wastebasket. For the first, I used a short piece of 2×2 for the base, and nailed 1/4″ plywood to it for a front and back. (These were sized so that a standard sheet of 8.5″x11″ paper would fit inside.) For the sides, I stapled on plaid fabric; stapling into the edges of the plywood. It turned out ok, except that the top edges aren’t exactly straight. It takes up very little floor space.

The second one turned out better. For the base, I used a 2×4 scrap, laid flat, with a hole drilled into each corner. Into each hole I glued a 12.5″ length of dowel, to make a sort of frame. Then I sewed a fabric sleeve to fit over the whole frame, hemming it at the top, and leaving enough extra fabric at the bottom to wrap around and attach to the bottom of the base (with a staple gun). So it’s essentially a stand-up fabric bag, and it doesn’t look too bad.

That takes care of my desk and the bill-paying desk. The other one is MFH’s; I’m not making anything for that yet because he’s still in the middle of sorting through a fifteen-year paper backlog, and I think he needs the closure of throwing things away for good.

Part of the motivation for making these came from a library book: Hand and Home: Inside the Homes of American Craftsmen, by Tommy Simpson and William Bennett Seitz. In some of the houses they show, the craftsmen-owners have made practically all of their own furnishings. Our house is a little like that–in every room there are things that I have made. I’m entering a season where I won’t be able to do nearly as much of that, but I’ve been missing it and feeling the need to do creative things more often.