Going Green. Ghetto Style.

Darin and I are probably about as into recycling as the average person.  We do our part and recycle our plastic, glass, aluminum and paper.  And furniture.  And I'm not talking about bringing our unwanted goods to Goodwill.  Take a look at our garage.

We have an actual shelving unit for a garage on the left.  Not bad!  To the right of that, we have the top half of my old entertainment center that I've had since 2004.  We have reused that in every place we've lived in since then but now have finally purchased a "real" entertainment center for the lower level of our new home.  Of course, we'd hate to get too classy too quick and get a nice TV stand for upstairs, so the bottom half of the old school entertainment center is still being used up there.  I have to say though, who knew that this cheap entertainment center from Wal-Mart would last five moves and be no worse for wear?!  Under the top of the entertainment center (now known as a "work bench") we have an old filing cabinet.  It's match is actually still in use in our study.  Next to the "work bench" we have a very old desk that Darin purchased from an antique shop while living in Minneapolis.  This thing is so banged up, I always forget where he got it and accuse him of dumpster diving.  It is now home to all our nails, screws and packing tape.  I'm sure there are other things in there as well, but if you read the post about my hoarding tendencies, you probably can imagine how many rolls of tape we have acquired over our many moves and I'm fairly certain I could outfit an entire hardware store with our nails and screws.  No joke.  In fact, Darin just told me yesterday that I'm not allowed to purchase anymore hooks.  I've only used two hooks in all the places we've lived, but seem to have purchased 2500 of them!  Next to the desk is our IKEA dresser.  I like to think that baby is still standing because it was put together by myself and Louisa, but I'm guessing we just got lucky.  It now houses a drawer overflowing with Darin's car washing "equipment". For the one time a year he washes our cars by hand.  (After all, it is more green to go to the car wash.  And we are very green people.  Clearly.)  And for those of you who are wondering, yes, that is my radio circa 1993 on top of the desk.  And it still works like a charm!  Rounding the corner we have a Bacardi display stand that Darin "rescued" from a liquor store many a year ago and then a bookshelf that looks much better from afar than it does up close.  

I think it's very obvious that we are very conscious about reducing, reusing and recycling.  Can you say the same?  

NOT PICTURED: black bookshelf home to all our (OK, my) paint and painting equipment