One tip to homesteading is not so much being a ‘pack-rat’ (although I am guilty of that with glass jars), but looking at ways to reuse something that might otherwise be thrown away. Today I want to share a pictorial tutorial of just what I’m talking about when it comes to saving ‘trash’ and making good use of it.
Thanks to when our dog, Chewbacka [nicknamed ‘Chewy’], was a puppy, a chewed up hose has been coiled in our shed for months, almost 2 years. I wouldn’t throw it away because I just knew there was something I could do with it, eventually.
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Low and behold, the other day, while going to dig up some purple potatoes, I found that someone had left our pitch fork (of 15 years) out under some bushes last fall and to say it’s weathered now is an understatement:
But it’s still quite sturdy and, frankly we don’t want to buy something if we can already use what we have , so my wheels in the wheels in my head started turning and I grabbed the exacto-knife, scissors and some electrical tape:
With the scissors, I cut four equal pices of hose, then with the exacto-knife, I split them in the center: Look at that guilty culprit in the background….
I wrapped them around the weathered, rough handle of the pitch-fork by opening them up at the split:
Then wrapped it with electrical tape:
The gripes are cushioned and smooth. No splinters and less blisters now – time to get to work!
Now my husband jokes with me that there’s no room for being lazy and just working for 3 hours in the garden, with this ‘cush-handle’ I should be able to dig and pitch all day long! Oh my! What have I done??
Seriously though, reusing things that may have thought of as trash or something not worth the time to keep is one of the top tips to developing a good homestead. Of course it’s a money saver too!
