Sometimes other people make me feel so dull.
I mean, I look at a burned-out light bulb or a used subway ticket and see trash. Others see a vase or material for a woven place mat.
This feeling of noncleverness came over me yet again this week as I viewed an online slideshow of the top 20 do-it-yourself projects of 2010 published by ReadyMade magazine. One person took empty glass jars, which I would have sent straight to the recycle bin, and used glass etcher and letter stencils to create classy, functional pantry storage. Another inventive couple took 400-plus empty wine bottles (I can do the empty part), and pushed them upside down into the ground, one next to the other, to edge a garden path. The path led to an outdoor solar shower, which they also made, out of salvaged corrugated roofing metal.
Feel dull yet?
One of my favorite projects was a wall papered with pages of an old book. (If you do this, pick a book that makes you look smart, like “The Odyssey” or “Moby-Dick,” even if you never got through it.)
More than wanting to know how to recreate these clever ideas — and the magazine’s website, , gives instructions — I wanted to know how people, who must have rubber bands in their brains, came up with these ideas in the first place. So I called ReadyMade editor Andrew Wagner and asked, “How do you get to think like that?”
He started by telling me that the 10-year-old magazine got its name from the work of Marcel Duchamp, who took common objects, put them in a new context and called them readymades. Most famously, in 1917 he presented a men’s urinal as a sculpture. He signed it with the pseudonym R. Mutt, named it “Fountain,” and shook up the art world.
“A urinal?” And here I thought that because I have teenagers I was immune to shock and surprise.
“In a different context, found stuff becomes art,” said Wagner, echoing Duchamp’s intentions nearly 100 years later.
“I see,” I said, and try to imagine how that, uh, art would fly in my house.
“What is that urinal doing next to the fireplace?” Someone would reasonably ask.
“A urinal is only a urinal in a men’s restroom,” I would pontificate. “Anywhere else it’s art.”
And so the rumors — she really is crazy — would begin.
Fortunately, my imagination has a limit to how far it can stretch. I am all for putting loose tea in a handsome custom-etched jar, but I draw the line at urinals in the living room.
These days, when household budgets are tighter than your high school jeans, re-using junk in new ways offers an affordable way to be expressive and green. Plus your stuff will have a better story than “I bought it at Ikea.”
Syndicated columnist and speaker Marni Jameson lives in Castle Rock. She is the author of “House of Havoc” and “The House Always Wins” (Da Capo Press). Contact her through .
Surreal surroundings
Here’s how ReadyMade magazine Editor Andrew Wagner says we can stretch our brains, and become more clever with stuff that would otherwise end up in a landfill.
Look at what’s right in front of you and see it differently. Before you go to the store for more stuff, look around and see what you have that may do the job. ReadyMade’s slideshow of its best DIY projects of 2010, for instance, shows a darn good- looking patio table made from an old wooded pallet. “We’re not anti-buying,” Wagner says, “and we’re not trying to be boring green hippie activists. But we do advocate mindful consumption.”
Don’t ask what it is. Ask what it could be. Appreciate objects for their elemental properties, not their current job. A stop sign, for instance, could double as a chair seat or back, a table top, or, with bent up sides, a bowl.
Be on the lookout. When you’re out in the world, if some junk catches your eye and you like its form, bring it home. Keep it for a month and regularly ask, what else could that be? (Note to clutter junkies: This is not a license to hoard.) The slideshow features a bookshelf someone made using old pieces of pipe, cleaned and painted, supporting old wood planks. “Old industrial stuff, deconstructed and put to new use can be beautiful.”
Play. Let whimsy take the reins and don’t worry that your project won’t make it to a Sotheby’s auction. One ReadyMade project used old light switch cover plates and fashioned them into box planters. “We need to look at the world in a light-hearted manner and bring a sense of humor and the unexpected into our homes.”
Caution: Be self critical. Don’t pat yourself on the back just because you made a hot pad out of old pantyhose. If the end result looks worse than the bottom of the birdcage, put it out with the trash. In other words, don’t take one pile of junk and turn it into another pile of junk.
Get high. A lot of people shop as therapy, because getting new stuff gives them a rush, said Wagner. “You can get an even better high when you create something new, clever and useful out of what you have.”
