Creative Reuse refers to using otherwise worthless materials to make art or decorations. Creative Reuse depots are usually
non-profit stores where, for virtually nothing, one can obtain used lab beakers (10 cents a piece), name tags with strange
acronyms (10 a piece),
plastic parts (of all shapes sizes and colors), casts of teeth (why? how?), buttons (1$ per plastic bag), records scratched beyond oblivion (
dollar an inch). Many of the items raise the question of why were they made in the first place (like dollar a bag of colorful plastic bears that fit on straws in such a way as to make the straw unusable) or binders that are twice as tall and twice as wide as regular ones. Wasting a paycheck there is a truly
post-modern experience, as one does not need to limit oneself to any reasonable amount of these things: most of what that the depot carries it carries in quantites of thousands
Highlights of my creative reuse shopping experiences:
- A little girls' sticker collection from about 1985, complete with little postcards her friends made in crayons (1$)
- Plastic rectangle with the heroldics of all the cities of Russia's Krasnodar region (50 c)
- 100 plastic bears that fit on straws. And 100 straws. (1$)