Reuse, reduce…repurpose

My mom lived through World War II fleeing from village to village to get away from enemy soldiers. Besides constantly not having enough to eat and almost no possessions to speak of while hiding, her own mother also died due to not being able to get medicine for her illness. Those lean and rough times traumatized my mom but they also taught her to be frugal. She was reusing, reducing, and recycling long before the phrase was coined. (On the bad end of that frugality spectrum, she was also a bit of a hoarder). She tried to teach me and my sister to be frugal, too.

My sister is much better about it than I am, but I do my fair share of the 3 Rs. Reusing is great, but there’s even more satisfaction when I can repurpose something. It makes me feel like I should post a life hack on Instagram or Tiktok. I don’t like to hear myself talk or see myself on video though…not that I come up with great ideas frequently. Probably just the opposite.

But here is one I am proud of. My FIL had a rack for the file folders on his desk. When he passed away, we took all those files for the Spousal Unit to sort through.

Meanwhile, in our kitchen, we have about 8-10 cutting boards leaning up against the wall next to the range. Don’t judge us. And sometimes, woods cockroaches would hang out for some alone time back there. You should hear me scream when I pick out a cutting board and the &^%$ing cockroach scurries out from behind like the ugliest alley cat ever. The only bright side to this is that they’re fairly benign woods cockroaches and not the more germ ridden types like German cockroaches (if there is ever a bright side to cockroaches).

So, I took my FIL’s file rack and I used it to slot the cutting boards into, as shown in the above photos. Now the rat-bastard insects have to squat elsewhere away from our food prep surfaces.

Do you have a clever life hack? I’d love to hear what it is!