RuthieatCommunityForklift's Profile

Okay, I live in a basement room with very little sunlight but would love to have something growing - would be overjoyed by something flowering, colorful, or visually interesting. Any suggestions - or am I out of luck?

AT, thanks so much for this post! Before my mother passed away, she was in a wheelchair for a year, and it was so hard to find an accessible place for us to live. I'm tall and have a tricky back so it can be really hard for me to hunch over, for example when washing my hands at a bathroom vanity. Bottom line is: I wish more homes had options for people at different heights and abilities!!!!

I broke my ankle last year, and months later I am still too tired and weak by the end of the day to stand up and cook. Amaranta is right: washable cotton tote bags are absolutely essential for any kind of task around the house, because it cuts down on the number of trips I have to take across a room.

Amanda0730, I did the office-chair thing too! I actually broke my ankle in the middle of moving across town (I fell off the tailgate of the UHaul). Luckily I'd moved all my furniture, but I still needed to clean my old place to get my security deposit back. So my brother dutifully drove me over there, and mopped all the floors, while I wheeled around on an office chair in the kitchen and scrubbed the appliances.

If I had my own place (right now I'm in a group home with a tiny kitchen and multiple roommates), I'd put a bar-height chair or stool on wheels in my kitchen to make it easier to rest while cooking.

I also had a deaf friend who took unnecessary doors down in his group house. That way, he didn't have to worry about a roommate coming from the living room into the kitchen, and hitting him with the door because he didn't hear them coming. He also re-hung the bedroom and bathroom doors so they swung into private spaces (for some odd reason, the doors in that house swung out into the hallway, so you couldn't walk down the hallway without worrying that someone would hit you as they opened the door).

Hi, Ruthie here, from Community Forklift Nonprofit Thrift Store for Home Improvement. Thanks to Mirabella, Petworthy, and JessicaBDesigner for recommending us!

For folks in other parts of the country with the same question, I would recommend checking out the Building Materials Reuse Association (www.BuildingReuse.org). It's the national trade organization for deconstruction companies, salvage operations, and thrift stores like us, and they have a directory on their website where you can search by state. Another national directory that focuses mostly on building materials thrift stores can be found at www.ReDo.org.

At Community Forklift, we do recieve donations of a wide variety of lumber - everything from modern 2x4s and pallets to old beams and vintage trim.

But for the board that Xiaolu is looking for, our consignment lumber would be ideal (our consignment partner is a company called Treincarnation - he takes local trees that are being cut down by the power company or landowners, and would otherwise be chipped, then mills them into gorgeous planks with organic raw edges. He also builds furniture - check out his stuff at www.Treincarnation.com).

We're located inside the Beltway, about 5 minutes from the NE DC line between Rhode Island Ave. and Kenilworth Ave (treehuggers & artists may be familiar with the neighborhood - we're in the Port Towns area, which is known for lots of green industry, and it's close to the Hyattsville Arts District).

One last bit of advice - when reaching out to tradespeople, builders, construction supply companies, thrift stores, and salvage yards, I have found that it can be hard to get an answer to an initial email. It's usually much better to call. This is because the construction world is online less than any other field - I think the official statistic is that only 20% of people in construction check email each day. I encounter so many builders who are out on jobsites, or construction suppliers who are out in the warehouse, or deconstuction folks who are out at the salvage site, and they rarely get time to sit at a desk to catch up on email.

And at thrift stores and salvage yards, it is always MUCH BETTER to visit because often there is so much turnover that employees don't even know what they have in stock at any given moment. - it's like calling Goodwill to ask if they have a particular size and color of pants.

Okay, hope that was helpful - happy reusing everybody!

To answer the original question about practical gifts, here are my top three:

1) On my 16th birthday, my dad brought me a breakfast-in-bed tray with tea, an english muffin, and a book about becoming a woman. I can't remember the title, but it was a compilation of advice from powerful and/or famous women, including some surprisingly candid advice about sex. Although some of my friends' parents threw them big Sweet 16 parties, I was not disappointed at all - breakfast in bed made me feel very loved, and the book had some information that was very useful to me at that stage in my life.

2) I work in a freezing-cold warehouse. Last year, my best friend got me luxurious silk long johns. I was so, so grateful!

3) Over my loud objections ("Real women know how to read maps!"), my boyfriend got me a GPS for my car. It has saved me so much hassle, especially when I am running late for an appointment at a place I've never been to before.

I second Barkeepers Friend! A friend had this problem with very cloudy glass shower doors. He'd tried everything. I used BKF, and the green scrubby side of a dish sponge, and it worked like a charm.

December babies, listen up - there is a great solution! My birthday is Dec. 20th, when everyone, including myself, is either taking finals, traveling to see family, doing holiday baking, frantically doing last-minute shopping, trying to wrap up a project at work before everyone goes on vacation, etc. etc.

After a few years in elementary school when no one could come to my party - and no one gave me birthday presents after I'd carefully selected presents for their birthdays - my mom got creative. She threw me a half-birthday party in our backyard on June 20th, complete with half of a paper tablecloth on the table, paper napkins cut in half, half of a round cake, and half of a princess outfit (I wore a t-shirt with a frilly skirt, and one sneaker and one sparkly shoe). It was fantastic weather and the best party a kid could ask for.

Ever since, I've held half-birthday celebrations. On my full birthday, I do something low-key and luxurious, like eating ice cream for breakfast, watching trashy movies in bed all day, or getting a pedicure. I don't need anyone else, there's no fuss or planning, it's great.

Then come June, I throw a big shindig, everyone comes, and everyone has a fantastic present for me. Some of my oldest friends have even given me presents on my full AND half birthdays because they can't remember if they gave me something six months before - so it totally makes up for when they stiffed me when we were kids :)

Here's the best part - it made 30 seem a lot less scary. I felt totally chill during my 29.5 party, and then on my 30.5 party, I had already figured out that my thirties were going to rock and it was no big deal. Plus, how grown up can you really feel when you are celebrating a half birthday? It definitely keeps you feeling young and silly.

I'm not doing Black Friday. I'm doing Small Business Saturday.

You left out Mrs. Lavender in the DC area!

I have rented in 4 places in the last 6 years, mostly in the Mt. Rainier/Hyattsville area just outside NE DC. Although it's still a bit of a best-kept secret, it's more affordable that many other parts of town, and is a highly desirable location for a certain type of person (moderate income, environmental/progressive values, maybe interested in the arts community, etc.).

Therefore, if you want to rent at one of the group houses or basement apartments in the neighborhood, you have some serious competition.

Almost everyone I know with a good place has had an in - they had a friend living or working around here who posted to the neighborhood listserve saying, "Hey, I've got this friend who's looking for a place, he's moving from Portland to work for an international development nonprofit, plus he bakes great vegan brownies! Just let me know if there are any openings."

And of course, whenever anyone posts about an opening to the listserve, locals immediately tell their friends who have expressed interest in moving here.

So I would just encourage anyone looking for a place to work those connections! Alert your friends, coworkers, folks you volunteer or play softball with, etc. That's how you find out about places before they show up on Craigslist...and also how you get the landlords to call you back.

I'm seeing TV armoires being converted back to an older function.

I work at a nonprofit thrift store for building materials & architectural salvage, in the DC area. We also take a limited amount of furniture.

We get plenty of TV armoires - especially from hotels that are converting to flat screens - but they sell very quickly. Some of them are bought by African and Carribean customers, to ship back home to relatives.

Most of the TV cabinets, though, are bought by 20- and 30-somethings who are living in the city. They grew up in big suburban homes, but have decided to settle down and raise kids in walkable urban communities. This means they are living in older urban rowhomes with no closets, or apartments with limited closet space. So, they are converting these TV cabinets back to the original purpose of an armoire - to store clothing!