RuthieatCommunityForklift's Profile

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!

Hi, Ruthie here from Community Forklift, a nonprofit salvage yard in the DC area. We get a ton of reclaimed doors all the time, and I know the same is true at many places like ours. In fact, we often have to put them on sale in order to make enough room in our door department! So you can snag them pretty cheaply (when they're on sale, ours usually go for $10 or $15). So thanks much for this post - I wish more people would put them to good use.

I know people often wonder how to find thrift stores for building materials in their area. Unfortunately there is no one comprehensive listing, but we do link to a bunch of national and state directories on our website. Just scroll about halfway down the page at http://communityforklift.com/links.cfm
- you'll see links to all of the directories.

You gotta take into account all the boomers who will be aging over the next few decades.

My mother was in a wheelchair for a while before she died, and couldn't even raise her arms for the last few months. I don't know what we would have done if there had been only a standard apartment-sized shower! I guess we could have put a plastic lawn chair in the shower stall, but then there would have been no room for me or a nurse to get in there to bathe her.

Because she had a tub/shower combo, it was relatively easy. I just got a shower nozzle with a sprayer, and we bought a standard bath transfer seat (they are made so that two legs go inside the tub and two outside. You can adjust the height of the legs so it doesn't wobble. You sit the person on the plastic seat, buckle them in, and then slide the seat over so the person is positioned over the tub).

The best solution would be if all homes have bathrooms like they have in nursing homes - the kind where the whole room has a tile floor that slopes gently towards the shower drain. That way, there's no lip between the shower and the rest of the room, so you can just roll the wheelchair into the shower area.

Sadly, this mostly exists only in retirement communities. Because so few homes are designed to be universally accessible, it forces seniors to move into retirement communities that are isolated from other generations. This especially sucks for younger handicapped adults with children, like a lot of the returning veterans. I know they have a hard time finding affordable homes that are accessible AND located in good neighborhoods for raising kids. Heck, plenty of handicap-accessible apartments are aimed at seniors and don't even allow families with children.

Ruthie from Community Forklift here. Ms. Tart, thanks for the shout-out!

I have a tip to add: when interviewing potential contractors, find out if they are willing to donate leftover materials - because it can save you serious money.

Are you changing cabinets, fixtures etc. simply because of style or layout, not because the old things are in terrible shape? Then donating the sturdy old stuff to a home improvement thrift store can really reduce the cost of your project.

Many nonprofit thrift stores will pick up donations. So, not only will you earn tax deductions worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, but it may significantly lower your disposal costs (after all, you get charged for the weight in the rental dumpster or the number of trips your contractor takes to the landfill). And of course, you can feel good because it creates green jobs, helps your local community, and reduces waste and energy use.

However, the time to talk about it is NOT when you see your contractor taking a sledgehammer to your vanity or chucking perfectly good light fixtures into the dumpster. BEFORE you sign the contract, tell him/her that you would like to donate if possible, and ask what s/he thinks can be removed carefully for reuse. Then have it written into the contract that they will try their best to make it happen.

Another important tip: contact your local thrift store for home improvement in advance and ask them what they are most interested in. We love it when a homeowner sends us photos of materials before it has been removed - it gives us a good idea of whether it will be worth our while to send our truck out to pick it up. Also, it means that we can schedule the pickup appointment according to the contractor's schedule, making it easier for him/her to work with us (If the homeowner doesn't contact us until after the stuff is removed, then it may have to sit there, taking up space in their house for days or weeks until we can pick it up - slowing down renovation work).

Some smart contractors in the DC area are starting to include donation in their bids. Andy Ault from Little River Carpentry will give a client an estimate that includes the cost of materials, the cost of labor, AND the amount of tax deduction that he thinks he can get them.

Don't know if there's a thrift store for home improvement in your area? Go to http://communityforklift.com/links.cfm and scroll about halfway down the page to the "Other Reuse Resources" section. We have links to several directories of building material thrift stores around the U.S.