Friday Furnishings: FYI - DIY, Plus The Goodwill Challenge, Part 3.8

Tomorrow, dear readers, will find your very own DC Goodwill Team at the Washington, DC Green Festival, a huge event featuring speakers, green businesses, and children and teen pavilions, the latter at which we'll be stationed. And what, pray tell, is Goodwill doing to have for teens?

Why a great activity wherein we transform t-shirts into reusable shopping bags, of course! The DCGF had a rough idea of how to go about doing this project, but needed no less than Martha Stewart to confirm that the concept was doable. The instructions are pretty easy: flip a t-shirt inside out, sew, cut, cut some more, flip the whole thing back outside in and voila! You get something like what you see at right.

Now whether this will in actuality be as easy as I anticipate under the pressure of a bunch of teens hanging around and pawing through the great selection of tees I've pulled from Goodwill stores is another matter. Suffice to say, though, that we're looking forward to being part of the event and providing yet another "green" option for young people to consider when they're shopping.

This whole project got me thinking about other ways to green my space. Sure, I buy the majority of my furniture second hand, and I have the CFLs and such, but what other creative ideas abound?

RePlayGround is a new-ish company that offers DIY kits for the construction of your own customized items, like the ReMake It! Bottle Lamp at left. They provide the fully wired frame and all you do is pop in six of your favorite bottles to reflect the light. Genius!

Also available are kits that create magazine stationary, a corkscrew trivet, and a series of one-of-a-kind projects. The lamp retails for about $40, which isn't bad considering that it's stainless steel and sustainable. You can even change out the "lampshade" whenever you want!

One of the coolest websites I've stumbled onto in a long time is foldschool, which offers free patterns on creating children's furniture out of cardboard. I mean, how awesome is that?

Now I don't know how easy it is actually to create something like the chair show at right, but the concept is incredibly creative. You know how half the time the kids love the containers more than they like the toys, so now you have a way to put that giant post-Christmas or birthday box to good use for the rest of the year.

And one of the projects - the footstool - could be used as a great side table for kids of all ages. I'm seriously in love with this concept. I think I'll marry it. Ha.

Finally, you know how much the DCGF adores her little kitties, Harry and Penny. But in a small apartment it's hard to find space for everybody to take a nap comfortably in their own place. That's why I love Cat Baggage, a compact pet bed created from an old suitcase.

This one's super easy. Remove one half of suitcase by undoing hinges. Fill remaining half with appropriate sized pillow. Cover with pillow case or fabric. And you're done. Look how happy that cat is! This is a project that I think I will take up this weekend, in fact. That and, oh, about 100 t-shirt bags. DIY, yo...


Any purchase made at a Goodwill Retail Store or on ebay.com funds Goodwill's mission of training and employment programs for people with disadvantages or disabilities. Copyright Goodwill of Greater Washington, DC Goodwill Fashion Blog. All Rights Reserved.