New Use
For many years, the magazine, Real Simple, included a section called New Uses for Old Things. It featured ideas from staff and from readers about repurposing items for a different use than for what was originally intended.
My favorite “new use” to this day is using pillowcases to dust off ceiling fan blades. I spray a general cleaner into the pillowcase and then use a pillowcase per fan to wipe off each blade. This is typically around daylight savings when it is time for the fans to change direction. I then toss the pillowcases in the washing machine. No dust showers happen or waste with items one might use to clean that would typically be thrown away.
Long time family friend, Nanky Tribble, wrote to me recently along with a picture of a bearded iris plant that she has placed in her yard. I brought cuttings from my yard for her over the summer. Nanky exclaimed a couple of years ago (when I posted a picture on social media of the bearded iris in bloom) that it looked just like the one in her grandmother‘s yard and that she - Nanky - had never been able to find one.
Nanky’s mother and mine went to college together and were roommates. She named the two cuttings in her yard after our mothers. Plants finding new homes. A new use for a cutting.
This time of year, there is ample opportunity to work in the yard to get it ready for the winter. We have been working hard to cover certain areas and then mulch them. We have been using moving boxes to cover certain areas of the yard and then place mulch on top. This is a new use for moving boxes, which will naturally break down.
While making soap, I used small measuring glasses for essential oils. After a few runs in the dishwasher, all of the lettering faded. I have repurposed those to be luminaries for votive candles. New use!
All of these share a common thread of the idea of a reframe.
This is an opportunity. How can we look at circumstances, situations and events in our lives that we can reframe into a new use, a new point of view?
I was recently laid off from my position with a local business, and I was sad that the funding was not renewed to help the people of the state in which I live. My point of view has been to reframe it into an opportunity.
Journal writing is one of the most fun things I get to do with other people. I get to do this through organizations like the Cactus Cancer Society. I have seen reframes and transformations happen in real time after just short-timed writing. I have witnessed people in those groups support and love one another and leave even after only 30 minutes feeling differently than they did when they arrived.
Does this mean that everything is all taken care of or that everything is all better? No, it is a practice, and change takes time. It does mean that considering something new is possible.
This is one piece of the work I feel that are part of my gifts to share. I am happy to say that I will be working also with All Souls Counseling and providing clinical supervision to those working toward their licenses as social workers (the profession needs you!).
All of this to say, I could be looking at this as a major setback. Instead, I reframe and find new uses for my skills and gifts.
I’d love to work with you! How can I help?
Try this:
Describe a time when your life brought a sudden and unexpected change. Include how you shifted to experience the results in a different way.
What is an item you have repurposed for a new use? Write about that process and what it felt like to create something new.
Describe a time, even though it felt like a negative experience, when you look back on it now, you can see it was a change that benefited you.
Let me know how it goes! I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at fsconsulting2013@gmail.com.