This is our first post on recycling, reclaiming, repurposing, and upcycling. I have become a master at scrounging items people discard and putting them to good use. Why pay good money for something when you can get the materials for free and build it yourself? Remember, we are on the path to self-sufficiency and we find the most economical means of doing things.
This particular article focuses on garden stakes. As you can tell, we have a pretty good sized garden and we needed a large amount of garden stakes for bean teepees, pea trellises, tomato cages, and cucumber trellis supports. After checking the price of stakes in local garden centers, we determined it would cost a small fortune to purchase enough stakes to cover our needs.
That’s where my scrounging skills and creativity kicked into high gear. I began checking with local businesses for long wooden shipping pallets. I hit one of the motorcycle/ATV dealers and hit paydirt. I loaded the trailer with a dozen wooden pallets and three metal pallets. The metal pallets will be used for future projects. I also saw a stack of shipping pallets outside a local furniture stores and scored another dozen long wooden pallets.
Now comes the creativity and hard work. I had to break the pallets down using a hammer, prybar, and long vise-grip pliers. After separating the cross members, I had to remove all of the nails and staples. Once all of the metal is removed, I ripped the boards down on my table saw. I was able to get 18 (7-foot) stakes out of one single pallet and could have gotten more by cutting them a little thinner. I was also able to get nearly 40 shorter stakes for other purposes.
I should note that most of the wood from these pallets is Oak. Sure it takes a little bit of work to get to the stakes, but they are 100 percent FREE and I was able to keep them from ending up in a landfill.
If you tally up all of the stakes I was able to reclaim from a single pallet, we saved about $50.00 from buying them at a garden center.
Stay tuned for future updates on my uses of wooden pallets and other reclaimed items. In the mean time, you can find your own projects using recycled materials. You can find additional information on the internet, your local library or by clicking on any of my ads below.
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