When we give school tours at VALCORE, our manager Genie Kaggerud challenges students to re-think how they look at trash.

ReadyMade quarterly magazine encourages you to re-think how you look at everyday objects. Each issue has a collection of practical or fun inventions. Items are made from old materials or things headed for the recycling bin in combination with new products. They get projects from readers who submit instructions and photos of the finished item.

ReadyMade’s fourth issue had a section on making unusual lamps. Who would think of making a lamp from a wire tomato cage with clothespins; a snake light from a length of dryer tubing or installing a fluorescent bulb in an old blender? Each lamp has a project card showing the required time, costs, skill level, materials and tools needed to complete the task.

Their fifth issue featured the lowly cardboard box. Projects transformed boxes into end tables, bed trays and an unusual bowl. Additional websites for companies using cardboard as material for manufacturing were included. Our website, www.VALCORErecycling.org, has a link to the state’s website featuring similar recycled products.

ReadyMade also re-views unusual products, books and old standbys. I found two non-conventional uses for duct tape. They printed instructions for making a wallet using duct tape and reported on researchers at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington, who are using duct tape as a wart remover.

It’s hard to pinpoint what I like about the magazine; maybe it’s their unusual or re-invented things that I don’t see in chain stores. Some say that necessity is the mother of invention but that is not the case here. These inventions are more like art or just plain fun. Clever re-use items included a bulletin board made from an old scrabble set and a candle holder made from scrap faucet handles.

ReadyMade editors do write serious articles too. There was a long story about the Auburn (Alabama) University School of Architecture’s project called Rural Studio. Students spend a semester in Alabama’s impoverished backcountry building houses, churches, and community centers from old tires, baled cardboard, car windows and other materials salvaged or donated by local industry. The article ended with instructions on building a tire wall.

ReadyMade writers also featured the make-over of the Benicia Brewery into an artist’s studio and living space.For more information visit www.readymade.com.

I’d like to salute our readers for their creative reuse of common items. Kudos to accountant J.D. Miller for using AOL CDs as coasters in his office. He didn’t want to take all the credit as he had borrowed the idea from attorney Louis Caretti.