Wednesday 10 November 2010

Freecycle Hacking

I am incredibly lucky to be part of a generous recycling community where I live. I'm a member of Freegle, Realcycle and Freecycle and anything we no longer have a use for is offered on the sites. I also put requests out for items such as baby food jars for my preserves, empty beer bottles for our mead etc.

Our house is filled with items from freecycle, our sofas, storage, dining table and chairs, filing cabinets, slide, swing set, garden swing seat, wardrobes, children's toys...the list goes on. If I see an advert for an item I like, I send a polite reply stating my contact information and when I would be able to collect. I also include a link to this blog in my email signature so people can see the items will be put to good use.

Although the majority of freecyclers are friendly individuals, there are also plenty out there who are rude, ignorant and pretty greedy. I have had some strange requests, and every advert posted brings it's own weird and wonderful characters.

One of the reasons we are so lucky on freecycle is that we're willing to take items that need a bit of fixing up, the play kitchen for Abi's christmas present last year for example.

This week, I managed to be gifted a Quinny Zap pushchair. It's perfect for me as it's small for the buses and playgroup corridors, lightweight, sturdy and it's purple ;). The only problem with it is one of the side catches doesn't quite lock but the pushchair is functional and safe.

The other issue is that although Abi walks pretty much everywhere, she gets tired on long walks and we use a buggy board so she can rest awhile. The old generic buggy board we used was rickety and liable to fall off when going over kerbs and our nice buggy board was a brand specific one for our Mutsy offroader buggy.

After a good luck at the underneath of the buggy, we thought that the Mutsy board might just be usable so we thought we'd try and give it a go. After trying it on for size, we realised that the only way to get it connected safely would be to turn one of the connectors upside down in order to keep the board level. So we flipped it over and drilled a hole in one side to enable the poles to lock into position upside down. This worked near perfectly but the board attachment clips were a little loose on the buggy. We needed something to help them grip slightly but still enable me to take them on and off quickly as I suffer with carpal tunnel and have problems with my grip.

We decided to try some sugru on them and it worked brilliantly. Sugru is silicone, but it's like playing with plasticine. You can mold it onto whatever shape you want, stick it to something, leave it to cure and voila. There are lots of great sugru hacks on their blog over at http://sugru.com/blog/ (Hack is the term the sugru makers use for their product, so anybody who wants to argue about the use of the word in my title should shush now ;) )

Here are some photos of the Buggy Sugru Hack

Buggy Board Hack

Buggy Board Hack

Buggy Board Hack

Buggy Board Hack

Squishy

Buggy Board Hack


Buggy Board Hack

Buggy Board Hack

The sugru has a little bit of give to it which adds to the grip as it connects to the buggy.

Buggy Board Hack

Buggy Board Hack

Tada. A buggy that is perfect for our family and one less item going to the tip.

Buggy Board Hack

2 comments:

  1. Great Hack

    If You would like this featured on www.MySugruHacks.com just sent us a photo and description to hacks@MySugruHacks.com

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