As I’ve rekindled a serious obsession in the last 6 months or so with arts and crafts (a natural by-product of my participation in The Artist’s Way group last fall), I am a very eager student of repurposing.

Repurposing aligns with a phrase I’ve always appreciated: “Necessity is the mother of invention”. Like those inevitable moments in our lives when we don’t have what we think we need or don’t have access to what we think we need, we improvise. We take a look around and see what’s there, right in front of us. What can be used in a pinch. Repurposing really appeals to my interests in both creating and problem-solving.

I recently discovered a new t.v. show, “That Thrifting Show”, hosted by Lara Spencer. It’s a competition reality show on Hulu that has two teams of two people competing for who can do a better job designing a room using exclusively thrifted items, with a budget of $2000. I love seeing the thrill of the hunt for treasures and what the design teams do with them once they’re back in the warehouse to put their rooms together. A lot of times they upcycle items they thrift. One time a team painted leather dining chairs purple. Lara’s special room which she has filled with treasures she has personally thrifted is the stuff of my daydreams.

Repurposing, however, is not limited to finding thrifted items and upcycling them. I say this not only because it’s true, but because while upcycling excites my creative spirit, I don’t have a ton of personal experience with it. This is on account of the time constraints of life coupled with fear that I’ll bite off more than I can chew (I have a special talent for that-or maybe it’s undiagnosed ADHD?).

Yet, there’s lots of simple ways we can repurpose things, like:

• Using plastic bags from the store to line garbage cans or to carry lunch to work in.
• Affixing googly-eyes or using a Sharpie to create finger puppets out of old winter gloves to entertain babies.
• Taking discarded wrapping paper and framing it to create a one-of-a-kind piece of art.

Or, going much deeper, other “things” can be repurposed, right? Such as:

• A personal blog
• A shed
• A career

Putting this in black and white gives me much, much food for thought.

But I digress.

What say you all about the notion of repurposing? Do you think about arts and crafts or furniture, or do you think of simpler, day-to-day things that could be repurposed? Or do you think it’s more interesting to ponder more substantial things, like how your life could be repurposed in some way, shape, or form?

I repurposed the tissue paper flowers made by my in-laws (what a beautiful part they played by doing this) for decorating the venue of our daughter’s wedding shower (put on by my gem of a SIL). There were so many left over! I brought them into work to decorate our offices, for my co-worker give them to her granddaughters to play with, and/or to use as decorations for our annual volunteer appreciation party in June. I just couldn’t bear to toss them in the garbage.

Naturally, I’m going to choose a song to cap this last-in-my-re-re-re series blog post by sharing a cover of a tune. One that was excellent in its original form but got repurposed and given new life by some really talented singers and musicians. Please share in the comments any songs you love that have been respectfully repurposed by other artists.