The Garbage Lady, Finally an Introduction

Hi all! Thought I'd tell you a bit about how myself and my vision for Good Garbage. My name is Lynn Quire, born in Louisville and raised in Southern Indiana now back, residing in the wonderful area of Old Louisville. I am an avid advocate for reduce and reuse. A self-taught sewer and crafter, I mainly love to create  bags from shirts, pants and other various reused material. I have worked in business from the time I was 18 and have a love of learning new things. This has given me the opportunity to learn businesses inside and out from accounting to human resources to information technology. With this love of learning also comes a passion for teaching.

I have been involved with many non-profits, volunteering, fundraising and organizing events. Though mainly my focus has been on school and youth organizations, I have logged many volunteer hours teaching various skills and working at area events.

As Executive Director, I will be working hard to take the message of reducing and reusing across our community by working with reuse artists, teachers, community centers, other non-profit organizations and Corporations through workshops, classes and camps for preschoolers to adults. My goal is to get our community to stop and think before an item is tossed or recycled as to the other lives that item could potentially have; if not by you, by someone else.

In turn, this will help the community, especially teachers, obtain inexpensive materials for their classrooms, art and craft projects and masterpieces.

During this time I will be searching for the perfect place to call home for our retail store, workshop area, gallery and boutique. I'm always up for a challenge and this one is a dream I'm making a reality. 

You can reach me at Lynn.GoodGarbage@gmail.com or 502.437.9021. I would love to hear about places (Community centers, senior centers, after school programs or summer camps) where I can share the Good Garbage message and ideas on reuse projects and crafts. I believe the only limitation I have is the imagination...and seems there is no end!!!

I am plowing through fundraising and events, shedding blood, sweat and tears, to make Good Garbage: Center for Creative Reuse an Institution in our great city of Louisville!!! 

Call For Volunteers

We are looking for some awesome volunteers to help out with events and camps we have planned around town through the summer. You must be passionate about the reuse movement and good with kids as these mostly revolve around guiding them through a craft project.  All volunteers will be put through a background check either through us or the facility we will be working in. Timebanker's and teens needing service hours are encouraged to volunteer. 

Please email me at lynn.goodgarbage@gmail.com with the event you would like to help with ONLY if you can completely commit. It would be awesome if I got a lot of volunteers where we could work you in shifts. We will rely on volunteers to make these events fun and successful. We will have a meeting prior to each event to go over the crafts, expectations, etc. The times listed are the event times and events are subject to change. I will need volunteers to help set up and break down as well.

Events:

Mighty Kindness Earth Day Hootenanny April 13 12-6 p.m. (3+ volunteers)

Ohio Falls Earth Day Celebration April 27 10-4 p.m. (3+ volunteers)

District 9 Community Wide Recycle May 11 9:30-12 p.m. (2+ volunteers)

Buy Local Fair May 11 2-8 p.m. (3+ volunteers, no kids craft just informational and possible selling of product) 

Louisville Library's How To May 11 1-3 p.m. (3 volunteers, FULL already)

Old Louisville Spring Fest May 18 12-6 p.m. (4+ volunteers)

GrassRoots Gala June 7 4-10 p.m. (4+ volunteers)

Community Center Summer Camp Tuesdays 2-3:30 p.m. From June 11 to July 30 (3+ volunteers)

There will be additional volunteering opportunities so stay tuned.

Thank you for all your support! We are looking to have a very fun year!

~Lynn

502.437.9021

The Junkyard Clubhouse, Events & Call for Supplies

WOW! We have been so busy booking and planning events for this spring and working to get the all the business side of stuff taken care of, I haven't posted here as much as I planned! But I think it is time that we let you all in on all the wonderful happenings at Good Garbage . . .

Behind the scenes, Anne has been busy talking and working with a lot of wonderful supporters and persevering through mounds of paperwork so we can see our dream of the retail, workshop, boutique and gallery space come to life soon. No concrete dates yet. Still lots to do...But she is hoping to get us going on a mobile basis soon! 

I've been busy working on events for Good Garbage, for both kids and adults! Along with our mobile retail side starting soon, we will be scheduling workshops and makes all over town. 

Anne and I have created the Good Garbage Gang and The Junkyard Clubhouse! The Good Garbage Gang is open to everyone. We will have promotions, games, contests and instructables for repupose makes. 

The Junkyard Clubhouse will be an educational and hands on area at local festivals, community centers and other places around town, geared toward kids from 1 to 101. 

The Junkyard Clubhouse will be introduced at our booth at the Mighty Kindness Earth Day Hoot on April 13 from 12-6, at the Brown-Forman Amphitheater on River Road.  

On May 11th you can catch me showing you some cool things to do with a t-shirt at the Louisville Free Public Library's How To Fair, just in time for Mother's Day! You can leave with a necklace, bracelet or scarf for the special lady in your life! FREE!

Also on May 11th we will be at the Buy Local Fair at the Louisville Water Tower from 2-8 p.m.

The grand premier for The Junkyard Clubhouse will be at the Old Louisville Spring Fest in the Kosair Kid's Zone on May 18th, from 12-6 p.m. Kids will be learning how and why we should repurpose items such as the infamous Plastic Water Bottle, through stories, posters, discussions and hands on crafts. We will be turning the bottles into sun catchers and medallions, snake bubble blowers, stamps and itsy-bitsy gardens. There will also be demonstrations throughout the day that will be geared towards older kids and adults, along with a display of many repuposed items. We will also have a booth in the vendor area.

We are absolutely honored for Good Garbage and the Junkyard Clubhouse to have been asked to headline the children's area at The Grass Roots Gala on June 7 from 4-10 p.m. on 4th Street, hosted by the Center for Neighborhoods organization. Keep your eye out for more information on this!

We have lots of other things in the works so the calender of events will be updated constantly. A link can be found on the right side of this page. Be sure to bookmark it!

I'm also putting out a call for supplies that I am desperately in need of for the activities I'm doing at the various events. If you have any of the following items, please email me at lynn.goodgarbage@gmail.com and I will be more than happy to pick them up. We have some time to save up! I would like them by April  13.

• 20 oz plastic bottles, preferably clear
• Bottle caps
• Older terry cloth towels and wash cloths (worn, thin ones are great)
• Colored permanent markers, or dry erase markers
• Styrofoam food containers (ie take-out containers, etc. NOT cups)
• Water color paints (ie the ones that come in kid kits)
• Small paint brushes
• Colored T-Shirts, Can be solid color or multi-colored, but not white. Old t's with small stains are fine, but they can't have dried goop on them. 
• Bins or medium/large lidded containers to put these items in.

***All items need to be washed, clean and dry.

I am SOOOOOO excited to get these events going and showing everyone how fun it is to repurpose stuff!!! Hope to see you at ALL of them!

~Lynn~

Keep up with our Materials List & Wishing for a Scale

Be sure to check out the list of materials we accept HERE and start saving for us. I'm planning to get out in the community very soon with educational talks and make-and-take projects and I need inventory, especially items on the wish list. The list is updated often so keep checking back.

We are looking for businesses to partner with too. Things like corks, wine bottles, colored pop and beer bottles, bottle caps, scrap vinyl (signs), etc. If you have a business or know of a manufacturing business here in town that has something unique that is cast off as seconds or scrap, let me know. We would love to sit and see if we can join forces to keep as much as possible out of the landfills.

Also note the Terra Cycle Brigades we are collecting for. These will help raise much needed funds for our education and community programs.

And at the top of our Wish List is a scale! Something big enough for us to weigh bags/boxes of items as they come in. A postal scale that would go up as high as 50 pounds and have a clear view of the weight. We will use this to log the weight of all donations and be able to see the tonnage we are keeping out of the landfill. We have so much already in our storage facility, I'd really like to get that all weighed soon. Anybody have an old one they want to get rid of?

Email me with any questions or info.  

~Lynn (Lynn.GoodGarbage@gmail.com)

The PosSOUPbility Experience

What on Earth is posSOUPbility?

PosSOUPbility is an easy and fun way to bring our community together over food to support new and emerging projects that create innovative ways to celebrate, and/or benefit people, places and things in the Louisville area.  Applicants and projects can be based in a variety of fields and disciplines - the only requirement is creativity!

Somewhere along the way of building Good Garbage, I came across this wonderful group. I wanted to be part of it, not just as a presenter, but to go listen to all the new innovative happenings around this town I love! 

Anne had spoken with Nick Covault, one of the wonderful people behind the event and he really was excited about Good Garbage and our vision and encouraged us to apply. And we did. Since we are currently still completing the piles of paperwork to become a non-profit, and building our followers, we thought this would be a great way to one, get our word out to like minded folks, and maybe even possibly get enough money to buy a used trailer so we could start a mobile popup shop and give us something to pick up large donations with.

Compassionate Louisville
Trackers

The application process was simple. Once they receive the applications, they are looked at by a blind panel and three are chosen to present at the event. This was their year anniversary celebration and word is getting out. They had a record six applications. We were one of the lucky ones chosen to present, along side Educational Justice and Compassionate Louisville Trackers at First Unitarian Church on Sunday, January 27.

Anne and I worked long and hard on our presentation. We practiced and edited and practiced again. We had a lot of fun with sharing our vision while sharing a few laughs with our audience, and from the video, +Rhoden Streeter,  did for us (and we will share once it's edited properly), and the grand response we received afterwards, it seems we did exactly what we set out to do. 

They had a record crowd and amount of money to give away. They collected $1490, which at $10 per person, means there were 149 paying supporters. WOW 149 people paid to eat some fabulous soup and to see the small projects happening in Louisville! How awesome!!!! For us, that meant there were a minimum 149 more people we got our vision out to. There was one person in the audience that couldn't stand the odd dollar amount and offered up another $10 right before the winner was announced to make the take and even $1500!!! This means that the winner received $1350. PosSOUPbility holds 10% to cover their costs, but if that is more than needed, they will add it to the amount the next winner receives.

Nick Covault, Organizer

Educational Justice, Winner

Unfortunately for us Educational Justice won, hard to beat out the needs of our kids. But you know what? You will not find any disappointment here!!! What we took from this event is exactly what we wanted. We got to meet so many wonderful people, garner lots of support, and make Louisville aware we are on the road to build another way to assure waste that could end up in the landfill, will have an alternative home, a place teachers, artists and crafters will be able to access inexpensive materials to help keep the arts alive, as well as a source of education on reducing, reusing and recycling! 

Thank you Nick, Beth and all the other volunteers for the wonder thing you are doing with posSOUPbility and the opportunity you are giving all your presenters and the Louisville community. Please check posSOUPbility out on their blog possoupbility.blogspot.com or on Facebook. Their next event is on April 7, 2013. Be sure to mark your calendar!!!!

(Photos all courtesy of posSOUPbility)

CALLING ALL LOCAL REUSE ARTIST, CRAFTERS & THINKERS

We would love to showcase your artwork, crafts and reuse ideas on our Community Pinterest Board. Email me a picture, a short description and a link to your blog or website or Facebook page, if you have one. From kids to adults, amateur to professional! Show us what you got and what the Louisville area can keep out of the landfill!!! I plan to showcase some of you on our blog itself, as well. These need to be pictures and things you have actually done yourself, not just reposts from Pinterest.

Even though I have tried to incorporate pictures of local items on our Facebook cover photo, I wish I could take full credit for this, S.C.R.A.P. Bin posted this wonderful idea on their Facebook page, and I thought it would be a cool idea for us to do too.

Looking for this to be a fun project!

~Lynn

Friend's Question and Prepping for the Drawing

Good morning everyone!!!! What a beautiful day here in Louisville! Hope everyone is getting out to enjoy it!  

We absolutely love when we get great questions on how to recycle or repurpose items. We know we have people really thinking! This morning I got an email from one of our friends asking what to do with glass candle holders with a little wax left and an assortment of old wax.  I suggested simmering the candles holders in a pot of water to melt the wax and to melt the other wax and combine them into one or more of the containers and add a wick to use as emergency candles. Do you have other suggestions? Please share in the comments! 

Right now, I am currently preparing for the drawing we are having since we hit 200 fans on Facebook, by writing everyone's names on paper and placing them in a bowl. There are three ways to enter between now and Noon. One - become a Facebook Fan, two - join as a follower of our email and I made a post on Facebook this morning. If you like it I'll add your name one more time to the drawing.  

Right now I'll have drawings for two sets of t-shirt shopping bags. During the course of the day... who knows what else I'll draw for! Depends on just how crafty I get during day! The winners will be posted here and on Facebook this evening. Good luck to everyone and thank you again for all your support. We are looking forward to opening the first and only Creative Reuse Center here in Louisville!

Happy New Year!!!!!

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas, or another holiday you may have celebrated this season! We've had sicknesses, birthdays and lots of family time this week and still working hard to start the new year off right for Good Garbage. Good Garbage Gab will continue next week! 

Remember to continue saving things like bottle caps, corks, plastic containers, tp and paper towel rolls, and other items on our list found HERE. 

Wishing you a happy and safe New Year from our families to yours!

Like us? Well be sure to share our page with all your friends and family! We will have so much going on in 2013, everyone will want to continue watching us grow!! 

Securing Our Spot in the Louisville Sustainability Movement - We Need the Community's Help!

Imagine if you will... A retail shop whose shelves are filled with a colorful array of left over, unused and recycled crafting material donated by artists, crafters and corporations from over-runs and collection drives. Glass - tiles - marbles - fabric - paper - buttons. On the far wall sits a grandiose display of artwork made from materials you see on the shelves—created by everyone from preschool kids to adults—being showcased for everyone to see; some even for sale. Then,  tucked away in a corner you can hear children and adults laughing while learning how to re-purpose a plastic bottle into a spider for a Halloween decoration or learning how to take wire from an electrical cord and make a pair of earrings. THIS IS OUR PASSION... 

Our mission...To provide a sustainable means for collecting scrap material before it enters the waste stream and making it available to the community for creative reuse.

You've been watching us over the last couple months here as we work on building shelves, sharing ideas and talking to just about everyone we come within 20 feet of. The behind the scenes meetings, hashing out ideas, brainstorming, researching and making educated decisions have been continuing beyond what we have been posting here.

After researching many options and existing reuse centers across the country and meeting with various people around town—from the Center for Non-Profit Excellence to civic leaders, to artists, teachers and environmentalists—we have decided to pursue a fiscal sponsorship with SCRAP USA (SCRAPpdx) in Portland, Oregon. Our mission and vision are closely aligned, and they have a sound business model, proven track record, and many projects all over the country. They will give us ongoing administrative help, access to grants, and the ability to begin functioning as a 501(c)3, tax-exempt charity, as soon as they approve our application, which could be as early as January 1, 2013.

In addition to our application, SCRAP has asked us to show proof that our Creative Reuse Center will have community support. A key part of that is to raise $1,000 in start-up money. This does not go to the sponsor, but serves as seed money to help us take our message to the streets through classroom demonstrations and workshops, environmental and arts & craft events all over Louisville, and to help us open our Creative Reuse Retail Store. Any money we receive in this campaign is not tax-deductible, nor does it give any ownership or provide any return on investment. It is an investment in OUR community to serve under-funded groups and support another part of Louisville’s sustainability initiatives.

We have started an email campaign and are now asking you, as our followers and those who would support the store either by donations or as patrons, please consider supporting us in this initial $1,000 campaign. Our goal is to send our application for fiscal sponsorship to SCRAP by December 1, 2012, so any amount you contribute before that would be greatly appreciated. We would like nothing more than to meet with you personally, discuss our vision further and to pick up your contribution. No amount is too little.

We are also always on the lookout for a building where we will be able to set up a retail shop, workrooms, etc. Have or know someone who has space that could be donated to us for a year? Or dirt (and I mean DIRT) cheap? Let us know.

Thanks for your time and thanks for your continued support by following us on here and on Facebook! Please be sure to share us with all your friends!

Anne Walker & Lynn Burgan

Anne.GoodGarbage@gmail.com

Lynn.GoodGarbage@gmail.com

We accept checks or you can contribute using PayPal (anne.goodgarbage@gmail.com).

We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously. 

Grace Lee Boggs

What we did this weekend...

Anne worked this weekend on finding ways to reuse these plastic red discs that we received from the Printing House for the Blind, looking for a fun and creative craft project for our up coming booths at local arts and craft fairs. Aren't they just AWESOME?!?!?!?!

I went picking Friday near Waddy, Kentucky. A wonderful lady let me go through a vast collection of office, Christmas and crafting supplies that were her Mother's. After I chatted with her more about what it is we are doing exactly, she showed me some place mats and a gorgeous bowl her Mom made out of Christmas cards. She ended up giving me the bowl, which we will have on display at our booths.

As we secure spots for our booths, we will be sure to update everyone so you can mark it on your calendar! 

Be sure to like us on Facebook and watch us grow!!!

-Lynn

Good Garbage Gab, October 19, 2012

Welcome to the first edition of Good Garbage Gab, where we offer useful tips and crafts for re-purposing items that you may normally just throw away (or hopefully recycle), or save not knowing what you can do with them. We may  also showcase local reuse artists and give you links to articles we think you might find interesting. We are doing this to get your motor running and thinking about the various ways you can reuse everyday items to keep them out of our waste streams.

     In order to keep from scaring off those new to repurposing, I thought it would be nice to start slow and easy. So I'm offering up a simple tip and a simple craft.

 2-Liter Bottle Canisters

You can use these for tons of items: Coffee, tea bags, sugar, crayons, markers, cotton balls, q-tips, change, and a host of other things. I like them because you can see what is in them so easily and when something is on the top shelf, with me being so short, that comes in quite handy. No guessing...

    What you need: Two 2-liter Bottles, washed, dried and any labels removed, Sharp knife such as an X-acto knife and a sharp pair of scissors.  

    Using the knife, cut the two bottles to look like the pictures here. Using the scissors, trim the bottles neatly.

Place the shorter one on top of the taller one and there you have it... a lidded, clear canister.

Another option is to paint them like these and use them as piggy banks, or whatever you can dream up! Both designs were painted with Rust-Oleum 2X satin spray paint and then details added with acrylic craft paint. 

Be sure to recycle the left over plastic!

And if you thought that was easy... Here's something even easier. No craft skills involved.......Button Earring Holder

You know all those extra buttons you get on a new shirt? Or the ones you take off a shirt before you reuse it as a rag or for other re-purposed items? Use them to keep your matched earrings together in your jewelry box or when taking  a trip in your jewelry bag. 

Did you go DUH?!?! Why didn't I think of that? Yeah, me too. 

Hope you enjoyed this new feature of our blog and can put to use the ideas we share. If you have something you've done and would like to share, please let us know by emailing or commenting here. Share our blog and Facebook page with all your friends and let's all work towards a better Community! 

Yarn, Yarn, Yarn...and Ideas

Yarn, Yarn and more Yarn!!! Oh my goodness the yarn! Received two, well stuffed black garbage bags full of all types of....yep, you guessed it YARN! We are quickly filling the shelves we built last week. We have to build more ASAP!!!! We are in need of scrap plywood, 2x4's and anything else that can be used as shelving, or stackable bins, plastic shelves, bookcases, etc.

Besides collecting stuff, we have been busy working on our plan and talking with everyone we possibly can about the creative reuse center. Passing out cards to anyone who will give us a minute. We have received a very warm response to our idea and hope we are building a great team of future volunteers as well!

We are starting a new feature this week simply called Good Garbage Gab. At least once a week (possibly more) we will be featuring ideas on repurposing items in your house, showcasing reuse artists and sharing thought provoking articles and such. We hope this inspires you to find ways to repurpose other things you might throw away and to keep as much out of the waste streams as possible.  Please feel free to post or email us with your own ideas. You are welcome to send us pictures of your finish products too. If you know a reuse artist, we'd also love to hear all about them. Be on the look out for the first post coming soon!

Thank you for following along, supporting and sharing our adventure in building Louisville's Creative Reuse Center. Keep watch for some exciting news over the next few weeks!

-Lynn & Anne

Hard at work...

We had a fairly productive week... Got some shelving built, had some great meetings, made some great decisions. We are moving forward!!! Each day Good Garbage is coming closer to reality!

Here are some pictures of the storage unit and one volunteer, who also donated the lumber, building shelves.

We have a home...

... at least for storage. This past Sunday we made it feel like home. Sort of anyway. We worked our butts clearing and cleaning up (as best you can a dusty, old buildings basement) our storage area.

Fortunate to get a jump start, we also couldn't do as much as we hoped because the old tenant hasn't moved out of it completely yet. Though we were very lucky to get a great start on collecting "junk" left behind by old tenants in the Hope Worsted Mills building. Lots of wood for shelves, the old plexiglass from the original windows that are being replaced, various types of paper, old computer keyboards, windows and lots of other stuff. With it being such an old building, we also felt very lucky we didn't run into any other furry 'tenants.' We left dirty but truly energized.

Today and over the next couple weeks we will build shelves, and continue looking for bins, storage containers, tables, and of course donated items we will be able to sell in the reuse center. The behind the scenes work for the center is keeping us extremely busy as well. We hope in the next few weeks to be sharing some very exciting news. Be sure to keep checking back on our progress...

The Frantic, Idea Flying, Farcical, First Few Weeks...

Wow! What a wild and crazy first few weeks for Good Garbage!

Since we met, we have been haphazardly exchanging ideas and thoughts about what we want to do, our vision, mission, setting goals, and taking deep looks into ourselves to assure this is what we want, and how we want to go about it.

There is so much excitement as we begin this journey, but there is still a lot of work ahead of us. Though in the end, to be able to teach about reuse, make items available to artists, crafters and teachers and keep the "junk" out of the waste stream will be the most fulfilling experience we have ever had. We hope you too will begin to think about what you are throwing away and see there could be a new use for it instead. If not, ask us...we may have an idea or you can donate to us to help further our cause! 

We have talked with many movers and shakers around Louisville and Kentucky getting some great advice and gaining supporters for the Good Garbage concept.

We are slowly getting a little more organized and making sense of the thoughts and ideas we've had. We are becoming a little more concrete in our efforts as well, we signed a six month lease starting October 1 in the Hope Worsted Mill's building basement for storage. This will allow us to start gathering things we will need such as bins, shelving, and racks as well as actual products you will be able to buy once the store opens. We have looked at possible store sites and as soon as we find one that is just perfect, we will be sure to share.

While we begin the brick and mortar part of the reuse center, we are busy also with all the behind the scenes things. Deciding if we will go this alone or find a fiscal sponsor, getting all the legal paperwork filed, and creating an advisory committee to help us along. We will be looking for a few volunteers soon as well to help with gathering and sorting in our storage space.

What IS Creative ReUse?

Have you ever thought about the many things that can be done with that jar you are throwing away? That chipped tea cup? Plexiglass from an old building's windows? 

Anne and I seem to think about that with everything. The jar? It becomes a vacation time capsule, holding small memories of places visited. The chipped tea cup becomes a faux fireplace mosaic, complete with a mantle. And the plexiglass becomes a cute magnetic dry erase board or a cloth & ribbon memo board.

We get excited about stylish, functional, and innovative creative reuse ideas. From a grocery bag made from an old stained, ripped t-shirt to a gallery installation, from home-made costume to classroom educational materials, creative reuse includes all projects that incorporate materials that would otherwise be thrown away. Teachers, artists, crafters, and designers who transform what could have been thrown in the landfill into something with new value will find materials at Good Garbage.

As much arts-related as it is environmental, creative reuse demonstrates that artistic creativity and learning can take place anywhere and everywhere - and with all manner of materials - and that "junk" has value for those who can see meaning beyond the discarding of things.

Two Women... One Vision... Chance Meeting... Dreams Coming True

Welcome to our Good Garbage journey... The vision of two women, meeting by chance, turning their dreams to reality!

What is Good Garbage you ask? Though we are still in the beginning stages, our mission is to divert usable materials from landfills to underfunded teachers and artists while promoting creative reuse through educational programs and workshops for children and adults in order to continue to protect the environment within our community.

Our vision is to have a brick and mortar creative reuse retail store, workshop space and eventually a gallery full of artwork created by the many talented artists in the Louisville area.

The purpose of this blog so early on in our journey has multiple purposes, but mainly is to familiarization the Louisville community with the concept of creative reuse and the Good Garbage name, introduce the gals who are spearheading this vision, Anne & Lynn, and to share our successes and failures and hold us accountable, as we pour our blood, sweat and tears into making our dreams come true.

So you are welcome and encouraged to sit down, enjoy your favorite beverage, and join us in our humorous, sweaty, frustrating journey of two women... one vision... a chance meeting... determined to make our dreams a reality!