Old Belt - New Use

As you know if you've read much of this blog, we try to live sustainably and we recycle and repurpose many things.   As a result, we like to frequent our local Habitat ReStore store.  Tom bought used shower doors and storm windows there to use as lids on our cold frames.  And, we've found a lot of used flower pots there.  I even found a nice oil painting one time!

One of the most useful items that Tom found there was a used cooler.  It is a nice size and does a great job of keeping our produce cool while we are at the Farmers' Market on Saturdays.  Here is a picture of it.

Notice that the hinge on the left looks a little funny.  Turns out there was only one thing wrong with the cooler when Tom bought it.....the left hinge was broken.   Well, Tom didn't let that deter him from buying the otherwise perfectly good cooler.  He figured he could find a way to fix it.

He brought it home and ended up cutting one of his old leather belts into strips to use as hinges and attaching them with screws like this.

We've used this cooler for several years and this hinge works just fine!  It is too bad that we live in such a "throw away" society where if something is broken, we are all too willing to throw it way before we see if it can be fixed.  Obviously, in some circles, we would be laughed at for our frugalness in using a "broken" cooler like this.  But, I am proud of Tom's creativeness in solving this problem and enjoy showing off his handiwork!