I stopped by CompReNew on 28th street the other day and in the back is located Learning From Scratch. It is a store that sells re-purposed products from manufacturing, stores, and just about any place they can find things that might have a new life as something else.

As I was looking through the barrels and bins of stuff I found a piece of plastic with four spokes. Two with 3/4 round rings at the ends and two with slightly smaller closed rings, another spoke sticking out at a right angle to the other four.

I picked up a couple and started playing around with them, sliding the smaller spoke end into the larger spoke ends, and basically mindless fig-giting as I wondered around looking for other stuff that I might be able to use.

Then I hand a brain storm, I am repainting my kitchen and need to paint a bunch of cabinet doors. I could use the little widgets to suport the doors while I fill holes with spackle and while I paint them to prevent the paint from sticking to the work surface.

Bingo-Bango a waste product re-purposed

One of the great joys I get is trying to figure out what the various bits and pieces that I find in the store were originally used for. For the life of me I just couldn’t figure out what these weird little widgets were for. So I asked Betsey Ham, the manager of Learning from Scratch, and she said that they were supposed to be used to elevate food and beverages from the bottom of a cooler. By hooking the widgets together you could make an elevated platform for any size or shape cooler. Unfortunately it never caught on so she got them.