“Because life’s too good to throw away” is the tagline for www.makeitandmendit.com and I’ve just been having fun meandering around the site.  Their main categories are

• Food
• Garden
• Interiors
• DIY
• Household
• Fashion

and they also have tabs for stories, events, resources, and a forum.

You can sign up to be a member and if you do, you get a useful free ebook on how to remove stains from everything. (Wish I’d had that quite a few times in my life!)

The site is run by four energetic women. How do I know that, since I haven’t met them? Well one them, Clare Flynn, is described this way:
For Clare the glass is neither half empty nor half full, instead it’s an opportunity to see what happens if you turn the glass upside down, trap the milk inside, whack a candle on top and turn it into a combined lighting system and yoghurt maker. I quote that to give you an idea of the out-of-box quality of the site!

I chose the gardening topic first — here are the articles under that category when I was there. I got lucky when I cut and pasted the titles that the links came along too. The article on starting plants in little pots made from toilet paper rolls made me go “Of course!” but I’ve never done it. Maybe next spring…

• Create a restorative garden
• Dig for victory
• Get creative with containers
• How to get green mold off the grouting in your flagstone patio
• How to grow your own strawberries
• How to keep squirrels and moles at bay
• How to make a herb planter from an old grate
• How to use colour in the garden
• Make your own compost – the ultimate in recycling
• Making garden candle holders
• My first efforts at growing from seed
• Plant pots from toilet rolls
• Recycle the rain
• The rise of the allotment
• The Small Garden – an oldie but goldie!

This is not just a gardening site, though. The fashion section gave me several ideas, though I don’t need the article about how to sew on a button. I looked at their article on updating old footwear, curious to see if my husband’s regular use of silicon caulk would be mentioned. It wasn’t — this was mainly about things like fabric pens and spray paints. Hmm, gives me some ideas!

Don’t go to this site unless you are prepared to get some fun ideas yourself. Maybe they should market the site as an antidote for depression… It’s certainly an antidote for excess consumerism! Highly recommended.