Thursday, December 01, 2005

The wonder of Altoids

I'm starting to go through my stuff at work, getting ready for the impending move. I'm scheduled to be moved from my lovely window seat on the 5th floor to a cube with a lovely view of the men's room on the 8th floor. This will occur on December 9th, so I need to start winnowing. Yesterday I threw away a whole bunch of useless crap. Or so I thought. I threw away a bunch of empty Altoids tins, not realizing how useful they could be. Examples:

Survival Kit
USB charger
iPod Nano case
computer mouse

I'm feeling pretty guilty now that I've thrown away such useful items. I'm also looking at the nearly empty Altoid tin currently on my desk and wondering what I could make with that. I'm thinking a bicycle survival kit would be tres cool.

3 comments:

Lois said...

Oh, my goodness, Pete. Altoids had a creativity contest to come up with new, innovative uses for the Altoids tins. A friend of mine is a professional contest enterer & came up with the idea of using the tin to "house" rings prior to a wedding ceremony...it was totally decorated & quite ingenius. I forgot to ask Pat if her tin won the contest...I guess I'll put that on my to-do list!

Gilby said...

I yelled at a coworker once when I caught him throwing one away, and then he started saving them for me. I use them at work to store a sewing kit in my desk; at home to store safety pins, hair pins, craft stuff, thumbtacks, small bike hardware bits, and stamps; and in my messenger bag to store bandaids, allergy meds, and Tylenol.

Frostbike said...

After I posted this, I noticed that I was actually using an old Altoids tin (wintergreen) in my gym bag to hold some q-tips. Here is a list of 94 more uses:
http://www.jdueck.net/article/9/those-empty-altoids-tins

My personal favorite? Altoid tin luggage.