Category: Domestic Engineering

Taking care of my primary wooden cutting board.

Here you can see the effect when applying mineral oil.

I’ve had this since 2005 and move from San Francisco to Berlin with it. I oil it once every other month with a basic mineral oil, to restore the health and lustre of the board. Such a pleasure doing so. Take care of your wood cutting boards: scrub them occasionally and dry them with a towel to ensure they will have a chance to dry thoroughly.

Custom trash bin, bathroom

I get enormous satisfaction in the way I setup our trash container on the bathroom. I designed it with a few things in mind:

Trash containers in the home or office perform best without a lid. Nothing should interfere with your ability to throw something away. Operating a lid with your hand or foot is often clumsy, loud, and sometimes take a remarkable amount of effort. If smell from the trash becomes a problem, then take it out frequently or change your purchasing and eating habits.

All trash containers should have a bag or liner. It’s easy to remove all contents at once. And anything that is wet is then trapped and easily removed. Here I’m using the most basic type of plastic bag from the grocery store. People often have a collection of these bags. Reusing them for this purpose is great.

I constructed this container out of something so simple: a paper bag, cut to size for that size of plastic bag, and with the base reinforced with the bit that I cut off. And naturally it matches other aspects of our bathroom (like the foot lifter device for our slightly-too-high toilet).