Improvised cigarette butt receptacle

I don’t smoke, but my housemate does, and so do many of my friends, and besides the unsightliness of loose cigarette butts (either in an ashtray or on the ground), there’s also a significant risk of wildfire in my area at this time of year. This is just stuff I had lying around: a terracotta flowerpot and saucer, a soup can, and an heirloom ashtray. When you’re done smoking, you just pick up the ashtray, drop the butt in the hole, and put the ashtray back. The butt falls in the soup can inside the pot. On trash day you remove the flowerpot and empty the can into the bag. It works well, looks good, and is easy to do.

Condo finally done

The renovations on the condo I lived in during grad school are now complete, some six months after I moved out. Check out all the photos in my Flickr set, taken the morning of January 16, 2011, just a few minutes before the first tenant arrived to sign the lease and pick up the keys. Too bad I didn’t have the presence of mind to get many “before” pictures, but the remodel was extensive. Everything was ancient cheap carpet, linoleum, and laminate when I moved in.