Darning season

We’ve just made up some of our darning mushrooms, in time to fix your winter socks and jumpers. Get your toes warm back inside your favourite pair of socks or revive your comfy woollens. We go for repair rather than replace, and proudly show it by darning in outrageous colours. The darning mushroom is an old tool from […]

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Oak table small, occasional, bedside

Greg Stirling Cricket Table in store

We’ve just got one of Greg’s beautiful little oak Cricket Tables in our Castlemaine store & showroom. These are a utilitarian design dating back to the 17th century. “Cricket” in country vernacular referred to anything small; as-in cricket, the small insect. The three-leg design means it is stable on rough floors, but these days they see

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usethings interiors

This project has transformed the spaces in the home and given its occupants open living and a beautiful, functional, kitchen with views across the deck to the creek below. The key has been bringing cohesion to all the existing spaces in a building that has had several distinct periods. The projects success is a testimony to

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Coat hooks all wood rack of pegs

Coat rack dispatch time 4 days

Just worked out our average time from order to dispatch with our  wall mounted coat racks: it’s four days. Not bad as we make up each rack by hand. A few times we’ve even got racks made and delivered overnight into Melbourne. Delivery time varies from: Next working day — Melbourne, Geelong, Albury & Central Victoria 1 to 2  days

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New Greg Stirling chair

We’ve just got a new Greg Stirling Windsor chair in as the “lobster Pot” sold. This is a “Comb Back with extension” made from ash, some local and some imported. Come and appreciate it’s beauty, craftsmanship, and comfort in our Castlemaine showroom usethings store at 8 Templeton St. We’ll be getting more of Greg’s work in

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Unseating the chair

By Elizabeth Dori Tunstall, Swinburne University of Technology Chairs are a health hazard – that is according to Galen Cranz, U.C. Berkley Professor of Architecture and author of the book, The Chair: rethinking body, culture, and design. She states in a 1999 article: If the designer wants to create a chair, narrowly defined as supporting

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plantation timber trivet, folds flat

Trivet, our new product

This is our new trivet. It flat-packs and is hand made in Castlemaine from plantation timber. We like to convert as much of the timber we get in to useful things. In docking the new batch of drying rack end frames and looking at the off-cuts we thought to use them for a simple trivet. This is

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Apology for our coat rack packaging

Looking at the coat rack packaging going out this morning I thought they looked a bit rough & ready. We use clean recycled cardboard—fruit boxes, anything at hand (Ikea boxes at the moment amusingly). This packaging is not slick, and not as considered as our coat rack packaging (jute string and recycled card: fully compostable) but they get the racks to

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usethings decade!

This August usethings will be ten years old. Over the next five months we’ll be celebrating, and looking back over the last ten years. Part of the celebrations will be discounts and give-aways: some for everyone, but the best for subscribers to our mailing list. Hit the subscribe button over on the lower left to

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New coat rack stock

We’ve just got a new batch of recycled hardwood for our coat rack back-boards. It’s really clear Vic Ash, ex building timbers, a few nail holes and sap veins but very nice & mostly quarter sawn. It’s been beautifully machined straight and smooth here in Castlemaine and, given their age and close grain, these timbers

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Partnership with architect Stephen Lumb

Interior design is another facet of usethings, conducted in harmony with our philosophy around good living and sustainability. We are excited to offer an expansion of these services in partnership with the architect Stephen Lumb. This capacity enables us to engage in whole buildings, integrating the total design of a home, office, or commercial space. We’ve worked with

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Opinel knives re-stocked

We’ve just re-stocked our range of Opinel knives. There’s a great kitchen knife, Japanese style with a heavy blade that is almost cleaver-like yet very sharp. A sturdy bread knife designed to handle real bread. The perfect paring knife with a decent sized handle and long riveted tang, sharp-as—we use it all the time. A

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Counter displays, RedBeard Bakery

We designed and made counter display shelves for RedBeardBakery in Trentham  as part of an  ongoing relationship. We’ve worked on their interior, displays, and cafe over the years… we also make traditional bakery peels for them, sourcing recycled Kauri for the handles and supplying the heads as they wear out. These counter display shelves are welded

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Holiday opening hours

We’ll be taking it easy from now through January. Our Castlemaine store won’t be open the regular hours, but call if you want to have a look, we may be near-by and can meet you there even at short notice. Happy to open up for a browse or chat. Our online store will continue to

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New ceramics

We’ve got some new stock of Phil Elson porcelain bowls and beakers—perfectly formed and incredible glazes, in the store now. This week we’ll be getting a Vanessa Lucus stone tea set, one of the best pouring tea-pots we’ve used, pictured right.

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Re-stocking for December

We’re re-stocking our usual lines and adding two new products at the moment. It’s not often we find items that meet our expectations, and  become a usethings other maker product. We’ll be introducing two new useful things from companies that have been around since the 19 century …  good things just keep being valid, even

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clothes drying rack

Drying rack winner

Congratulations To Donna who won the “Make It Wood” drying rack at Grand Designs Live in Sydney recently. Her rack was  dispatched early this week. We are proud to be associated with Planet Arc’s Make It Wood campaign and our drying rack sits well with these ideas, being made from plantation sugar gum, a fast

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usethings goes global

We shipped our first first drying rack to the UK this week. Our customer said she couldn’t find a contemporary drying rack that she liked and was happy to pay the shipping cost. It’s like coals to Newcastle – the heritage of the drying rack coming from the UK originally. We’ve shipped a few to

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Aliens are coming…

The return of our laser-cut plywood stool. This supper-eficient design has been languishing with production issues to resolve, but a recent order of Aliens from Bluebottle catalysed a design evolution – Alien 4. They will be used at The Hub in the Melbourne Festival. We’ve stripped Alien 4 back to the core strengths of the

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Mud Mat in Sanctuary Magazine

From the products page, August Sanctuary Magazine: “The clever people at usethings have made a handmade mud mat that removes mud and dirt from your boots as you walk into the house. It’s made from plantation sugar gum dowel off-cuts that would normally go to waste. The mat can cope with the flex and moisture

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@ Clementines

As part of our current exhibition in collaboration with Vanessa Lucas for Craft Cubed, we’ve just installed an exhibition in the window of Clementines, 7 Degraves St Melbourne, featuring our 600 x 600mm All-ply table and Vanessa’s porcelain. Clementines is a great store featuring all Victorian products and produce. drop by if you are in

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Scaling the All-ply table

We’ve recently completed a few interesting sizes of our All-ply table design and it has worked surprisingly well. There is the 600 x 600 made for our Craft Cubed exhibition – it’ll be in the window at Clementines 7 Degraves Street Melbourne CBD from the 17th till the end of August . Then there is the

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Windsor chair at usethings

In refreshing the store for our Craft Cubed Exhibition we brought it one of Greg Stirling’s beautifully hand crafted Windsor chairs – a Lobster Pot. We are interested in a re-evaluation of these traditional chairs from a contemporary design perspective. The Windsor chair is an evolved design using local (in its place of origin) materials

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Craft Cubed images

Our exhibition opened yesterday with a beautiful display of Vanessa’s cream porcelain tableware. We served tea from  some of Vanessa’s stoneware (the black ceramics in the slideshow below) and where impressed with the teapot design also from a functional point of view – they pour really well!…  sadly this is often not the case in

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clothes drying rack

Drying racks back in stock

We’ve just had news that our plantation sugar gum rods will be machined next week so we are now taking orders again from our online store. We’ll contact those who emailed us to go on the waiting list and fill those orders first. Apologies for the delay, our sales have doubled each year so we

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timber mud mat

New product – Mud Mat

After a bit of prototyping and testing we are finally ready to launch our Mud Mat. Hand made from plantation sugar gum production offcuts, this door mat is extremely durable and weather resistant. Designed to flex and shed mud and dirt from your boots before you go inside. We’ve had the idea for ages but

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coat rack tool storage

Coat racks hard life

Some of our early prototype coat racks from 2004 are still in service around our place. This one was relegated to garden tool storage on the outside of an old shed, but it’s coping with the weather and punishment of storing heavy tools. We love physical joins – the pegs fit into a deep socket

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coat rack at ANAM

Coat rack at ANAM

We recently installed one of our coat racks at the Australian National Academy of Music in South Melbourne. This office and rehearsal space refit was designed by Bluebottle and project managed by Debbie Taylor of usethings… its not what you know… Bluebottle also used a lit version of our coat rack with a ply backing board

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Use and Reuse; exhibition.

Use and Reuse is an exhibition of small works by Kir Larwill, Kathryn Davies, and usethings, at usethings store for the duration of the Castlemaine State Festival 15th to 24th March. The opening will be on the 16th March, 2:30 pm  at 8 Templeton St Castlemaine. usethings items will be available throughout the festival but

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market basket

Traditional weave market basket

This is the date palm weaving from Morocco that is part of a long tradition of creating practical hard wearing carriers. These baskets are used, among other things, for hauling construction materials on donkeys so are extremely tough. We couldn’t find a local equivalent for a sustainable hard wearing basket so these French market baskets

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drying rack kit package sustainable packaging

Drying racks to New Zealand

We’ve just had another enquiry about shipping our drying racks to New Zealand. We do, and it costs AU$100, so the total with the kit is AU$380 and it takes 4 to 8 days. It seems The Block has just aired in NZ. Brad and Lara used our drying rack in the laundry of their

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Drying rack comment

Hi – just wanted to thank you for the fabulous drying rack kit (and the other items). My rack is now installed in my garage and I don’t think I will need to use the clothes dryer except for emergencies.  It reminds me of growing up with mum drying the daily wash for a family

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flat rate shipping usethings

Flat rate shipping

New for us is the flat rate shipping / delivery charge – the price of delivery is included in the price of each useful thing we offer. This is great value for our regional customers (being regional ourselves), some of the delivery costs are over half of what we used to charge under the location

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timber drying rack

Sugar gum for end frames

We just got a new load of plantation sugar gum for the end frames of our drying rack. Now, 14 holes per end frame and 234 end frames… thats 3276 holes to drill! We worked with Smartimbers to use off-cuts from their processes, we only need short and narrow pieces for the end frames. The

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usethings goes mobile

We’ve set up a mobile website so if you access usethings.com.au from a smartphone or mobile device you will be automatically redirected to our mobile site. All our pages, weblog, and online store are available, only pared back for the small screen. I can see why they say to make your mobile site first –

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navy 111 chair at usethings store

New to the online store

Work on our new website continues. We’ve been updating images and adding more products to the online store. These are items – useful things by other makers, that we stock in our physical store in Castlemaine and now offer to all of Australia. In telling their stories online it helps express what usethings is about.

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Welcome to our new website

At last it’s here – usethings new website and online store. It’s been a long process that required a rethink how we express our business and getting up to speed with online trading. Any feedback would be welcome – I’m sure there’ll be things to iron out. Technically it is a better platform – the

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Green power change

We’ve had 100% Greenpower for our home and business for many years now with Origin 100% wind power. Now there have been concerns about Origin but we’ve stuck with them more for the trouble it takes to change than anything, but their position on reducing the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target is unacceptable. So we’ve ditched

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Tensegrity wardrobe

We just installed a Tensegrity wardrobe for Jane, one of our best customers. Tensegrity is a minimal material clothes hanging rack that uses the existing building to mount tensioned stainless steel cables that suspend a rod for hanging clothes… saves the space and materials required for an independent structure. Jane says “thank you again for

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The best bike pannier

This is a little embarrassing – we have stocked Ron D Swan’s bike panniers for almost two years because they are well designed and made. They also use reclaimed canvas, end of production-run leftovers in great colours, including some ace vintage prints. And RDS is also a really good local business. Anyway I was looking

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Shelf supporting table

usethings and architect Stephen Lumb designed office table with shelf / support. This 2.4m by 750mm table is made from our favorite E0 plantation hoop pine plywood with a wax finish to retain the whiteness of the ply. “It’s almost bridge-like” says Stephen about its structure. It certainly was great to have Steve in the

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ergonomic stool

New study on sedentry behaviour

Originally published on Castlemaine Independent Another study explores how bad sitting is for you. This US study looks at sedentary work and  watching TV and quantifies the risks of reduced lifespan. Article focus: This paper presents the results of an analysis aimed at determining the effects of sedentary behaviour on life expectancy in the USA. Key

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The perfect chair

By Tim Preston. Originally published on Castlemaine Independent Imagine a chair that is very comfortable, light, strong, made with renewable materials, and has a highly evolved design- a chair that will last for generations. Greg Stirling makes chairs that fit this ideal in his workshop near Castlemaine. Lets take the Windsor chair out of its

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All-ply tables for home office

We just delivered a pair of All-ply tables for a home office in Trentham. These are 600mm wide with one 1200mm drawer in each. This design is scalable – we’ve done a 3m long table – wide, narrow… email your specifications for a quote. For their size the All-ply table is lighter than a solid

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usethings brand awareness

Despite being all-for conscious consumption usethings is up on all the latest aspects of marketing. So we’ve kicked of a brand awareness campaign and it’s having benefits already – we are getting less burns. We are making progress on the brand identity, I’m all for calling it Eric. We’ll get into brand extension at some

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usethings wedges

usethings branded wedges made from production off-cuts. The mighty wedge can do so much more than holding a door open, they are a very useful thing. I got to know the power of the wedge in shipbuilding where incredible force could be applied – like lifting the 38 tonne Enterprize replica to put the lead

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Food thermos in store again

We’ve got the Aladdin Stanley stainless steel wide mouth thermos in for winter. Great for hot drinks or meals. A neat trick is to bring ingredients to a boil in the morning and pour into the thermos where they continue to cook in the insulated flask to be ready for a hot lunch. The vacuum

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New trends in product design

Three new trends in product design show how the process of creating new products is shifting. As the previous CAD revolution (Computer Aided Design – drawing and 3D modelling) and CNC (Computer Numerical Control – computer controlled machining) quickened and globalised product development, and Chinese manufacturing met that capacity with fast and flexible manufacturing; new

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Circular saw hack

I’ve always been annoyed that the air moving through a circular saw was not directed in front of the saw to blow away the saw dust that covers the line you’re cutting to. As an experiment I put a bit of tube onto the blade lock where some air was escaping and directed it to

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Tensegrity wardrobe in-store now

We’ve just installed one of our Tensegrity wardrobes in our store. The Tensegrity wardrobe is a minimal-material hanging space for clothes. Taking advantage of existing structures, this tensioned stainless steel cable ‘wardrobe’ uses the least amount of materials to create a stable hanging space. Common hardware is repurposed to allow for simple, local production. Price

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Three meter All-Ply table

We’ve just delivered a commission to Matt and Rachel in Melbourne – a scaled up All-Ply table that is three meters long with the fabulous Salsa colour furniture linoleum. This will sit at least 14 people comfortably. Rachel comes from a big family so this contemporary inner city home occasionally hosts big feasts. Just the

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usethings recieves commendation at Bendigo Sustainability Awards

The Bendigo Sustainability Group held the 2011 Inaugural Bendigo Sustainability Awards last night, and usethings received Highly Commended in the sustainable business category. Guest speaker Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest and Natural Capitalism inspired us with an overview of  the changes in society and our world. He links back through history; often small acts

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