recycling

The embryo of an armchair? A kitchen? A doll? A car? Surprise us!

Our whole apartment is full of old newspapers. Magazines, newspapers and monthly magazines. I don’t know where they come from. All these fucking free magazines and interior design magazines. Life Style Magazines and glossy fashion magazines. What are they doing in my home? It doesn’t matter how many I throw out. They just continue to pop up. They’re the media industry's equivalent of killer snails or moss. They are everywhere; the corners in the living room, under the couch or in the bathroom.

I’m outlining my new major project. Building the world's first chair made entirely of old newspapers. I still have no idea how to attach them to eachother. But I've stopped becoming irritated by them. Instead I’ve started piling them up in pager bags in the den. As I watch their smug covers I know they don’t have a clue about what awaits them.

The problem is that I’ve never put together an armchair before. How do I make newsprint comfortable to sit on? How long will the chair hold together? Will it take several days to put together? Weeks? Then my home will be full of newspapers again. It’s a vicious spiral of ink and glossy covers. I will take my job seriously and do it right. It will be a chair made out of newspapers before the year is over if this is the last thing I do. You can leave it on my tombstone:
"Here lies Navid Modiri. He did at least find a way to get rid of all the fucking magazines lying around his apartment."

Have you read any tips on what to make of old newspapers? E-mail us at info@365saker.se. We want to see photos, videos and text.

Word.

I won’t pretend that I don’t like to buy things. I love to buy things. That is exactly what scares me; people who say they will go shopping. As if that in itself would be something to do. You don’t go shopping for the sake of it. You shop for a thing you need. I get a little dizzy as I write that sentence, so I have to sit down in my nice designer chair and drink a latte I’ve made myself with my latte machine at home in the kitchen that I’ve just renovated. Where was I? Right. I was talking about desires and the need to buy things. I love to buy things. That is exactly what scares me.

When I was five years so I wanted a microscope. I had seen a TV-show where a scientist studied insects in their lab. Since then, I was completely obsessed with the idea of becoming a scientist. In retrospect, I know that that wasn’t really the direction I was leaning towards, but that’s not the issue. The point is I wanted and longed for that microscope a whole year before I got it.

That’s not how it is today. Today if I want something I go online and I buy it. There’s no longing anymore. There’s no appreciation when buying things. It is more like eating potato chips on the couch. Each chip isn’t a sensation in itself, it's more like five minutes and POFF, suddenly the bag is empty. No appreciation.

I won’t say that I know exactly how build up for the next paragraph, but I think you get the jist from the introduction. The idea is that you should feel eager to do something yourselves.

My mother used to always use old ragged T-shirts as rags. She tore them to pieces and used to clean the bathroom, kitchen or other rooms in the apartment.

My friend is a photographer and needed a good photo bag for his new medium-format camera. He took a regular backpack and sewed it to fit his needs.

Wine bottles can become candleholders. 
PET-bottles can become piggy banks. 
Old toilet rolls can become pea shooters. 
Curtains can become cloth bags. 
Ice cream containers can become lunch boxes. 
Ill-fitting old dresses can become stylish tops.

When I lend my friend Markus a book or a movie I know that I'll never get it back. In that sense giving away an organ is similar. I know that someone else will enjoy what used to be mine and that's completely okay. I don't need it anymore. If I'm dead I'm hardly going to need eyes or lungs. The same goes for a book I've read. Let Markus keep it.

Of course it can be scary thinking about the fact that I'm going to die. And maybe that's why a lot of people don't become donors. It's like a post-it tattooed with our own mortality. Not that it's news or anything, but we don't want to hear it. We cover our ears with shaky hands and sing ABBA's Waterloo to drown out the thought of dying.

Or you can suppress the thought and just do it. I went to www.livsviktigt.se. There I read about a six year-old boy passing away. But his organs had given life to six other people. That's as if Markus lent my book to another six people who each got to read it. That would mean eight people got to read a book and only one had to pay for it. That has to count as a win.

BONUS: www.livsviktigt.se