Quaker Museum

Visited Quaker museum in a wee village in Kildare/Kilkenny today. V enjoyable, interesting quirky. Info about Mary Leadbeater (?), related to Shakletons. Also Edmund Burke was a quarker. Funny layout of info posters - didn't seem to be chronological or informatively ordered, hard to comprehend. Helpful librarian who let us upstairs. One of the three museum rooms was a costume exhibition with a humidifier etc, very professional! I described the experience to a friend this eve and she said "surreal". I just say a different side to life in our wee country - it exists!

The Bag Levy

I can't remember exactly when it came in, I could prob find out for sure on the Department of Environment website but it doesn't really matter. The consequence of the bag levy is what I want to discuss.
In Ireland, we have to pay for plastic shopping bags. It used to be 15c, I think it's gone up, I never take a bag now. It's supposed to free the hedgegrows of ugly plastic bags and help the environment etc.
But I am cursed, as a result, finding the right-sized plastic bin liner for my kitchen bin. I went through a phase of having a big bin with a black bag in the kitchen, to cut down on the small bags I was using but this was, needless to say, less than hygienic. So I'm back to using the little bin which is a perfect size for the handled bags we can get in supermarkets to bring home the groceries (the ones I don't get any more cos there's a levy and I'm trying to be good to the environment...) and I end up buying a roll of 50 bags in Tesco or somewhere. But they're never the right size. It's so frustrating. I don't know if the size of my bin was designed to accommodate the grocery bags or if that was a coincidence but my bin certainly wasn't designed to accommodate any of the bin bags I've bought so far.
Phew, I've got that off my chest! - that's what bloggings for eh?

Shelving Design Wizard

I'm a sucker for online design tools. www.shelvingsystem.co.uk has a wizard to put together an arrangement of their shelving system to suit your requirements (depth, width, height, with or without back supports, side panels etc etc).

My aunt in Belgium has this idea of a modular shelf unit as does my Dad in his study. My aunt

has added to hers successfully over the years.

The shelves are held on metal brackets that clip into one of the holes in the uprights. And they come in polished or unpolished wood. Dunno if this is the company my family has used.

Another design tool I like is the www.ikea.com kitchen layout tool. It's actually nicer than the shelving one because it doesn't just apply to the ikea kitchens, the units are pretty standard and the ikea drawings can be used as a basis for seeing your finished kitchen and knowing what units will fit.