Day 186 – Multipurpose

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186/365 (July 5, 2011) – Funny how things can have purposes that you never thought they could have.

Take this for example. Do you ever look up at the ceiling in an elevator? Often it has this plastic grid work. In the lab I used to work in, one of my labmates found another use for it. He cut it to size to fit into a styrofoam box filled with ice. Then he could push eppendorf tubes into the ice and keep them neat and tidy and separated. When the tubes filled with tissues or blood were closed, the lids were too big to fall through so you could just lift the entire grid out and all the tubes were still nicely aligned and in order. If the ice shifted, everything was still organized. Jonathan, you really were a genius. I and many others after you continued to use this stuff for the same purpose.

Years later we got the boat and we bought this big cooler. We set things inside the cooler but as the ice melts everything gets wet. Enter Jonathan’s ceiling grid again. I found some, cut it to size and laid it across the bottom. Now the items inside the cooler never get soggy because the drain is slightly below the level of the plastic grid so everything stays cold, but not soaked.

Who knew something as simple as ceiling grid could have such varied other uses?