الخميس، 10 ديسمبر 2009

Furniture for easier relocation

Having recently moved, I’m astonished how painful the process is, even though I don’t have a lot of stuff. There are a few cool ideas out there:



  • Casulo: A design that allows one to fold complete furniture for a small apartment into a compact, relatively small, box. No tools are needed and it is supposed to take about 10 minutes.

  • Furniture made of lightweight building boards: Only the outer hull of these boards is made of timber-derived materials, the inside consists of cardboard. This reduces material consumption by 40%. The reduction in weight is increasingly sought after, because customs have begun to charge by weight and wood is being used for heating and thus becoming more expensive. Lastly, light furniture is now easier to sell, because younger high-tech influenced generations don’t equate “heavy” with “quality”, any more. [Source in German]
    In fact, a study found out that 76% of Germans don’t think that lighter furniture has less quality. But, only 16.6% would buy furniture made partially out of cardboard. Well, I guess, you would have to see such furniture, in order to make a realistic decision. “Cardboard furniture” might conjure up the wrong image. [Source in German]

  • Gube Instant Furniture: Uses building blocks (mainly cubes) to assemble various kinds of furniture configurations. No tools are needed.


Additionally, the increasing popularity and real-world suitability of e-book readers should help with moving. Sometimes I have the feeling that the total weight of my books equals the total weight of the rest of everything I own. Already digitalization has helped me with trimming down: My iMac has replaced my hifi system, my TV, my VCR and my DVD player. And I now could get rid of all of my CDs, should the need arise. (But I’ll be waiting for a file system that corrects errors, until I do that; btrfs is a promising and free candidate.)


Have you heard of other ways of owning less or lighter stuff? Let me know...

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