Quick cooler repair
The battle with weeds, mowing, and watering is now mostly won, thanks in large part to the kids and my wife. Things really got out of hand the week before and during our church camp trip. We missed that “golden hour” when the weeds are nice and small, and should, and can be removed easily. If you keep weeding well every day it makes it fairly easy the rest of the summer. Instead, we returned from camp to choking weeds in the garden and mowing and trimming needed everywhere else.
While I was working (and dreading the coming weekend garden battle) my lovely wife organized the troops (kids) and whipped the whole place into shape. It looks so much better, that I can actually write about it. I turned the irrigation water loose on the place for the last few days and rounded up enough hoses to keep all of the sprinklers going with it, but I haven’t had to mow or trim a thing.
In fact, I had so much energy, I thought I would crank out a blog post that might help a few people out.
Many people have these big plastic coolers for camping. This one of ours is about twenty years old. It has been pretty tough up until now. The plastic restraining straps on the lid both broke recently and the entire lid was flopping over and stressing out the plastic hinges. These coolers still aren’t cheap and for the few times we use it I really didn’t want to buy a new one.
All you need for this five minute fix is two plastic straps from some old ice cream containers. The plastic straps from these are tougher than the original cooler straps. The old straps on our cooler were held in place with short stainless steel screws. Some of the newer coolers might not use this much metal anymore, and you might need to supply your own.
This is a great fix for our cooler because we always have these buckets around. With our crew they don’t stay full long. If you don’t have them, two buckets of ice cream are still cheaper than a new cooler.
July 6th, 2010 at 8:40 am
You are one of the most resourceful men I know….including my husband! Cut from the same cloth you two!
July 7th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Great idea! Any suggestions on what to do if the hinges have already been stressed out and are now broken?
July 8th, 2010 at 6:20 am
I love how you and Mary repair and reuse stuff instead of just tossing it! It never would have occurred to me to repair the cooler — we’d probably just keep using it broken.
July 11th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
I would try some regular two to three inch brass hinges, and use the old screws as long as the holes weren’t stripped out. Using the old screws might mean drilling out the holes on the hinges, but brass is easy to drill. Some washer spacers might be needed to bring them at the level of the old hinges. Happy fixing, and good luck!