Dutch science writer Rik Kuiper of Utrecht has a cool blog called the The Museum of Unintended Use, which features objects that are used differently than they were intended. Feel free to send Rik pictures of stuff at unintendeduse (at) gmail.com and follow him on Twitter.

Off the top of my head, I’m thinking of things such as an old bath tub turned into a table with a sheet of glass over it, wooden wine crates DJs use to store 45s or the plastic shopping crates stored vertically that serve as shelves in one of my co-blogger’s bathroom. When I was young my mother fashioned plastic buckets and belts for us to go blueberry picking and I use a twist tie on the zippers of my luggage so it doesn’t open by mistake and can be opened quickly.

This amusing blog gives you a dog in a cup in a car, a wine bottle as a rolling pin (I’ve always done that) and handcuffs as a bike lock.

Kuiper adds stuff almost daily to his online museum. The main criterion is that the object’s conversion has to reversible. As he explains, a lighter being used as a can opener can still be used for its original purpose, but a design coat made from old post bags cannot.

(People of the NRC that we quoted: Your link to the museum is broken (leads to some empty German page) and it’s ‘museum’, not ‘musueum’ in the caption.)

(Links: nrc.nl, unintendeduse)