Bricks n' boards.
You can steal the former from construction sites, old buildings, old walls, or anywhere that's made of bricks & has a shoddy security system.
You can grab the latter from construction sites, buildings (mostly old), walls/fences, the side of the road, or by finding a weak spot in the security system of the local Home Depot/Lowes/Diamond Lumber/etc.
Stack the bricks flat about 4~6 tall in two piles about ~4 feet apart.
Lay a board over the bricks.
Make two new stacks over the tops of the first set, atop the board.
Lay another board over the top.
Repeat this as many times as you like until there's no room left to stack bricks n' boards.
Fill the spaces between the bricks with books.
Call it a day.
...
Or go behind your local supermarket & look for stacks of plastic milk boxes.
The kind they use to transport 4~6 gallon milk jugs in at a time.
Fill the back of your vehicle (I suggest a pick up truck with an empty bed) and make a break for it before they catch you.
You can repeat this at every supermarket in the town until you've got enough to store all your books.
Wash each one, dry it thoroughly, and fill it with books.
Set them on their sides & stack them atop each other, so it looks like a "pigeon hole wall" of open box ends.
This is handy because it also doubles as the hauling containers when/if you ever have to move.
...
If you drink lots of canned beverages, wash out the cans completely, dry them, and crush them flat.
Keep the cardboard containers they come in & carefully open them so they lay flat.
By the same method with "bricks n' boards", use the crushed cans as "bricks", the folded flat cardboard boxes as "boards".
Put a stack of cans at either end of the carton, so they support both ends.
The spaces will be shorter than with the bricks n' boards, but the concept is the same.
You just have to adjust the number of cans you use to get the height of each shelf right.
...
Visit all your neighbors & collect all their junk mail, fliers, old newspapers, etc.
Make sure they're clean & dry.
Roll them into solid tubes of paper about 1 inch thick & 1 foot long.
Secure them with a hunk of sticky tape.
Keep doing this until there's no more paper left, and you're surrounded by "sticks".
As in the "bricks n' boards" section, stack the sticks into piles for the columns, and crosswise for the shelves.
This may not be very durable, but it has the benefit that it's easily replaceable by merely going on another "junk run" through the neighborhood.
Be carefull in explaining what you're doing to the neighbors, as they may decide to do it, too, thus becoming competition for your building materials.
Those thieving bastages.
...
Be creative.
Find things around the house to use as building materials.
From cans of old soup ("Hey! This was built in 1947!" How can you tell? "The expiration date on this can of soup!"), cardboard toilet paper & napkin tubes, old pots & pans & baking sheets, a metric f4 ton of LEGO, Lincoln Logs, Duplo bricks, old issues of TV Guide, old magazines you hate, etc.
If you want to be Avant Garde, you could steal store manequins and form them into shelving units akin to "A Clockwork Orange" milk bar scene.
Have a pair down on all fours for the base, a board across them for the shelf, another pair on all fours atop the first set, another board, etc.
The possabilities are endless.
You just have to be creative...
Insane helps, too, but since this is *ME* suggesting it, that was a given.
=-)p |
