---
title: "Toy Crate"
date: 2023-06-03T00:08:58-07:00
draft: false
---

## Next Steps
- None!

## Completed Steps
- buy materials (only $30 roughly!)
- buy tools (lots more lol)
- cut to size (thanks, cuñado)
- plane and sand
- Apply more coats of verathane
- Assemble- predrill and screw
- Affix placard
- Fill with toys
- Place at destination (might require shovel work)

## Backstory:
So, the plan with this one is to create a "take a penny, leave a penny" type bin for toys at the beach near me. It's been a great learning experience in woodworking and I even got to justify the purchase of more power tools!

The idea came to me on the near-daily walks with Zoey on the beach. There are so many plastic toys getting left on the beach, and I felt they could be reused. Since the City of San Diego is too gigantic to deal with such an issue, I reached out to the Pacific Beach Town Council, but heard nothing back. I plan to plop it down anyway, and see what happens.

My wife and I have been gathering abandoned toys on our morning walks for awhile now, so it should have a pretty good start.

## Finished!
The box came out more lopsided than imagined, but it works great! It's been about a month and there have been multiple full cycles of toys. I'm thrilled that the community has been accepting of it, and that it hasn't been removed.

## And Death
We ended up moving further away and went to the beach less, and the check-ins got to be more depressing, typically mostly trash and it was used more as a lost and found for kids socks. I kept putting toys in, but they would dissapear too quickly. I noticed there were usually toys I didn't add, but none would last more than a week. 

One day I cam back, it was in its place but it looks like people tried to use it for their fire, but it must have burnt abysmally with all the waterproofing I did.

It was in an unsafe state, so I came by later and took it away. It was a fun experiment, but ultimately the sucky people beat out the good ones. I have no plans to make a new one here.

![burnt_crate](/img/burnt-crate.webp)