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DRILL WITHOUT THE SPILL

This is likely only a small-scale solution, as we can’t imagine it would work for any large-scale industrial operations.

Moving house inevitably involves drilling a lot of new holes in the walls. Should the movers happen to be your elderly parents, with an array of memories in the form of pictures and paintings accrued over decades, many such holes are required.

As this was our recent experience, we contrived an economical shortcut, instead of hauling out the vacuum cleaner for every new hole drilled.

A piece of kitchen paper towel – folded into a small pocket and secured with masking tape, as shown in the picture, then stuck to the wall directly under the drill (the closer, the better) and slightly dampened with a spray bottle on the inside of the pocket – neatly catches all the little dust particles, and the damp secures them to the paper towel. It can be reused numerous times by simply peeling off and reapplying, after which it’s neatly folded up and discarded. It’s also almost entirely biodegradable, so you could even discard it into your compost heap.

The Van der Westhuizen family