From the other side as a scavenger, thank you very much! My hobby that makes me a bit of spending money is scavenging the alleys around here, and fixing up and selling or recycling the useful stuff I find. Just today I sold a little solid wood table that I found - before in its downtrodden state and after I painted it all purdy. I really like taking old, beat up furniture and decorations and doing something creative with them.
I also really like the freecycle attitude - I have this, I don’t use it or need it, but it’s still got life left in it, and I hate to just throw it away. I pick the stuff up, I check to see if it works, I fix it (if I can), and then I sell it for a fraction of what the item would cost new. I see this as a win all around situation.
Many years ago SWMBO bought a coffee table from a friend. She painted it sort of an olive-ish green and then ‘antiqued’ it. Her friend wanted it back. It’s in our living room.
When we lived in Houston, the first Thursday of every other month was Bulk Waste Day. The city sent out a bin on wheels–the size of a railroad boxcar–and a claw truck and took whatever you had sitting out. The Wednesday night prior was the Scavenger Pick-up Truck brigade, starting at (roughly) sundown and ending before dawn. All good metal went, sometimes other things. They were very quiet, as a rule, and didn’t make a bigger mess; very efficient. Scary, though, to see a pick-up piled 12 feet high with stuff; I wondered how they got around the corner without tipping over. A really good system, wish we had that here.
Is that the kind of antiquing where you take a chain and wallop the snot out of it? Maybe put a few [del]nail[/del] worm holes in it for good measure? Sounds like fun.
When we moved out of our condo a year ago, we had half a dozen partial cans of interior latex paint and some wood stain. I tried Freecycle: a few inquiries, but in the end, no takers. I finally put them out by the trash cans and they were gone within a few hours. Better that than have them go into a landfill.
Thanks for reminding me that one of these days I should put the box of ugly-ass cheap (but functional) aluminum blinds that were all over our house and put them on Freecycle. I hate them, but they are perfectly functional window coverings.
I’m thinking about putting an ad on local Freecycle to see if I can get some paint remnants for my furniture re-fnishing - I often need just a cup or so of paint.
We had a salvaged sofa, and my wife saw a better one set out on the curb by the street. So we hefted the old sofa down there and carried the new one home. My wife unzipped the cushions and put the covers in the wash, but it was some wierd miracle fabric and they literally melted in the dryer and turned to clumps of plastic. So we picked it up and hauled it back where it came from, and carried our original sofa back home again.
I get about 70 - 80 pounds of lemons each year off the tree I have in my back yard. I’ll pick about
20 or 30 at a time, throw them into a cardboard box and put the box out on the curb. They’re usually
gone within a few hours. Some people rummage through the box, taking just a few lemons while others
will grab the whole box. “Make lemonade” is the most common response when I ask what they are going
to do with a whole box of lemons.
The last box of the season goes out to the curb this weekend. But the next crop is already starting to
grow; the tree is full of tiny pea sized lemons.
The house on the ‘free stuff’ corner is vacant. The yard has grass two feet high, and dandelions and raspberry vines higher than that. I went down and mowed a large patch. I had a bunch of 2 x 6 scraps, and I laid out a little platform and arranged stuff that was down there on it. I had a bundle of 25 two-by-twos, about 27" long each, and I put those out there in case anyone could use them. The rest of the scrap wood I put out so people can use it or burn it. (Beach season is upon us!)
ETA: Oh, and I put out one of my 1 qt. non-stick Calphalon pots and lid. Mrs I.A. overheated it, and liked to use metal utensils in it. Plus it’s old. So it’s a bit worn. But still usable. And I put out the scanner I was going to take to the dump, and a pair of Blue Blocker sunglasses in their soft case. (Where the hell did those come from? )
I pick up all the clothes I find in alleys (why are there so many clothes in alleys? The question for the ages), wash them with bleach, and take them to a charity to get a discount on clothes I buy there. The circle of life.
I must have been about 10 when I got it. Oh, the memories! I used to lay in my blue mesh hammock on the patio, watching scary movies/TV shows in the dark. It has a 60-minute timer, and I’d set it when I went to bed and fall asleep to whatever I was watching. It used to have a separate 12 v battery and cord, and dad and I took it car camping. I remember driving through the night with dad watching a space mission.
I kept it most of my life because I spent so much time with it as a child. But now it needs a converter to watch anything over the air. The focus is a little soft, though I’m sure that would be an easy adjustment. But I’m never going to use it again. I’m not even going to use it as a decoration. Tomorrow I’ll take it to the free stuff corner. I’ve always liked knowing that I had it, even though it was packed away and I wasn’t going to use it. But it’s time. Maybe someone can use it (I don’t know what for), or they can sell it to a collector on eBay.
The built-on trailer I’ve been using for storage is about 10 feet by 40 feet. The back three rooms are cleared out. (The middle two rooms are particularly small.) So it’s just the front room left. There’s a lot of stuff in there, but it’s not packed. Shouldn’t take very long. I may even finish before I reach the week I’m taking off to clean it out.
Anyway, between the three loads I took to the dump, the stuff that filled up the trash bin once, the small pile of stuff I’ll put on eBay, and the stuff I took down to the Free Corner, I ended up putting only about a dozen boxes into the storage unit.
)
