It was pretty easy - we don’t get trash collection - it’s something like $25-30 per month for one pickup a week, no recycling included. Instead, we go to the convenience center where we toss our trash, including trash cans, into a big dumpster, and all our paper, plastic, glass, cardboard, used oil, antifreeze, clothing, and electronics components go to their designated bins. Doesn’t cost anything and it’s only about 6 miles from the house - we go maybe every 3 weeks.
When I moved into my house, the previous owners left a variety of things, some intentionally, others not. They intentionally left me a bottle of champagne (I knew it was intentional since they taped the keys to it), their trash cans and a patio umbrella. They unintentionally left me a bottle of ouzo and some ugly-ass curtains in the guest room.
The previous owners were staying down the street for a few weeks after the sale closed, so I called them to let them know that they’d left the curtains. They laughed and said that when they moved in ten years ago, the owners before them had left the ugly-ass curtains. They looked at them and thought, boy, those are ugly – but they never got around to taking them down. For ten years!! I vowed then and there I wouldn’t be the same.
Note to self: take ugly-ass curtains down today. 
How could I have forgotten our far weirdest left-behind of all?? Must be getting old…
Shortly after we got married, my husband and I were wandering around a local marina (we lived near Jacksonville, FL at the time) and got to talking to a guy who was working on his old wooden boat. Turns out he wanted to sell it, and we decided to buy it.
Some months later, I decided to do a thorough cleaning of all the lockers, and up forward, under the V-berth, I found a leg. :eek: OK, it was a prosthetic, but it was a leg nonetheless. We knew the seller, John, lost his leg below the knee in a motorcycling accident, and he’d lived aboard the boat, so it wasn’t a stretch to realize that he’d left it behind. We also knew that he worked where I did, so it was easy to reach him.
My husband called and told John what we’d found and said we’d bring it to him. His response? Keep it! It was what he called his “dancin’ leg” but it didn’t fit right so he never wore it. So we kept it. Eventually we packed some batting in the hole where his stump would have gone, and drizzled red paint over the whole thing, making a great Halloween prop.
Over the years, movers have been, um, amused by it. I think it’s in the basement right now. Perhaps we should leave it behind when we sell this place.
There’s a creepy giant teddy bear in our attic. He’s squooshed up under the rafters, and watches us, with his one remaining eye, when we go up there. We bought the house 16 years ago, but it was built in 1946. I’m willing to bet Teddy is atleast from the 50s or 60s.
The widow we bought the house from left her douche bag in the bathroom closet.
Due to some strange things we’ve experienced over the years, she may have left her dead husband behind too. But that’s for another thread…
The last house we bought, the previous owner left behind three sets of four each beautiful stainless steel, razor-sharp, clearly unused steak knives. We wrote her and asked if she wanted them, and never heard back. Needless to say, we didn’t leave them behind a few years later when we moved out!
Mein Fuhrer I can walk!
In a classic Chas Addams cartoon, there’s a row of hang-up garment bags in an attic. They are labelled; Richard’s vacation clothes, Richard’s summer clothes, Richard’s winter clothes, and Richard. 
I like the idea of leaving cryptic stuff hidden away for future owners. When we got the master bathroom repapered, we discovered there was a niche for a medicine cabinet over the sink. Before it was papered over, I put a set of Batman & Robin figures in there.
When we moved in here, there was a leather riding crop in the front coat closet. Hmmm.
When the factory where I worked closed down a plant, I got the job of emptying a few hundred lockers at the front of the plant. There was a huge amount of trash. There was also $20 or $30 in coins. There were hundreds of tools, most of which I turned in to the crib. There were bushels of porn. Two lockers were completely filled with empty half-pint whiskey bottles. There were lab experiments of horribly rotted food. There were triple-beam scales and a digital scale that somebody didn’t have the nerve to finish stealing. One abandoned office had a dozen brand new hatchets, six new tape measures, and twenty blank VHS tapes.
While gutting the house he had just bought a friend of mine found several nude photos of an elderly gentlemen relaxing in a reclining chair. The pictures were stashed under an area rug.
Last summer the custodians at work were putting up new whiteboards in the classrooms and they found four or five homework assignments from the 1950’s behind some old cork board that was nailed to the wall.
When we moved into our current apartment we found some items that weren’t so much as weird as awesome. We found several pieces of All Clad cookware. Two saucepans, a skillet, and a stock pot with lid. A few hundred dollars worth of stuff.
I thought it was just regular cookware but my boyfriend flipped for it. He’s loves cooking and this was the brand he’d always wanted.
We live on land that used to be an old farm. This past spring we found where they used to toss the rubbish. We found old glass patent medicine bottles (“A. D. Elmers - Pain Killing Balm - Cures Like A Charm!” “Gargling Oil”), a milk glass cold cream jar, an old cracked iron skillet, metal bits of a loom, the bowl of a clay pipe, bits of crockery, purse frames, and, inexplicably, DOZENS of turn of the century leather shoes in all sizes. Not worn out, so far as I could tell, other than having been buried for years upon years.
The ‘treasures’: http://flickr.com/photos/kimhotep/179418898/in/set-72157594176847625/
The shoe heap: http://flickr.com/photos/kimhotep/179418897/in/set-72157594176847625/
Metal detector is my most favorite toy ever.
He was probably a douchebag as well.
A complete set of poker chips, an almost new round cooler/beverage dispenser, asian porn, booze, a (mink/chinchilla/some little furry critter?) fur wrap-the kind that has the legs, feet, and heads included, a microwave oven, furniture, video games, a propane grille, CDs, DVDs, suitcases full of books, an antique electric drill, a clothes washer and dryer (not odd except the house had no hookup for them-the landlord told me to haul them out).
Oooh! Open that thread! Or at least link to it, if you’ve posted about it before. Please!
I’m renting a house and I guess my landlady’s had a fair amount of turnover before getting to me. Anyway, everything was pretty well cleared out, except for a sorta junk-room in the back of the house with some old doors, cardboard boxes, old wood, and so on (I’m assuming most of it was put there by the owners.) Anyway, one of the boxes was for aftermarket tail lights for a Ford Escort. I assumed that a previous renter had just left the box there until today. I just went to move it to get to a cardboard box underneath it and realized it felt surprisingly heavy. I opened it up and there were the stock tail light covers for a 99-03 Ford Escort.
So, anyone need to replace a tail light lens or assembly?
The former owners of my house left quite a bit of stuff in the garage. Most was throw-away-able, but I got one really cool item - a Texas DOT “Road Closed” sign.
We put it up on the back wall of the garage.
Say it with me: eBay. 
I was thinking about it.
Just a couple of guys who either of which would have been a shock to discover that they were gay. Nothing particularly notable, but there wasn’t really much indication beforehand.
We’re still not sure which one put the stuff up there. (now that it’s 13 years on, I doubt we’ll ever find out).
Tools, a pillow made from a wedding gown, a men’s Wilton’s leather car coat, pots and pans, a set of steel tipped darts in a case along with extra flights - that’s all I can think of off the top of my head.
Or, it might have been left by someone else before they arrived. You never can be sure.