<p>I admit: I’m a shameless trash picker. Yesterday I scored three rolls of brand-new Christmas wrapping paper as I was walking the dogs. I only pick up things I will actually use (plastic milk crate for weeding the garden, wrapping paper, etc.), and only while I’m walking. It’s good for the environment - keeps things out of the landfill - and saves me money. The fact that it embarrasses my daughters beyond words is a bonus.</p>
<p>So - what’s <em>your</em> best find?</p>
<p>Ooh, I once found a perfectly good computer desk set out for the trash. I was taking my son for his voice lesson when I spotted it. He helped me load it into the minivan (he was about 16 and not at all embarrassed) and my current computer now sits on it.</p>
<p>My boys used to do it when they were young. Only in our neighborhood. They once took a perfectly good couch set out and then had the nerve to ring the doorbell of the house and ask for the cushions that went with it.</p>
<p>Definitely furniture! But then, it seems exciting at first, but, after a few weeks of it, why does it seem like it starts to look like the garbage it was? Perhaps because of the initial excitement over finding something useful that is also free (???)</p>
<p>No one ever said you’d find a valuable antique in the trash. But if you don’t have a chair, and have no money for a chair, free looks awfully good.</p>
<p>I don’t know why people don’t call Goodwill to come pick up things that can be recycled, instead of putting them in the trash.</p>
<p>Anything You Can Use is a great find. BUT watch out because Bed Bugs are back. I would recommend that you never take home a mattress, box spring, couch, or anything with fabric that can’t be easily chemically treated or washed in very hot water. Better to spend a dollar or two on Crags List and at least have the owner tell you why they are selling the couch.</p>
<p>A brand new garden bench…I gave it to a friend. A computer monitor – obviously somebody went flat screen. My dh always seems to find some piece of metal or autopart that is ‘exactly what I need’. </p>
<p>I have also found – at different times – a goat and small children…but they weren’t with the trash so much as just wandering around. (I’m not joking. I really have found a goat and small children.)</p>
<p>mommusic—I’m with you. I’m amazed at the number of people who are too lazy to call Goodwill, Salvation Army, Amvets, Habitat for Humanity, etc. to donate furniture and outgrown toys. I find it easier to create a stack in the garage and just take a carload of stuff every once in a while. A pitfall in this strategy is that we usually come back with (i.e. buy in the Goodwill store) more stuff than we dropped off! At least I feel like I’m helping people out (even if we can’t seem to recognize that we really don’t need most of the stuff we drag home!!)</p>
<p>And yes, my D’s have been known to slink down in their seats when I stop to pick up some bookcases or storage crates (who in their right mind can throw out a milk crate?) from someone’s pile at the end of their driveway. I have picked stuff up and taken it to my next Goodwill run.</p>
<p>mommusic, I still remember the Antiques Roadshow segment featuring a young girl whose mother dumpster-dove for a painting that turned out to be worth quite a bit. I still keep hoping, but am content for the little things.</p>
<p>Novelisto - too funny about the goat!</p>
<p>When my oldest was in elementary school, he had a thing for taking stuff apart. Sort of like dissecting, but with inanimate objects. H used to grab anything he could find from people’s garbage and gift it to son. He took apart vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, all kinds of stuff. Dad is an electrical engineer so he made sure that anything dangerous was disabled on the equipment.</p>
<p>Last year I noticed my neighbor and good friend had an oil painting out on her trash. I picked it up and hung it on the wall in my dining room. Then I called her up and said, “Hey Sue, come look at the awesome painting I bought the other day at the antique store- I only paid $100 for it!” So she came over and saw her painting on the wall. Hahahahaha.</p>
<p>
LOL!</p>
<p>I agree that anything upholstered should be left on the curb. YUK!!! But just last week D snagged a beautiful wicker cheval glass mirror for her room. It was neatly propped up on one of our wealthy neighbor’s garbage cans. It was off the swivel frame. She had been looking for a cool looking mirror to mount on the wall behind her door, and this was perfect. We painted it & it looks great. Very unique.</p>
<p>H cannot resist bikes in the trash. He enjoys fixing them up & donating them. I, of course, have much more useful (& selfish) ideas for how his leisure time should be spent.</p>
<p>Here’s a great way to effortlessly donate your discards:
<a href=“http://www.clothingdonations.org/service.htm[/url]”>http://www.clothingdonations.org/service.htm</a></p>
<p>It’s the Vietnam Veterans of America. You just call for a pick-up, leave the stuff at your front door, and off it goes. I often schedule a pick up as a motivator to get some of my clutter cleared away. I suffer from the pack-rat disease.</p>
<p>Doubleplay – I bet she did a double-take! </p>
<p>I have a friend who runs a small consignment shop with kitschy stuff. She finds an awful lot of things on curbsides and at yard sales that she turns around and sells for $20 or $40. Sometimes they need a good scrub or a polish but that’s it. </p>
<p>One must wonder how much of human history has gone out in the trash. Things that were not valued or somebody thought was ugly. On the Roadshow or Cash in the Attic, people are always saying ‘oh, I don’t like it’ until they find out it’s worth mucho moola.</p>
<p>Tenant abandoned two of the dirtiest (and ugliest) rocker-recliners in the history of furniture. I called the trash man and dragged them to the end of the driveway. Later that day, the chairs are gone and in their place is an old 10 speed bike! </p>
<p>I never knew if the bike was left so the chairs could be dragged away or “traded” for the chairs or just added to the pile. </p>
<p>The bike was gone a day later…</p>
<p>I cannot admit to going through trash but probably only because I do not have the time - or a dog that I walked regularly. I have picked up items left on the curb and I have no shame in accepting hand me downs - and LOVE garage sales! Every room in our house must contain pieces of furniture that we acquired for free from friends who had done remodeling or that we got for next to nothing from garage or estate sales. Definitely a step up from the “poor college student” decor I started out with, but still gives the home something of an ecclectic look, since very little truly matches! And at this point in my life, I guess I am somewhat reluctant for a complete fashion makeover (or perhaps at least until DS is finished with college). </p>
<p>DS, however, has the makings of a true trash picker! When he was little he would always be bringing “treasures” home from the trash cans at school (he usually had very specific plans for his “treasures” but sometimes it took a bit of imagination to come up with creative project ideas to make use of the dead flowers, scraps of ribbon, paper and cloth, old baskets, broken toys and plastic containers that he would come home with, and occasionally we had to sneak them out in our own trash a few days later…) and I swear he must raid the lost and found at the end of each school year - he has the biggest t-shirt collection that I have ever seen! Last spring he told me with some pride about all his great pickings while watching the Boston Marathon - name brand sweatshirts and t-shirts, water bottles, etc. that were cast away by the runners. But the most unique item he came home with was about a year or so ago (while in hs) when he brought home a toilet that someone had left on the curb - which we immediately passed on to a friend who was quite happy to accept it, and made it into a flower pot in her backyard (along with one other toilet, a couple of metal washtubs and even a large porcelain tub on legs!)</p>
<p>Picking up some discarded furniture is really very common and is at the most amateurish level of trash picking. I once knew a semi-professional dumpster driver who claimed that she made more money a few hours a week than she made in her regular well-paid IT job. Initially I thought she was pulling my leg but I heard enough details to be convinced even though I was not motivated to try this experience for myself. She specialized in dumpsters at large apartment buildings. Apparently the most valuable finds came when couples split up. There might be the expected wedding albums, but there was also likely to be spite trash - really expensive items discarded out of spite. Apparently it is necessary to perform these searches late a night wearing a head lamp. It seemed a bit dangerous, but I guess she was well known by the police especially since she turned in large numbers of discarded handguns.</p>
<p>I have a lovely cabinet I picked up that a neighbor put out on the sidewalk to be hauled away. I painted the sides and refinished the top - after I was done, I showed it to her and she wanted it back!<br>
Now I do freecycle - both giving things away and getting things. S is still amazed that when our tv died, I was able to get us two new t.v.'s on freecycle. Now every day he’ll ask me if I’ve seen anything good. Today, I’m waiting to hear if I’ll get some river rock for a little landscaping project. I was going to say I’m not much of a trash picker…but I did grab a Day of the Dead t-shirt for my son that was hanging for days on a tree branch along a trail I walk my dogs. He turned his nose up at first, but then decided he really liked the design.</p>
<p>wine rack Ive been using for 25 years
lovely rattan chair now in my living room
picture frames
H’s specialty is old turntables he makes work again and real old fashioned record albums (he’s found real gems) that he actually plays.He’s a runner/biker and has gone so far as to hide his finds in bushes,etc so he can go back for them with a car!</p>
<p>I had a co-worker in NYC 25 years ago who furnished much of his apartment with finds. He had an incredible eye and his place was actually profiled by NY Magazine in a home decor piece-- absolutely gorgeous, ecclectic, stylish. He’d be on his way to work, and he’d phone in to say he was going to be late because he was dragging something or other home with him first…</p>
<p>Around here the custom is to put the good stuff to one side with a sign that says “FREE” on it, often on Saturday mornings. I did that a few years back with two wood rocking chairs that I had repaired and repainted one time too many (I’d gotten them off a different curb a few years before). I was thrilled to find find them a few weeks later at a neighbor’s house, a new color and fully repaired.</p>
<p>My personal knack seems to be for finding jackets and sweatshirts by the side of the road, usually filthy. I wash them and toss them into the Goodwill pile.</p>