At the end of the school year the college students around here throw out perfectly good and mostly almost new items. They literally put lamps, desks, rugs, chairs and the like in and around dumpsters. This year I picked up some really good stuff. Anything I don't end up using I can sell at the Neighbors and Newcomers' annual yard sale. A lot of professors and people in the community will dumpster dive for stuff and also a lot of people who live in vans down by the river (no joke!). I didn't actually come to blows with any river people, I just asked them politely if they were going to take a certain item and it not, could they help me take it out of the dumpster. I did have to power wash a few items to remove a year's worth of grime, but I think it was worth it. My husband said he would only get stuff if there was no one around and if it wasn't actually in the dumpster. I had no such reservations.
Here's what I found: cotton candy machine (which we have had endless fun with), desk from IKEA, small trash can, dolly, clothes drying rack, hat rack, set of plastic drawers, white flower pots, basket, chair, beanbag (not pictured), small area rug (not pictured), microwave (not pictured), cooler, 2 mirrors, electric kettle, four slice toaster, Hamilton Beach single serve blender with travel lid (perfect for protein shakes), corduroy purse, practically new broom and dustpan, shoe rack, small plastic shelves, and some kind of tupperware with lid and compartments and handle for carrying (not pictured).
I would also have had a new aquarium, but a river person got it first. I would have gotten a brand new futon, but my husband wouldn't let me load it into the mini van because he was afraid one of his students would see him. Don't tell him, but one of his students (that I have actually met before) did see me pull a beanbag out of the dumpster. Next year I am getting a babysitter and camping out by the dumpster on College Student Cleanout weekend, who knows . . . I might luck out and get a mini fridge.
8 comments:
That is SOOO cool!!! I'm all about the freebies, how fun! I'm jelous, I don't think BYU students have such cool stuff.
That's awesome!! That's even more awesome Collin's student saw you. I really like that black mirror. I CAN'T believe people were getting rid of some of that stuff. LUCKY (as Napoleon Dynamite says it)!!!!!
I think a main difference is that the Bucknell students mostly come from richie rich families and also BYU students would probably have made the effort to take good stuff they didn't want to DI.
You rock my world, Tara! I have gotten some pretty wonderful stuff from Freecycle (www.freecycle.com), like brand new deadbolts for our new house that didn't come with keys to any of the doors when we bought it, a very nice queen bed, a toddler gate, and jars of baby food. I LOVE free stuff and I'm not too ashamed to dumpster dive (most of the time). In fact, Darrell and I have a funny story. When we were living in Springville, we saw a nice trunk in the dumpster. We debated whether or not to dig it out, but decided none of the neighbor's were looking, so why not? It was padlocked and there were contents in it, rattling around. We made several guesses as to what could be in it that would justify locking it up and throwing it away. We guessed maybe it was something stolen, or a human skull, or probably just a stash of porn. So when the weekend was over, we took the trunk to the high school (where Darrell was working at the time) to get the custodian's gynormous clippers to snap off the lock and see if any of our guesses were right. Darrell opened it and immediately slammed it shut with this frightened look on his face. He ordered all the students out of his office and then beckoned me to come see what was in it. I thought for sure it was going to be a human body part. But I was wrong. It was a gun. Here to the weapons-free high school campus full of children, we had inadvertently brought a gun. Oh, the panic! Immediately I was thinking that it was most likely a gun used in a homicide and we had put our fingerprints all over the trunk! We were in trouble! And we had to get it out of this school before we were caught with it and then we'd decide how to get rid of it permanently! But Darrell picked up the gun, and to our great relief, it was made of plastic. It was some sort of realistic-looking pellet gun. It still wasn't a good thing to have at school. But as a bonus, there was also a wooden box in the trunk full of coins, some of which are really old worth a bit of money. It was an eventful first dumpster dive for us and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
I don't think there's anything wrong with dumpster diving either. I was the one who told Collin about "freegan" living, and I think we're a pretty wasteful (myself included) society.
That was a hilarious story, Robyn, but do you think the coins were stolen from someone's collection?
The story we've made up for laughs is that in Idaho, on a school bus headed home, the perpetrator (a 6th grader) used his older brother's fake gun he got for Christmas to forcibly steal those coins from an unsuspecting 5th grader, who borrowed them from his dad's collect for show and tell on Fridays. But, 10 years later, the gun and the coins were locked up and thrown away in a fit of Mormon guilt.
Robyn, that is a hilarious and believable story. It totally sounds like the product of Mormon guilt.
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