This is a cool Barbie Trycicle I found in a dumpster raid- No repairs or anything needed to make it ridable for my cousin's granddaughter Josie. She seems to like it. I never can understand how people throw out perfectly good Bikes and trikes. I got a Schwinn Varsity ten speed in the same dumpster last year.
Also, I found a childs chair on freecycle, that is perfect for Miss Josie… Love the color- goes with her outfit. Her Aunt Marcy is seen sunning with her on my cousin's front deck.I recently got five steel wheels on Freecycle. Had to have the tires removed at Les Schwab- I like them because they send them out for tire recycling. I am going to make some footstools out of the wheels. If I welded, I could make a table base out of three of them.
Do you dumpster dive? What's the best thing you found? Does it drive you crazy when people throw out perfectly good stuff with no effort to see if some one else would like it?
7 comments:
I love cute little kids! Well all little kids are cute anyway.
I got a couch.
I dumpster dive all the time. Right now mostly 5 gallon buckets for container gardening. When my son was a baby I learned to climb up into a dumpster with him in the baby sling.
Let's see: awesome desk, lots of clothes & food, lots of toys, CDs, storage bins, blankets... at one point nearly everythign I owned was dumpstered.
My son's got two bikes from the dumpster - one he outgrew so we're giving it away. I think usually bikes are in the dumpster because they were stolen & dumped, or because tenants left them behind & the landlord dumped them. I just can't imaging people throwing away a bike if it was theirs.
A lot of times with stuff that seems good but you just can't find it a home, people here put it *near* the garbage so everyone knows it's OK to take. That makes the trash picking much more pleasant.
Both my family and Ed's family are builders, so they grab the really good stuff before it goes in the dumpster. We got a ton of materials for our house that way, including all of our ipe decking, beadboard, and trim.
i've never been dumpster diving, though i've wanted to try. i just can't seem to get anyone to go with me. i have gotten some decent things from my neighboorhood heavy trash pick-ups. my son got a nice reclining couch for his room, i've never paid for tomato cages and my daughter has a lovely outdoor picnic table. after ike, there was fencing as far as the eye could see. none of it damaged, all of it stacked nicely by the curb.
i got this amazing wooden table, with a cutout in it, and a car race track underneath it. my kids love it. score! saved from the landfill. i garage sale, and gratefully accept hand me down's for my kids. great post!
p.s. how about that san diego professor who dumpster dives for food. hardcore!
Jenny, dumpster diving for *all* your food is hardcore, but dumpstered food is usually just fine - especially fruits & vegetables and bread. In San Diego I bet you get lots of good fruit.
The best dumpsters for food are food distributors - they have to dump before stuff hits it's sell-by date, since it has to be delivered a day or two before that. Also, a lot of grocery stores crush their food waste to avoid dumpster divers (and, I believe, to avoid people seeing how much is wasted.) Sometimes if you ask at the store they will set aside pre-dumpstered things for you, and usually employees get first pick of that kind of stuff.
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