One man’s trash

Istanbul

This week in the area I live in is council clean-up week. For the uninitiated, it’s the week when people finally go through their garages and throw out the stuff they’ve stored, never used and never really needed. You’ll see a lot of treadmills and exercise bikes on the roadside. Such good intentions…

Some people have such a pile out the front of their house that I’ve wondered if they even have any furniture left. There are lounges, mattresses, bedheads, outdoor furniture, BBQs… Where on earth were they storing that stuff?

We threw out 8 lounge cushions, a slow cooker, a pancake maker {really? Did I not know how to use a frypan?}, an ice shaver {I thought I was going to make slushies. I didn’t}, a beaded blanket that I once took from my sister when she was doing a clean-up but never used, a fry pan, some neglected toys and a bookcase. A whopping huge Ikea bookcase that we’d been storing in our garage {the place where furniture goes to die}.

So, yes it’s council clean up but it’s also a week where more traffic travels on our streets than ever. Honestly, I’ve thought I’ve had so many visitors this week, only to find it’s people searching through my stuff. On the day we put everything out, we popped out for half an hour and on our return we found a family loading our bookcase onto a trailer. I gave them a wave as if to say, “You’re welcome” but got nothing in return.

An hour later a woman came to search through everything, and she searched like her life depended on it. She unpacked and rifled, she cut cords from appliances and then she neatly placed everything she didn’t want back. She was so thrilled with the old fry pan that she did a little dance to her friend waiting in the car.

Hubby even came home from work at midnight and there were still people searching through everything. A lady took 6 of the cushions. I wondered why she only took 6, and Hubby said, “She didn’t even have a torch! What kind of rubbish collector is she if she doesn’t use a torch?”
I’d say she just hasn’t found one yet, and she’s my kind of rubbish collector. I’d never want people to see me.

I find it riveting to watch. So much enthusiasm. So much rubbish.

There was a moment when I found myself judging people, which was probably right after Hubby made seagull noises loud enough for the people to hear as they scavenged. WE ARE BAD PEOPLE.

But then I walked to the laundry, bypassing the rather large buffet table that resides in my living room. The buffet table that I once found at council clean-up, and went above and beyond to get back home {it’s SUPER heavy}.

I am a seagull too. I’ve got the buffet to prove it.

Ever found a gem on council clean-up week? Or would you never ever?

photo credit: Tal Bright

20 thoughts on “One man’s trash”

  1. This is our list from several years ago: 3 bikes (all in good condition) of various sizes, 1 totem tennis set, one plastic children’s picnic table, 1 roll unused vinyl, 1 little tikes ride in ute (Toby’s first ute – what a country boy), 6 outdoor chairs, 1 white cabinet, 1 gorgeous hall table, 1 beautiful painted white bookshelf, 1 Tonka truck, several miscellaneous terracotta pots, 1 toy vacuum cleaner (batteries included), 150 novels in a box, 1 clam shell swimming pool, 1 table top for a potting table, 1 umbrella pram, 1 wooden bead chaser, 1 baby activity table, and 1 worm farm, 8 wooden Thomas the Tank engine trains. All in good condition! I kept the list because I couldn’t believe how much perfectly good things were going to landfill. I donated most of it to the church garage sale we had a month later and it all sold! People were just too lazy to donate it.

    We got rid of some stuff too 🙂

  2. I got a laundry trolley that needed two wheels, hubby has since replaced (and replaced the original bunnings replacement wheels once whilst the set that came with are still going strong!!) I have been meaning to paint it all these years, but still haven’t. Hey, it does the job!

  3. OMG this was my father until he had the aortic dissection and is no longer allowed to drive due to brain damage and vision problems. He would pull over at ever pickup. Had the map of when and where the council had organised the next rotation (colour coded and everything!) and would even make me get out and help load things. Since he got sick Mum and I have decluttered the house and gotten rid of the vast majority of stuff he’d collected except for the things we actually appreciated and used. I have a coffee table, 4 dining chairs, my work bench, the book case in my craft room and my scrapbooking cupboard. I also have my CD towers and a cupboard I use to store all the pieces I use for my quilting machine. We don’t like to waste things in our family. 🙂

  4. We have a council pick up area in the garage of our apartments and I always have a sticky beak for first dibs before it goes out on the street. I look but I don’t touch, not because I’m too precious, but too short on space which is a shame because some of that stuff is totally ace.

  5. Hehe… We live on quite a busy road and often stuff we out out there is picked up before we’ve made it back inside!
    What weirds me out is when people take our stuff and leave their stuff behind.

  6. Haha. I only hate it when people go through our stuff and don’t put it back. We’ve had a massive (dodgy) outdoor table where they’ve shattered and smashed the glass in it as they knocked it over. We’ve found stuff scattered in a way that we know the council won’t collect it if they find it that way. I have no problem with people recycling our trash – go for it – just be respectful!!
    We have never really scavenged ourselves (except for one terrible roller mower that stinks of fuel that my husband put in our car once and got in massive trouble with me for and he has never used or up cycled in any way since may I add), but I do have a rule that it can’t be neighbours on our own street haha. That would just feel weird.

  7. The majority of my house is furnished with stuff from the street siphoned after we moved to Melbourne with clothes, books and a bed. We didn’t drive around though- Fitzroy is set up well for opportunists ☺️

  8. My in laws passed away only month apart a few years back and, to cut a long story short, we moved into their house. I married into a family of hoarders & I am a decluttering addict!!

    We had to condense two households into one basically and when we moved in, every cupboard was packed full of stuff….I thought I was going to go crazy!

    My aim was to recycle as much as possible instead of throwing it away and so I took to putting stuff outside my home every Sunday…..I got rid of so much stuff, it was great. I found it a little odd when people took plugs off stuff & rummaged and left it all in a mess, but actually it was a brilliant way of recycling & saved me driving to the local tip many times over.

    I was going to say that I probably wouldn’t do it but then I remembered that I I picked up 3 great dining chairs that were left outside my last flat….they were great!

    • I’m in the UK & I wrote the comment above you 🙂 I think it depends where you live though….I’m in north London & lots of people leave stuff outside on the pavement for anyone to pick up. My mum lives in south London though & she wouldn’t dream of doing it, she thinks I’m crazy!

  9. Where we lived previously you could put out a pile 2×1 sq metres, the great thing was that a lot of it would be taken & then you could put more out if you needed to! I have never searched through a pile but I have had a look as I’ve passed to see if there was anything ‘good’ visible. We have a cute little cupboard that I found on cleanup, much to my husbands disgust as I made him go back with me to get it.

  10. When my husband was a struggling student in Sydney, he furnished his entire apartment from hard trash (he had to move from interstate and didn’t take anything with him) and it wasn’t as bad as it might sound. He had quite a nice apartment! I kinda think it’s fun to have a look but I’m not sure I would rummage through the night, in the dark, without a torch….with that said, I do have quite a few items from the op shop, so really it’s the same same right?

  11. Haaa Council Collection Week is such a funny thing to experience here on the Gold Coast. LOVE IT!
    When we moved house a year ago, we got a skip bin delivered out front {it wasn’t council collection week unfortunately} – to force me to do a big cull and clean-out {and because it’s easier than doing 30 000 trips to the dump at $7 a load}. It was hilarious {and disturbing} to see how many people would stop, scavenge through our bin and take carboot-fulls of crap! Broken things, useless things, even mouldy things from the side of our house. The bin got emptied almost everyday by random people – we should’ve saved the $200 the skip cost and just dumped it all kerbside 🙂 Intriguing!!
    x

  12. I think it’s great that people can share our unwanted ‘stuff’ – so much better than it going to waste. There is plenty enough waste in this day and age! It is riveting to watch though, I’m always so curious what people have taken from our pile every year.

  13. We don’t have a council clean-up day here, so nothing there. However, I did get the twin mattress for our porch daybed from the side of the road. I’d been looking for a twin mattress for probably 6 months and couldn’t find one at a price that I wanted to pay. One day I was driving home from the gas station and saw one sitting on the side of the road. I loaded it up into the truck and came on home. I set it out in the yard in the sunshine and hosed it down with lysol over the course of a couple of days.

    It’s now in a plastic liner and covered on our porch 😉

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