Saturday, January 13, 2007

Things I Dragged Out of the Trash

Well, since my last couple of posts didn't in fact involve anything actually I found in the trash, I thought I should show a few things that I have, indeed, saved from the eternal obscurity of America's landfills. Truth in advertising, and all that.

First, we have seven lovely pinecones with floral wires, even lovelier, attached. Neighbors had thrown away their Christmas wreath, so these were lying there, in the snow, ripe for the picking. While my dog was shitting at the next house down (yes, I did pick it up), I wrestled these little beauties out of the wreath. They'll come in handy next Christmas, so into the pile they go.
Next is a perfectly good, and nicely sized, dog crate. I found this in the trash in the last town I lived. I intend to give it to a local, donation dependent animal sanctuary which always needs whatever basic supplies they can get. Why I moved this to my new house rather than donate it before I moved is a good question, indeed. But a better question is why people throw out perfectly good stuff that others would be happy to have.I found this perfectly good pair of scissors in the metal dumpster at a dump ( in Nottingham, NH) for which I have great affection. The dump now thinks of itself a recycling center and so there is a place for everything and everything has its place. The metal dumpster is something like 20 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 8 feet deep (or whatever is normal for a normally large dumpster). Everything metal or mostly metal goes in, and these scissors were right on top which meant that, as an extra bonus, I neither had to go beg for a hook from the minders of the dump, nor risk falling in to get them. And, yes, they cut fine. Again, why would someone throw these away? In other words, what exactly is wrong with people?!? Given my predilection for scissors (see here), I was very happy to have found these. There is a little cognitive dissonance going on here: I'm perpetually frustrated by how much America just throws away, but also happy to have treasures to take home...
In the past week alone, I've dragged even more great things from the trash, but this is all I've got time for tonight!

3 comments:

lynneguist said...

Do you have Freecycle in your town? You might be able to pass on the dog carrier to someone who could use it. (Though the idea of giving it to charity is nicer.)

Celeste said...

We do have freecycle, but I don't use it much because it is almost exclusively used by people who are either looking for or looking to get rid of baby clothes. But once, a couple of years ago, I answered a post from a woman who needed someone to turn some novelty fabric into basic curtains for her son. She dropped them off, I did the simple sewing and then I dropped them off where she worked. We never even met!

Anonymous said...

I love seeing your rescued items and I encourage you to look into having a couple of chickens despite your location.

http://www.madcitychickens.com/

A couple of chickens wouldn't need much space, but sometimes the girls to get to cluck, cluck, clucking which could annoy neighbors :)