Kevin's Watch

My husband and I went back to college after we had kids. Living in the family housing, we were around after all the young (traditional) students left. It was always astounding, what they would leave behind and throw away. Furniture, clothing, curtains, textbooks, you name it. It was a huge boon to a family of four with growing kids trying to work our way through college.

We also spent a few summers at a children's and teen's camp-- my husband was operations supervisor. We really stocked up on clothes and shoes for the kids, towels, and luggage come September. (We picked through, the rest was laundered and sent to charity.)

Just this year I was carrying out some trash to the dumpster at my mom's apartment complex. On top of the bin, there was a handbag. My first thought was that someone had forgotten it there so I looked inside for ID and quickly realized it was for the toss-- just candy wrappers and receipts. But there was a glint of gold at the bottom... a 14K gold necklace.

Have you ever dumpster-dived? Whadja get?

When I was kid I found a complete set of compasses (the ones you draw cirlcles with) in a nice velvet covered wood case. It was in the dumpster of an architect's office next to the bus stop where I had to wait for the school bus every morning.

A large number of inquest reports for the 1880s onwards were found in a skip in Lincolnshire a few years ago. They are now in Lincolnshire Archives. We presume they were thrown out during a refurbishment of a Solicitor's office. More recently a load of parchment documents were discovered in another skip and rescued. They turned out to be leases and other documents concerning land rent etc. from the 18th and 19th centuries. These are currently being indexed and abstracted before being deposited at the Archives. It's amazing what people will throw out!

When I lived in UF's village housing of course we went through the discards at the end of every semester. Dorm sized refrigerators, entrtainment centers and televisions, even barely used computers were tossed by the students in the surrounding regular apartment complexes.

At the beginning of the now-hopefully-ending recession, when I was decommissioning buildings that were being vacated by business units that were downsizing, I came upon a lot of very useful office supplies that had been tossed out. Kept some, diverted a fair amount to schools and youth programs, and still saw way too much end up going to landfill.

In West Africa, you can put the crappiest pair of worn-out shoes on the wall by the road and someone will claim them. You have to be careful about how you dispose of your dead dog here. I am utterly serious. The neediness does help the environment somewhat, although the sector of the population who uses disposable diapers, etc. is probably more than making up for it.

I'm a dumpster-diver from a line of dumpster divers.

When I was in college, I often snagged chairs from the dumpster.
My roommate was rather amused (though perhaps somewhat frustrated) that the number of cheap, ugly rolling office chairs in our apartment would just keep increasing.
She said I must be taking them in, trying to provide a good home for them.

Once I snagged a whole color copier, but it was broken.

One friend of mine really knew how to delegate.
She knew about my dumpster-diving habits, so when she planned a collage-making activity, she asked me to dumpster-dive for magazines w/ pictures we could cut out!
(I was honored. )
When I was at the campus recycling center "recovering" said magazines and catalogs, I met an older couple who just happened to be getting rid of like TEN gorgeous calendars w/ nature/landmarks pictures.
They wondered if I'd want some of them. Twas awesome.

When I was 11 or 12 I would get nudie mags out of the dumpster behind a convenience store that was within walking distance. The covers were always removed, but I wasn't getting them to collect.

I once picked up a brand new shirt off the top of a dumpster. It said "Oral Me" in the same logo as Oral B.

[Syl] wrote:I once picked up a brand new shirt off the top of a dumpster. It said "Oral Me" in the same logo as Oral B.

That reminds me: I left my goodie bag from my dentist visit today in the car.

That's probably not on point, but...



Carry on!