While walking the dogs yesterday, I found a wastebasket full of shells and coral set out for the trash. I sat down today and started sorting through them. I found quite a few interesting ones. These are just a few of my new collection.

great save!

I would have taken those home too! I love seashells. There are tons of them in our bathroom, in various glass jars, bowls & vases. I've been collecting them for over 50 yrs.

I'll never understand people who put perfectly good things in the trash just because they don't want them. First, the landfill issue. And second, it seems incredibly snobby and selfish to me. Things that could be donated to charity. Seashells (especially in FL) don't fit that category, but I see all kinds of things at the curb on trash day that broke people would love to have. I'm not above bringing curb stuff home, especially when it's a nice upgrade for something I already have, and anything that can serve as a plant stand.

I brought a wood headboard & footboard home once & DH made a bench out of them. I have a beautiful bentwood chair on my porch that was curbside because a dog had chewed one of the legs a little bit. Once I found 4 like-new plastic stacking chairs. Lots of flower pots, a couple of baker's racks, various little tables, a couple wall shelves, a beautiful upholstered foot stool with wrought iron legs that are kind of rusty on the bottom, baby pools, an antique wood ladder, plastic stacking drawers, tomato cages, probably other stuff that doesn't come to mind at the moment.

Tiffany, I will confess I've put a few things out to the curb that someone could have found some use for. A lot of those things have been picked up by neighbors who had a use for them. Good for them.

And even stuff that doesn't work any longer sometimes gets picked up. Every year we have a large-items pickup day. A man who lives in another part of the county prowls the town in his truck looking for items he can repair or use for parts, or sell for scrap. Things like old washing machines or driers, microwaves, etc. Really an old-fashioned junkman. Old mattresses, though, usually end up at the dump. No one seems to want those.

No doubt about mattresses. I always assume they have cooties! Hopefully if those are picked up by individuals, it's because there is some metal in some of them, if they have springs/coils.

Yes, I've seen those people too. So glad they are out there doing those things. Metal or anything that can be recycled does not belong in a landfill. That's not a good way to manage resources. I try to take responsibility for my discarded items and make sure the recycle-ables don't end up in the trash. That requires taking them to community bins here, no pickup for recycling.

When I have useful stuff I don't want anymore, I drop it off at Goodwill/Christian Mission. Some things I keep to have an occasional garage sale, but it's understandable if some people don't want strangers milling around their driveway to haggle over stuff they don't want anymore. When I lived in OH, there were flea markets to take stuff to. I met a lot of fun people at those, miss doing that. Often ended up spending my profits buying other people's junk. LOL! Good times.

This discussion reminds me of the house flipping shows I love to watch. I know time = $ in a flip, but it can be heartbreaking to watch them smash and demo cabinets, windows, decorative trim, mirrors, and other stuff that is so much nicer than what is in my house. Might not be much BUT it's paid for!

I liked what they did up here when I was younger and this was mostly a Summer community. They had large pickup week where for the first 5 days all was left for people to go around and see what others had , as kids we made most our bikes from parts we found. And repair men would pick up most of the gas garden tools like lawn mowers and fix for resale. Then the town would take what nobody wanted. It was kind of a community event.

I'm sure a lot of you remember another type of recycling-- hand-me-down clothes. My father's elder sister and her family lived just a few miles away, so we saw them fairly often. She had 3 sons, the youngest of whom was 2, maybe 3 years older than I. So I got a lot of school shirts as Cousin Joe grew out of them. Some of them ended up getting their last use by my next younger brother, who was 3 years younger than I. The only downside was that the hand-me-downs included a lot of brown and a lot of plaid, neither of which were my favorites.

In one apartment building I lived in there was a large table in the basement next to the door to the laundry room. Residents would leave things there they didn't want anymore, either in good condition or needing a little light repair. I got quite a few useful things there including a large heavy mirror and a pair of torch lamps. Every apartment building and community should have something like that.

I agree and applaud saving 'junk'.

In my eyes it would have been a crying shame to put those seashells in the dump. Crafters, decoraters, hobbyists, so many people would enjoy them. One of these days, I want to visit the beach and 'reverse shell collect', leave my previous collected or given shells where little kidddos will find them and be so thrilled. Same with fossil shark teeth that my family collected almost 60 !!! years ago along the bay cliffs where they can still be found.

My parents' senior living place had a table in the laundry area for drop offs. My mom got a small but still usable toaster oven and an iron. She was thrilled-I guess she wanted to continue to iron my dads' boxer shorts..I found a metal kiddie car with real rubber tires and steering that works. Gorgeous metal candlestick, silver, brass and copper. They're definitely vintage. I can tell by the style and they're heavy. An old fashioned washboard, wooden playing swords, a cookie press in it's original box, garden decor-new because it was resin. A friend brought home 2 relatively new humidifiers. H e reconditioned them and sold them. Plus a 64in Sony tv that works great despite the fact that it had been outside for a week and rained on.

We gave some good stuff away when moving MIL out of her senior apt. Luckily there was a new neighbor moving in couple doors down!
Helped daughter on college dorm move out, there's another place to maybe grab good stuff they had dumpsters for excess and I assume going to a charity but who knows and how many charities can deal with that volume of stuff all at once?
I think ReStore Habitat for Humanity will take the two kitchen cabinets we are getting rid of now. Maybe someone can repaint the frames and install doors to match and make a whole set.?

Our township dump has separate areas for metal, wood and garbage. From the wood pile, my SO once picked up the makings of a room divider a guy got frustrated trying to assemble. He brought home all these beautiful finished 2-3' long ash boards. We've been using them for all kinds of things for 20 years. From the metal pile, I've retrieved stove racks, perfect for hanging herbs to dry, grilles for climbing plants and some pretty good storage shelves.
But the best thing is a little house where you can put things for other people to pick up. I've gone free-shopping there lots of times: books, a pair of coffee tables, a beaten copper serving tray (wt?) coffee carafe, snow shovel, vases, a lamp, craft supplies and once a basket full of new, high quality sport socks I'm still wearing 10 years on.
Of course, I've left quite a lot of stuff, too.

In Boston all the students (tens and tens of thousands of them - we are estimated to have about 250,000 students in total) tend to move in and out around the same time every year.

We have a time of year nicknamed "Allston Christmas*", when all the moving out students dump their stuff (furniture, books, cds, household goods) on the side of the street in the student neighborhoods (Allston being one of them), as they depart.

Then anyone can come by and take whatever they want. There is a lot of nice free stuff to be had by the new incoming students. Or just anyone looking for free stuff, really. But never take soft furnishings - students may have bedbugs.

* https://www.boston.com/news/lo...

That's a great tradition! You know you're getting smart items that know how to have a good time. : )

And I have the same rule, would never consider bringing home anything upholstered - UNLESS I want to remove the old and replace with new. I haven't before, but in general I want to, just never saw the right piece at the right time yet.

It looks so easy on "Flea Market Flip" but they don't show much of the work and admit there's a team of experts there & a full workshop of power tools to do the wild stuff the contestants envision. I love most of what they do, and the saving of the pieces in general. The industrial stuff from old factories is so cool.

Vehicle size has kind of put a crimp in my dragging stuff home. The time I brought home the barbershop chair (Holy smokes, that's heavy!!) only happened because I had a Suburban at the time. And a headboard and footboard can hang tilted upright out of the trunk of a regular sedan, but would be dangerously flat and might fall out of a hatchback.

That chair was super comfortable and although it was obviously many decades old, in perfect condition except the up/down mechanism. It probably could have been repaired, I suspect with a new gasket. I got tired of how heavy it was, and tall enough to block my view out of the window, so we put it at the curb and it was gone within an hour. It's hard to part with such a well made thing even when it doesn't fit in the house.

At this point, I feel like collecting as many "honestly made" items as possible. So I can point at them and say, "Look at how they used to make a chair, back when the person who bought it expected to never have to buy another one again because it would never break." And, "Look at this old thing that still works."

That's the reason many donation stores will not take anything upholstered, bed bugs. I tried to donate my new mattress to Habitat and Salvation Army. Habitat would not take it. In fact the woman I talked to was actually snobby. She said it was illegal in the state of NJ to take a donated mattress but they will take them from a company with a LLC. Don't know why. So I arranged for a pick up from a specific company and they came, wrapped the mattress and away it went. Got the credit for it the same day. They took it to Habitat.

breith95 said: That's the reason many donation stores will not take anything upholstered, bed bugs. I tried to donate my new mattress to Habitat and Salvation Army. Habitat would not take it. In fact the woman I talked to was actually snobby. She said it was illegal in the state of NJ to take a donated mattress but they will take them from a company with a LLC. Don't know why. So I arranged for a pick up from a specific company and they came, wrapped the mattress and away it went. Got the credit for it the same day. They took it to Habitat.

I think there's a church here that will pick up things (mattresses included) and they use them for the homeless shelter.

I like to think that any place with a procedure for picking up used mattresses would fumigate them.

When I said we put that barbershop chair @ the curb, I wanted to clarify that it was a beautiful Saturday (definitely not trash day) with no sign of rain. It was placed "customarily" as a general donation to whoever wanted to carry it home. We would not have let it get rained on or taken by the garbage truck.

Where I live the garbage truck would have left it. We have to purchase a separate bulky-items waiver online and tell them which week we will be leaving it, so there are no surprises for the garbage guys. I forget how much it costs, something like $10 per bulky item to take away.

Also, our state has just passed a law that we can no longer throw away mattresses. Now we have to arrange a special pickup from a company that takes them apart for recycling. Hopefully, not into more mattresses.

Hopefully into fiber and metals unless they are the new foam kind. I think recycled fiber went big with covid and everybody wanting rags and towels.

Scored! The neighbor across the street is moving and I spotted 2 nice sized plant containers. They're resin, straight up design with a ribbed texture. Perfect for the porch and my color-pale grey.