So today I went on my first dumpster diving adventure. I took a long a co-worker for moral support. It was a great rookie experience. here's a hint...weekend after college graduation, go to a campus...they are gold mines!
After quite an adventure of how to actually get onto campus I did a drive thru and scoped out best places to "shop". Obviously the large, blue dumpsters that were outside of each dorm were the hot spots. I would find a place to park and go up and scope it out. Now, being a rookie...and having a strong disgust towards very rank smells and critters that like to hang out in such places I was not super brave. I would basically walk around the dumpster and if there were things in plain view I wanted I would grab them. There was one dumpster in particular, overflowing, so some students just left stuff beside it. Thank you students! This was very helpful and where I acquired most of my loot. I even went back a second time after seeing some more kids drop stuff off.
We got brave and tried to go in a dorm (we had been tipped off that there were good things inside by trash cans...like a chair that has been donated to our office). But we lost hope when we went in, no problem, but then ran into an RA on front desk duty; it just felt a little too shady!
I was so pleased with what we found! Not one, but two of these wire trash cans...
a really nice container store drawer like this...
a little magnetic, dry erase board that is silver...
not one...but that's right folks two full length mirrors (one is even really nice with a white frame kind of like this one)....
a box of gently used crayons...
a brown, canvas bin...
plus 2 white milk crates, a drying rack, a little fan, and all this was going to go to the dump! So glad I saved it.
The best part was after getting a lot of good loot we jumped back in the car and passed a house with some stuff out front with a "free--please take" sign. I pulled over, parked the car illegally. Only because it was Sunday. Ran up to the stoop and got 2 really adorable wooden boxes with this floral print that I'm not crazy about but will live with that will be perfect organizers in my office, the cute magnetic dry erase board mentioned above, and a really great closet organizer. The girls giving it away were not outside, but some of their co-dwellers in the apartments were. They were really sweet and said they may be putting more stuff out later if I wanted to drop back by and check it out.
All in all, I really did find that one persons trash was my treasure! I love that it was all free and really useful stuff. I can't wait until a new semester ends to see what treasures I dig up on the local campuses.
