Tips For Scoring Free Stuff
By DestinybyDefinitionIn all my spare time I have discovered places and people to help me get my thrift fix. I want to share with you a few places you can go in search for those table legs or that sheet of lumber you need to finish your homemade ottoman.
1) Go Binning! Sounds terrible and probably is best left for the bottle-collecter, you say. No! Take a detour throught the alley of a block of apartment buildings. You're almost guarunteed to find a cute chair or an old side table waiting to be rescued from the landfill. The great thing is that these items rarely get tossed into the dumpster, they're usually set on the ground beside.
2) Hit up your local building supply stores. Some of them have a very obvious "FREE WOOD" sign next to an old fence near the yard. If you find out what day is 'truck day' then you'll be laughing. On truck day, they bring back the truckloads of unneeded or leftover wood from construction sites and toss most of it into the free bin. If you drive by and don't see a scrap bin of wood, then drive up to the yard gate and ask them where they keep their scraps. If you are looking for something that you don't see in the bin, ask if there have been any custom cuts of wood that never got picked up. You'll get a wicked good price on it.
3) Cruise past your local furniture dealer stores, check out the dumpster area. You'll likely see a broken couch set with a decent set of legs. And they will toss a whole couch if a single leg has broken, so you can score a few brand new foam cushions for whatever projects you have at home.
4) Find the hoarder! Every town has a hoarder! In my case (and your best bet for searching) is in the undustrial part of town, where all the contracter companies house their spools and fencing wire. Somewhere, tucked in those gravel roads, the hoarder will be hiding. The hoarder owns a big lot, filled with old busted cars (use the seatbelts!), oil barrels (to catch rain water, if you clean them properly), cute little scraps of wood or metal (to use as wall-hooks, picture frame shelves, you name it!), leftover rolls of chickenwire, sheepwire, etc (for countless projects, garden being one), and more other great stuff than I can list or you can imagine! If you 'wander' into the yard and keep an eye out for the owner, tell him you must have wandered off the beaton path in search of (insert item here) and ask how much money he'd like in return for allowing you to scour the junk. My 'hoarder' gave me free reign of his yard so long as I promise not to spread the word.
5) Cruise behind the thrift stores. Many of them dont accept certain things for resale because of liability. Baby items, like high chairs and carseats are usually left in the back to be picked up rather than resold. Same with a wobbly chair or a large picture frame that needs reattaching.
6) Lastly, if you can tolerate the smell, people often dump things on the side of the road heading out to the landfill. IMO the landfill should give the public access to the scrap car/furniture area, but they don't. And many people get rid of good quality stuff just because they don't have the room for it or know a buyer or taker. So they dump it somewhere for people to see and pick it up.... the landfill road!
Happy Hunting! Believe me, it's more fun and less dirty than you think it is!
Things I have Found For Free:
-a tickle trunks big enough to house myself and a couple of bedspreads (by a dumpster)
-awesome clawfoot-looking couch legs off a tossed couch at the furniture store (it had a spill-stain on the seat
-enough free wood (from the building supply store) to build a three-seater lounge/ottoman for my living room! AND got the foam cushions free from the furniture store!
-a huge roll of chickenwire from my hoarders junkyard (gonna grow sweatpeas on it around my garden!)
-a wood-frame futon from a dumpster by an apartment building.
- two barstools with rusted swivel mechanisms (which i powerwashed and re-oiled) from the dumpster behind a bar.
-a solid wood bedside table with nice corner hardware to look like a chest (found beside a hotel-dumpster) fixed up with a fresh coat of paint.
- a vintage highchair for my youngest daughter (found behind salvation army) painted glossy pink, looks brand new with super vintage design!
-hundreds of knick knacks and doodads for around the house!
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DestinybyDefinition's blog (5 posts)
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Member since: 03/26/09
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I'm just crafty.
DestinybyDefinition
Yeah Stacey it is a great program and I am a member. But unfortunately people in my small town don't take much interest in freecycle, and would rather dump off goodies than find a new home for them :( There are literally like, 5 people from my community on freecycle. I am tempted to go spraypaint the websites' name all over town to attract more people to it! But I am a loyal member and when I have something taking up too much room in my own home, freecycle is where I post it.
Stacey Folsom
One more to add to your list is to join your local Freecyclers group on Yahoo. It's a great way to get rid of unwanted items around your house without them ending up in a landfill and score some great items that others don't need as well.
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