Okay, that title is kind of misleading. I have never really dived into a dumpster. Well, there was that one time when I spotted a really neat piece of beveled glass sticking out of a dumpster but I pulled it out, I didn't go in to get it. I turned it into an entryway table and put it in my foyer.
That other time I didn't get into the dumpster either. It was too high so I went and got a little plastic stool and took it back there but while I was unloading and coming back for more somebody made off with my stool! The nerve of some people. I was only getting boxes for moving. Really.
Not like my mom and her friend Jeanne when my mom climbed into the dumpster and couldn't get back out. She swore she was just trying to retrieve an envelope she had accidentally thrown away but being in her seventies and only 5 feet tall she was stuck in there. I don't know if she hollered till Jeanne found her and got her out or what. I suspect that Jeanne is the one who helped her in there in the first place. I did hear Jeanne say, last time they were together, "Remember that time we found the marijuana in that purse and we turned it in to the police and they made us tell our age? We said we would never turn anything in to the police again if they make us tell our age!" I don't know exactly where they found that purse. Or how they knew what marijuana looked like anyway.
My mom is the one who taught me all I know about retrieving fine objects from the roadside. It was her idea to get that chair from someone's trash when we lived in California. It wasn't in great shape so I turned it into a plant stand but when we were transferred to Oklahoma the moving company thought they had damaged it and fixed it up like new.
I get my best stuff on trash days. Like the bar stools I picked up. I didn't need them myself so I sold them on Craig's List for $15. And I got the queen headboard that is in my guest room now right around the corner from Jake's house. The trash truck was right behind me so I might have been speeding a little. The guy putting it out for the trash actually helped me load it in my van.
I got a really cool little table from my neighbor's trash across the street the other day. If she had been home I would have asked her, but she wasn't and I didn't and then it got too late to say anything and now I can't let her in my house because there it is looking right at home next to my chair. We talk on the porch.
Dennis has never really been a fan of my little hobby. He makes me take him home first if I spot something good and he even made me lose some perfectly good patio chairs last week when I had to take him home and when I got back somebody else had snatched them. I keep telling him people don't mind. If they wanted to keep these things for themselves they wouldn't put them out by the curb, right?
It's not really dumpster diving, it's keeping things out of the landfill. I'm saving the environment.
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