Best thing you ever pulled from a dumpster or out of someone's garbage?

Oh wow where to begin. I was a garbage picker from an early age! My first "stereo" was garbage picked, I made some crazy speakers and could play 8tracks! I furnished my college home with mostly side of the road finds. Lots of bike parts! My favourite thing is grills from trash Barbecues and stoves. I've gotten so much metal and plywood.

I built my chicken house and Chicken run from almost entirely trash. I found a 4-ft cube wooden shipping crate made from plywood and 2x4s. I had scrounged a bunch of 2x4s that had been left behind at a rental property. I also found some wooden frames made of 2x4s that had been used for some sort of packing/ shipping purpose. I had some plastic coated chicken wire left over from a previous project. I had salvaged a whole bunch of hardware and screws, and metal roofing from the same rental where the 2x4s had come from.

I created some stilts from the salvaged wood and put the shipping crate on top of it so I'd be able to easily reach the chicken house to clean it and collect eggs. I did have to buy a sheet of plywood to create the nest boxes and the access door. I used tree branches for the roosts.

I took the wooden frames and covered them individually in chicken wire, then screwed them together to create the chicken run. This way, they would be modular so I could reconfigure the chicken run if necessary. I attached the chicken run to the chicken house, put chicken wire over the top and used a metal and glass storm door that my neighbor was throwing out to access the chicken run. The shipping crate can very comfortably hold eight chickens, and I've had as many as 12 in there. It's a little cramped but they make it work.

I also have salvaged enough lumber and windows to build almost my entire greenhouse. I'm going to buy some multi-wall polycarbonate for the roof but I don't think I'll have to buy anything else.

I've collected so many materials that I had to build a lean to on my shed to hold it all. The lean to was built entirely from salvaged wood and I still had enough salvaged wood leftover to practically fill it, along with many many storm windows that I salvaged to use for cold frames.

My wife would call me a hoarder if it weren't for the fact that I actually use the stuff I collect.

Oh, I forgot to mention, my mom supported us through "shopping" at the junkyard for bike parts, which she used to build entire bikes out of. She'd give them a beautiful paint job and sell them. This was in the 60s when bikes weren't considered "throw-aways," so they didn't get junked until they were really thrashed. New bikes were prized so she had no trouble selling her like-new rebuilds.

I didn't pull this from a dumpster, but, it was salvaged from becoming trash.
A coworker had a bench from his dining table break.  He brought it in to me to see what I could do.
I used it as a series of lessons for my science classes.
We did the woodworking while covering simple machines.  Kids were a lot more interested in inclined planes while using a plane to remove old finish or cutting the mortise for a mortise and tenon joint.
It had been held together with a couple screws.  Those came loose and the tongue and groove broke on one end of the bench.
We shortened the top and re-cut the tongue and groove.  The mortise and tenon joints holding the cross brace to the legs is much stronger than a screw.
When it came time to re-finish the bench top, I had kids make the wood stain out of a red cabbage.  It took 5 coats to get the color I wanted.
Nearly everything for this repair/rebuild were either scrounged or I already had.
The only thing I bought just for this was the red cabbage.
The paste wax we used was a batch I had my chemistry class make a couple months ago.
The kids were really involved.
It is now in that coworker's class room and gets used several times a day.

I forgot to mention, there is no hardware in it now.  We put it back together using traditional wood joinery.

Different times; All curb procured Little Red Flyer wagon(metal & sturdy)  and a basic smaller furniture dolly which just needed air in the tires. These saved my back thru many moves and gardening. Huge wonderful solid oak tall shelf which had built in base and sailed thru a major earth quake not tipping. Pile of handmade crochet afghans. Dumpster; mainly perfectly good lumber and windows which became a greenhouse. Embarrassed the teens but now their kids sleep under those blankets

Once I found very good headphones for about $ 200 I don't know why someone threw them they were good maybe someone got bored

The storage space I rented in Michigan a few years before I moved to Missouri was kind of a man cave for me.
There was very often some treasure somebody was throwing away when they would move out of their rental
space. I would gather it and stuff it in my rental space. Then I would sell the stuff during the few weeks yard
sales were allowed in the neighborhood. Just about anything you would normally find at a yard sale, and then
some.

Some was donated... like several hundred new in the package mesh tank tops of different colors and sizes were
donated to a school program for kids that couldn't afford those kind of things down here in Missouri.  Several
large boxes of school supply items like pens, pencils, paper, solar powered calculators, soccer equipment, new
flip flops in adult and child sizes and T-shirts etc were sent to the Philippines by a friend who had contacts there.

Some stuff I kept for my own use. The best things were several vintage stereos with speakers... even a reel to
reel tape machine. But my favorite find was 4 Motorola 10 channel walkie talkies like the kind that might be
used at a construction site. There were batteries and chargers for each and 2 had remote clip on speaker/mics.
They all worked fine. Apparently they had been in a fire because I had to clean them well to get rid of the smoke
residue and smell. Still have them to this day.

I'm not sure if it would count as my most memorable dumpster dive. But just a few weeks ago I was at an SCA event called The Pennsic War.

These people throw out tremendous amounts of stuff at the end of the event. From things they never intended to take home like furniture, to Broken tents to coolers that had stuff spilled in them, tarps, cots, Etc.
There is a nearby food pantry that gets probably literal tons of dry goods from this event at the end as campers don't want to take excess home with them.

I have to be careful not to let my vulture eyes get bigger than my car can carry. I got a cooler, a folding stool, a stockpot full of car canopy elbows, and a milk crate.
The cooler that I picked up by this same method went missing last year. So it's a good thing that I found another Coleman cooler, slightly larger, perfectly clean on the inside but the plastic hinges are broken. These are the same type hinges that I replaced on the cooler I got years ago. So I know that for a few bucks I can buy replacements off the Coleman website. The cooler is perfectly clean on the inside and has partly rubbed off Sharpie marker on the lid that indicates it may have been used with sports team boosters fundraising. The lid is nice and snug even without the hinges.

The stool is a simple x leg folder, but taller. I used it several times to sit and take a break after I had folded up the camp chairs while packing.

The milk crate might not count, because it came from somebody else in my camp. But it would have ended up at the dumpster if no one in Camp took it. Milk crates are amazingly useful, college kid Lego furniture.

After I got the stock pot of canopy elbows back to my packing area, I took the time to lay out the pieces and determined that I had enough of the correct sections to make a two section canopy. I did not see the poles to fit these elbows in the trash. But I believe that getting PVC or other pipe sized to fit cut is pretty cheap, the money is in those welded elbows. I was thinking about using them for a tent, but they might be useful for a temporary Greenhouse. At this point I have not taken a close look at the stock pot to see if I would want to use it for anything. A quick glance when I unpacked and then repack the elbows did not show any obvious problem with it and it was clean. Most likely used for food but I want to inspect it more carefully.

If any of you all are near Butler PA, you might consider swinging past Cooper's Lake and working out a deal to access and recycle out of their dumpsters after big events.

Somewhere between 20 and 40 years ago, I got an blow dryer out of the trash.

Its is an ugly yellow thing which dear hubby fixed the cord on and it is still working today.

I dont use a blow dryer much now as I just put my hair into a ponytail as soon as I get out of the shower.  This method is relatively tangle free.

My best find was in a box of old books, from the 1950s and 1960s. The type most people only read because they have to for school or college, thrown out after an elderly former English literature professor passed away.  I took them because I like old books and also at the time had a small sideline selling books online. I got a huge surprise to find when I sorted through them at home that one was a signed paperback original first edition by a well-known author from that era. I sold it for the equivalent of $600.

That didn't need a dumpster dive, a stack of boxes of books considered unsaleable were piled at the back of a thrift store who wanted rid of them ASAP. They were very happy to have me take them away so they didn't have to pay for an extra dumpster load to be collected!

Got two fully functional brand new metal roll-up doors for our two sheds from the dumpster of a shed building place ... the bent brackets were very easy to fix!  Huge boon for us, and the nice folks there let us take them and even helped my son and I get the first one out of the dumpster and into the the truck ... despite losing the value of it it as recycled metal.

I got a good 100 rejected bricks (poor things!) from a construction site. They were enough to pave the walkways between 4 raised beds! It was a lovely finishing touch.

A motocross motorcycle. Technically I didn't remove it because I was at the county dump at same time as the guy who was throwing it out. Asked if I could have it. Took it home, replaced a piston & rings. Reassembled all the other parts. Cleaned it. Rode it a few times to make sure it all worked properly. Cleaned it again. Then sold it for a nice profit.

I got nice sea shore paintings from local artist

I used to remodel buildings, (old K-Marts, Walmarts etc.) for new Murdoch's stores through out the west.   Many times the building had lots of good items that we were told to throw in the dumpsters.
I kept many items, small wind turbine generator that works great, many boxes of everything from nails, screws to hinges, lots of building materials.  Kept what I could and then sold a lot of it locally where ever we were on facebook market place.   Hated to see any of the stuff go to the landfill when it would be recycled.

To many to pick just one.

Way back in the day, still in my late teens I found a brand new Mac chain saw still in the cardboard box someone had thrown in a Hardee's dumpster. It ran perfectly but the chain was on backwards........


Another time a friend let me know they were trashing the shopping cart covers from defunct grocery stores they were  remodeling I got 4)  of them 8'x35' aluminum frames with opaque white rooves.  

William Bronson wrote:My favorite score  is probably the hundreds of dollars worth of live trees I snagged from home depot.
Not the most profitable, valuable thing, just the most satisfying.

2 years ago, my pumpkins/ squash crop failed miserably. But right after Halloween, Home Depot had big carts full of pumpkins and squashes they were about to get rid of. I took as many as I could (2 full carts, heaped up high), just before the hard frost that night. They were brought free and safe in my garage. It sure felt good to have something I didn't think I could enjoy at all due to crop failure.
Oh, otherwise, I religiously go dumpster diving every Wednesday and Saturday, when our dump is open.
I scored many stainless steel pots & pans and also some cast iron Lodge items.
We no longer buy any of these dangerous "no stick" items.

Difficult to tell what was my best find. I don't 'dive' in dumpsters, but I always have a look at the larger things they put next to the garbage. I take (garden) chairs, baskets and (house)plants (still alive!) with me.

Most people I know (friends and family) don't just throw away stuff, if it's still in good shape. They first ask if others want to have it (mostly through app-groups). So I have curtains from friends who moved (to a house with different size/shape windows). And more.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:Difficult to tell what was my best find. I don't 'dive' in dumpsters, but I always have a look at the larger things they put next to the garbage. I take (garden) chairs, baskets and (house)plants (still alive!) with me.

Most people I know (friends and family) don't just throw away stuff, if it's still in good shape. They first ask if others want to have it (mostly through app-groups). So I have curtains from friends who moved (to a house with different size/shape windows). And more.

Hi, Inge. I guess I should have been more precise: My town does the same thing: When there are some things that they think could be salvaged, they set them aside. (The things that are in the dumpsters themselves are usually not salvageable.)
(But if I saw something there, I'd have no qualms asking for it.)

There have been a large number of forest fires in our area. Now, old dumpsites are easily found with the underbrush gone. Walking the dogs and working my new knee, I found a dumpsite with a bunch of ball spring top jars and a Griswald #6 10-inch self-basting lid. They're selling for 300.00 on E-bay.  I'm not a collector but the daughter is so it was a good score.