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

 
pollinator
Posts: 164
Location: Ontario
48
6
hugelkultur bike ungarbage
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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.
 
pollinator
Posts: 146
Location: Upstate New York
56
chicken solar rocket stoves
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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.
 
M Wilcox
pollinator
Posts: 146
Location: Upstate New York
56
chicken solar rocket stoves
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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.
 
pollinator
Posts: 285
Location: Wichita, Kansas, United States
82
2
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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.
IMG_2614(1).jpg
It's about 8" shorter than before.
It's about 8 inches shorter than before.
IMG_2618.jpg
It's now being used in a class room.
It's now being used in a class room.
IMG_2623.jpg
Different grain patterns give different stain effects.
Different grain patterns give different stain effects.
IMG_2615.jpg
The mortise and tennon joint is much stronger than the wood screw we replaced.
The mortise and tennon joint is much stronger than the wood screw we replaced.
IMG_2636.jpg
Purple bench top. Yule Gibbons jokes come to mind.
Purple bench top. Yule Gibbons jokes come to mind.
 
pollinator
Posts: 136
68
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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
 
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Once I found very good headphones for about $ 200 I don't know why someone threw them they were good maybe someone got bored
 
Posts: 10
Location: So far outside the box, space telescopes can't find me (Zone 7a)
7
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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.
 
Posts: 62
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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.
 
steward
Posts: 16058
Location: USDA Zone 8a
4272
dog hunting food preservation cooking bee greening the desert
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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.
 
master pollinator
Posts: 1013
Location: East of England/ Northeast Bulgaria
378
5
cat forest garden trees tiny house books writing
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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!
 
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