On the scrounge again...

It's hard rubbish time again in our area, which means the nature strips are decorated with trash, or treasure, depending on your point of view. 

Last year for the first time I went round purposefully checking out some of these piles and came home with a couple of things, so I thought I'd do the same this year.

Yesterday I went strolling with the kids and brought home a basket:

It should be pretty useful, once I've given it a scrub down, maybe I'll keep it in the car for the farmer's market.

Then today we cruised round for a short while in the car on our way to the library.

Picked up this...

And this fisher price swing seat, which is really too small for my kids but I know they sell on ebay, or at the very least I could freecycle it, rather than it end up in a landfill.

That pole you can see is part of the pole-tennis set I picked up today too, the bottom part of the pole is around somewhere. 

And 3 bats to go with it.

And a little wheelbarrow, good as new.

I also spotted one of those green and yellow bolt-together swing sets that are good for young kids. It was in pieces but on closer inspection there were a few broken bits on it.

So instead, when I got home I put a call out on freecycle for one and got a reply just this evening. Someone in my suburb has one and they want to get rid of it! Woohoo!

(You see, we have school holidays coming up and remembering how unprepared I was last school holidays...the first time I've had both kids home ALL the time....I've been casting about for some things to make our limited outdoor space more enticing.  Mission accomplished.)

On another note, it just about makes me cry to think of the amount of new landfill that will be created  from this hard rubbish collection. And that's just my suburb. You could seriously outfit entire houses from what I've seen out there. Loads of everything and so many big tvs, I'm sure many of them work but they've probably been replaced by their take-up-less-room flat screen cousins.

Hubby suggested I contact the council and ask them to advertise freecycle on their next hard rubbish collection flyer.

 I'm gonna do that and they better have a darn good answer for me if they say no!

Come a-scavenging with me

It's hard rubbish collection time in our local area lately, and as I go on my nightly walk/run....definitely not just a run....I have been passing intriguing looking piles of stuff. Junk. Rubbish. Detritus. Things other people no longer require.

Now I have never been a scavenger before, certainly not of hard rubbish on nature strips, but my new frugal mindset has me looking at it all a little differently.

What do they say? Reduce, reuse, recycle.

So my hubby was not surprised when I huffed home after my walk/run last week carrying two freezer baskets. I have a small deep freeze with only one basket and would dearly like one of two more to help me organise the space. They turned out to be rather too large however, so will be put to use storing my fabric stash, which is currently occupying two disintegrating 'sposie nappy boxes which hail from when I used 'sposies with my first bub.

This morning being a weekend, I did a round of our block with the kids in the double jogger and picked up a perfectly fine clothes drying rack. My plan is to keep this one in the garage and try to use it instead of the dryer when the weather is wet. A friend of mine has three racks and puts them out on her covered porch when it's raining. Covered in wet washing, obviously. Smart lady.

And for my container gardening efforts, two large polystyrene boxes from beside the back door of a sushi joint. I asked, they said yes. Actually they looked at me somewhat oddly and said "you want, you want?!" in a fairly incredulous tone. Understandably perhaps.

So the boxes have now been put to work growing spinach and cucumbers.

I thought perhaps I might need to cover them with bird netting to keep our feathered friends from scratching in it, but it turns out my biggest problem is keeping my 17 month old dirt lover from sinking his little hands into the lovely black soil and throwing handfuls of it around.

Now, if you feel like going out perusing the nature strips during hard rubbish collection week, keep in mind that in my area it's an offense to scavenge and you can actually be arrested for doing so. Though I have never heard of that happening and there are many, many people doing the rubbish rounds before the trucks come.

Just do think long and hard about what you find and IF you actually have a use for it. There is absolutely no point in cluttering up your house/yard/garage/garden with things you'll just be wanting to put out for the hard rubbish collection when it's your turn.