Every year our city has a Clean-Up Week, where you can throw out almost anything you want and the city will pick it up for free.

“Berm Shopping” has become popular because of all this amazing stuff sitting on the berms, waiting to be picked up by the city.  If you drive around picking up this “trash” on the boulevard, you can get some amazing free stuff and all for the price of some gas.  (People also post free items on Craigslist and Facebook groups, so there are useful things being given away all the time!)

We like to hunt for discarded items we can recycle, re-purpose or re-use.  It’s a great way of getting useful items and keeping things out of the landfill!  I want to share some of my finds with you and I’ll show you a tally at the end of what these items would have cost me new!

 

We actually got a pair of these mid century metal lawn chairs.  Vintage lawn chairs  are selling for about $85.00 each.  $170.00

I am re-purposing this antique school desk as a planting table.  A simple planting table sells for about $100.00 and antique desks sell for around $50.00, so let’s say we saved $75.00.

A vintage door.  I’ve seen people re-purpose these into benches.  That would be a fun project!  Vintage doors sell for about $50.00.

Piano guts!  I have a few ideas for re-purposing this.  I would say the salvageable materials here are worth $100.00

Terra Cotta flower pot liners.  These come in handy for plants, bird feeders, etc.  Saved about $8.00.

Screen windows!  Invaluable for drying herbs and seed saving.  I would value these at $10.00 each and I had 4.  $40.00!

5 old windows!  I can make cold frames with those!  Windows are expensive, but I’m going to stay on the cheap side and say $50.00 each, so $250.00!

BENEFITS:

• Keeping items out of the landfill
• Getting usable items for free
• Gathering free materials that can be up-cycled into items you can sell
• Having fun hunting for things

I hope I peaked your interest in free stuff and that you didn’t mind the tour of my messy garage!   Now for the grand total!!   Drum roll…..

MONEY SAVED $693.00!!!!

🙂