curb farmer

i am such a garbage gazer. when i go running or for a bike ride and i see people’s trash out on the curb, my eyes are always checking out their non-bagged items. i mean, the furniture-type trash. i can’t believe some of the things that people throw away. don’t they know that their are second hand places that will come to pick this stuff up for free and then sell it to someone else who will use it instead of it going to a landfill?! i have even briefly considered making some sort of volunteer career out of driving around town and picking up people’s perfectly good things and taking them to thrift stores. briefly.

so it just kills me when i see something on the curb that someone could use and i find myself thinking and thinking about whether or not i could find a use for that object. i keep resisting the urge to pick up this tiny charcoal grill on one of the streets where i run. my brain keeps trying to figure out if i could make it into an outdoor fireplace (with just a little cement and a few rocks? or some spare metal parts?).

recently, on the way home from church on my bike, i came across a really nice curbfull of throwaways. there were a few chairs, some flower pots, and a whole board covered with rows of nails and perfectly good embroidery thread hanging from the nails! i snagged all of the thread (hello cheap craft supplies!) and was checking out the chairs when i realized that the house was exactly across the street from one of the families in my church. we’re having a fund-raiser yard sale later this summer at the church (hosted by this particular family) so i approached the dad who was in his garage and asked if maybe they would be willing to rescue the chairs. i pointed out that the kids could paint them decoratively and sell them as art. he loved the idea and went over and got two of the three chairs. the third chair didn’t look like much–a squarish stool painted pink with drippy paint of other colors all over it (and not the on-purpose kind, just the i-used-this-stool-while-painting kind of drips) so i think he left it there. i biked on home with my embroidery thread pondering on that third chair. i thought i remembered seeing steps on it–the kind that you can either fold into the chair to make it into a regular stool, or swing out to make it into a step stool with little stairs. i’ve always liked those kinds of chairs and never had one. i finally decided that it would be very handy to have in our basement whenever we finally get the shelves on the wall because then we could reach the stuff on the top and not have to drag a step stool in every time. plus, it could be extra i’m-waiting-for-my-turn-at-pool seating. and it would look so cute if the seat were painted in stripes. ok, the last thought sold me. so when i got home, i called the family who had grabbed the first two chairs to paint and sell and asked if they could please also pick up the third chair for me and i’d stop by to pick it up the next day. i had to leave a message because they didn’t answer their phone, so later, they called back to let me know that they had been successful in getting the pink chair for me and that i could pick it up whenever. mr. happy stuff was the one who answered the phone when they called back. i heard him say, “ok… ok, thanks, i’ll let her know” and he hung up and said, “now you have other people picking up trash for you?!” that chair is going to be so cute. and so not in the landfill.

and here’s a photo of it all done!