Remember Offbeat Bride Claire’s puppet wedding from way back in 2008? You know, the one with the male flower girl? Well, Claire’s still living the offbeat life!
Every Sunday night in the summer, my husband and I hook our little dog Neville onto his leash, grab a flashlight, and head outside to take a walk. We get giddy as we make our way down the street, swinging the flashlight from side to side, shining light on the bulky shapes lining the sidewalks. Sunday night is curbside shopping night in our town of Somerville, Massachusetts.
We never know what might come home with us. We’ve found a dining room set, complete with matching chairs. We’ve found not just one, but two couches. I remember sitting on one of them, hugging the cushions and giving the stinkeye to other collectors while my husband ran to get a Ziptruck. We’ve found beautiful bookshelves left behind by people who have upgraded, or moved on to new lives. Our house is almost completely furnished and decorated by things we’ve found curbside.
I can look at each item in my house, and remember the adventure that we had getting it home, or the fun that we had fixing it. Like the time my husband came home with a little tea hutch. We sanded it down and discovered that underneath a cracked and peeling mud-brown finish was a beautiful golden oak. The hutch now sits in our kitchen, holding our canisters of tea. Every time I walk past it, it makes me smile.
I am always surprised by the amazing things that people throw away. But I suppose that our cast-offs might be treasures for other people, too. I like to imagine that the things that we’ve chosen to give up have found homes as good as ours, and make someone just as happy as they made us.
Tips to start shopping curbside:
- Find out the garbage days for your area. We live in an area with a lot of renters, so there is always stuff being left out.
- Even better, if you live in a college town, find out the typical move out date. College kids leave behind gold mines of free stuff.
- Bring a flashlight. That chair you think is a nice green in the dark may turn out to be a (still awesome but not matching) chartreuse with light on it.
- Bring a buddy. You never know how heavy something may be and you’ll need help to carry things home. You may also need someone to guard an item.
- Make friends with Pinesol and Lysol (or a green alternative).
- Rehabbing furniture is not as hard as you’d think. A block of foam and a cute fabric can make the difference between trash and a kitschy treasure.
- Be careful of upholstered furniture. Bed bugs are on the rise.
- A coat of paint can completely change a piece of furniture. Don’t pass something up that has good bones because it’s not exactly right.
- If you can’t quite bring yourself to take something home off the street, start off by checking out some yard sales. You never know what someone will be selling for ten dollars.
Best of luck in your curbside shopping! If you’ve already been, what’s the best curbside or dumpster score you’ve ever found? We’d love to see them in the Offbeat Home Flickr pool.
I have paid for exactly two things in our lounge/dining area. And that was ebay so dirt cheap. I love the eclectic look and my kids are still too small to bother paying good money on good stuff that will get spilt on, peed on, drawn on. LOVE garbage throw outs, to the detriment of my driving when there is a ‘score’ on the side of the road. I get so excited!
I’ve done this myself many a time, but an important thing to keep in mind is that some towns have laws prohibiting this. You may be willing to curb-shop regardless, but it’s still a good idea to know the rules before you decide to break them.
Dumpster diving has become a time-honored tradition for me: milk crates, 2 dressers, and awesome painted leopard print dishes (sure there’s a few nicks, but whatever) among other things. I don’t really do it purposely but when I comes across something, I’m on it!
I found a mannequin in the trash. A MANNEQUIN. The Mister and I were not yet dating, but we were walking in the same direction after an event, and we saw her legs sticking out of the trash. We looked at each other, grabbed it, and he helped me carry it home. A week later, TRUE LOVE 4-EVA, etc.
Living in New York, I won’t pick up ANYTHING wood or upholstered from the curb. Plastic and metal, sure. But if there’s even a small chance I’ll get bedbugs, then NEVER. The two weeks of my life when I thought I had bedbugs (I didn’t, I was just allergic to fabric softener) were humiliating and miserable, and that was when I only SUSPECTED I had them. Bedbugs: almost literally the worst possible thing that could happen to you in NYC.™
Gotta say, I appreciate the courtesy people who get the dread bugs do when they throw away the infected items: spray-painting “BEDBUGS” on your discarded mattress/chairs/etc ought to be standard practice.
Not always bed bugs either. I got my first experience with german cockroaches from a beautiful free dresser I found in a less than glamorous part of town. That was the month from hell. One little roach I nicknamed George. He came out from my computer when I ate, sat there at a safe distance, stared for grub, then went back into hiding when the food was gone. He must have picked up the begging habit from my dog, roaches are supposedly pretty smart. Ugh.
Please be careful doing this, although it is awesome. I won’t say I’ve never done it, becasue believe me, I have some awesome stuff that was another man’s trash.
But make sure you look at your local laws first, as, in many places, this is considered theft. I’m not saying it’s right, but it is the law. Here in my town it’s illegal to take the trash, and illegal to salvage from the dump… I get around it by scouring the curbside contents, and actually knocking on doors. “It looks like you were planning to throw this away… I was just walking by and noticed it; I could really use it. Do you mind if I take it off your hands instead?” Most people won’t say no.
My fiance and I were lucky in that the area where we were living when we got our first apartment together was very into Craigslist. Not only did we manage to furnish our entire apartment for free but we also got all of our dishes and small appliances for free from people trying to get rid of yardsale leftovers. Our mattress we pretty much dipped in bleach but everything else we just wiped down with a light cleanser and were good to go.
A lot of people gave us weird looks but we didn’t know how long we would be staying in that town and the furniture we got was functional.
I actually found my HOUSE in a curbside shopping event. We were looking to move out of our teeny-tiny apartment and knew we would need new furnature. My mom told us about a nice loveseat and arm chair out on the curb so we went to snag them. The tenant came out and thanked us for taking it because she was moving out that weekend. The next month, we moved the cast-off furnature BACK into the house.
We have since aquired new couches, but that set will always have a special place in my heart.
I absolutely love these kinds of finds. A majority of our furniture and decorations are second hand from so many different places. Recently we got some amazing chairs from an abandoned apartment in our complex.
also:
Neville Dogbottom! That made my day.
I have only purchased one piece of furniture in my life and that was found in the scratch-n-dent of a Value City Furniture backroom. Everything else has come from the curb (or my dad made it). I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years, at first out of necessity, then out of the thrill of the hunt. My now 22-year-old son used to be really embarrassed when I’d point out my latest finds to people but, gradually, he’s not only learned to appreciate it, but also takes pride in my “hobby” now too. Lest opne think my apartment looks like a college flop house, I can assure you it is beautiful… an Edwardian-flavored cozy antique-filled home. My greatest find was a fully functional 1920s era four-foot high Radio!
OK this is a tad weird. I got that EXACT same couch (with matching chair) free off of Craigslist in downstate NY about 4-5 years ago. It went to the curb when I moved out of that apartment and was gone about 20 minutes after I dragged it out. Either my couch ended up in MA or (more likely) people really liked forwarding that model to the next owners via curb!
I totally eat food out of the garbage. I do. The Market of Choice near my house (not sure if they have these elsewhere?) has a juice bar that is FOREVER throwing out perfectly good produce. The city has a compost program so they’re just tossing it into a bin with other produce, not, like, urine or kerosene or anything. Technically speaking I am trespassing when I do it, but nobody has ever said anything to me. Seriously every single morning I stop by on my way to work and grab a paper bag full of tangerines, avocados, bananas, peppers, mushrooms, entire wheatgrass plants, ginger roots, all kinds of stuff. It’s the best dumpster in the universe. I call it the Miracle Dumpster. One of my co-workers knows about this and thinks its hilarious and I sometimes bring her treats from it, she always squeals and goes, “oooh, the dumpster fairy came!”
I’ve eaten other stuff out of dumpsters too but I used to be more punk. Now it’s just the very-clean produce.
I love picking furniture off the street. Here in Melbourne Australia we live in a a very trendy, inner-city wealthy suburb that’s also right next to a University. The combination of constantly rotating student sharehouses and rich people upgrading their furniture all the time means there’s always tons of stuff to find and tons of people willing to take it. We call it the furniture circle of life. We once put our old couch (a street find in itself) back on the footpath and timed it – it was gone within half an hour!
It’s worth noting that bed bugs can be hiding anywhere on furniture. Even small cracks in wood, it’s not just cloth that harbors those little monsters. Always be wary and check over the furniture you want thoroughly. Better to spend 15 minutes doing a full inspection than having to spend 600 bucks and a lot of labor to remove an infestation where you still might have to throw out some of your things