Spring Cleaning - Part 3

Now that the kids are back to school, things are nice and quiet at home giving me some time to better concentrate on my posts. Christmas vacation is great and all, but near the end everyone gets a bit of cabin fever, boredom sets in, and then the fighting starts. Listening to petty arguing, and hearing "Moooom!" yelled a thousand times leaves me counting down the days 'til they go back to school... that's when my Christmas vacation starts :P

So here is a look at all the stuff I picked up during the 3rd spring cleaning weekend. This was a big area, so there was lots of stuff...

I'll start with one of my favourite things, what I like to call surprise boxes (or bags). These are boxes or bags that I peek into and see that there is definitely good stuff inside. Since I try to make my pile stops as quick as possible, I'll throw these into my car quickly to sort through at home.

Here is the surprise box before taking everything out

and here is everything that came out of it...holey moley! 

There were tonnes of tea light candle holders, bonboniere bags, plastic shot glasses, confetti, floating candles, rolls of ribbon and flower candle rings. Everything was still in the packages and/or still had tags attached. I'm guessing this must have been for some kind of party that ended up cancelled.

Other things I picked up included...

This vintage looking thing. I had no idea what it was when I grabbed it, but I knew it looked older, so it came with me.

Once I got home I looked it up online, and it turns out it is an Abu-Roken smoker, mainly used when camping for smoking fish. Here's what is all inside...

I also found a bunch of decorative collectors plates in wooden frames

Lots of books

Dyson vacuum attachments. These were like new so I guess they were thrown out because the owner never used them.

A cute table top water fountain. It works just fine, but a frog had come off. I don't know if this is why they threw it out or not, but I just glued him back on and it was as good as new.

An amazing mid-century lamp

Some hair irons and a brush. I pulled the brush and the bottom iron right out of the original (yet wet and soggy) box. You can see the cord on one iron is still all neatly wrapped up with a tie and a plastic protector is on the prongs of the plug.

Ironically, this is the second "hippy" bear I have found. The last one was also during a spring break clean up I believe.

A funky lava lamp

 A nice little Japanese plate set

Various knickknacks 

A beautiful pair of ladies skates

A man was putting a set of lamps at the curb, so i stopped to check them out. I grabbed these two, and there was also a matching chandelier, but as I looked at it, I noticed two of the glass lamp shades was busted. The guy said "Sorry I broke that one, but the others are good, nothing wrong with them, we just changed some of our lights."

This nice mid-century chair sat by itself at the curb with some garbage cans. 

This old mint green farm window was pretty cute and I knew I would be able to easily sell it to the Pinterest crowd, so into the car she went.

Antique wooden shoe stretchers

Vintage rotary telephones :)

A working popcorn machine

Some school/office supplies still wrapped up

 I grabbed this silver painted vintage frame from a pile, and when I did, I heard a kid (that I didn't know was watching me through the window) yell excitedly "Mom, she's taking the frame!" LOL

At another pile, an old man was sitting in his garage when I went to check out what he was tossing. He told me to help myself to anything I wanted, but there wasn't really anything good except for this cute vintage metal breadbox. When I grabbed it, he said it was a good breadbox and that they don't make them last like that anymore. 

 A very vintage print of some roses

and this oil painting in a gorgeous frame.

I also pulled this guy out of a pile, still wrapped up and unopened...

It's Boaty McBoatface!

Aww.... he's so cute! Why would anyone throw him out?

I also got some misc. jewellery, nothing too exciting or valuable, but not junk.

The watch is new and was still packaged in the bubble wrap and box 

I'll finish off this entry with another surprise bag that I grabbed. Here it is after opening it up at home. That's my dog Barney checking it all out.

Here is what was inside... some big Christmas bear decorations, some angels, and a rustic star. You can see a bunch of other small Santa tree ornaments in the picture above...

And a whole bunch or working lights.

Stay tuned for part 4, the conclusion of my spring cleaning finds, coming soon!

Keep looking out for treasures, and happy picking!

Diving into 2017

I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful holiday season and started off 2017 happy and healthy :) I had a great time with my family spending a few days snuggled up in bed with my kids and husband watching movies and munching on Christmas goodies.

The garbage year started off pretty good. I totaled up all my sales for the year and I'm thrilled. I didn't count any found change this year as I didn't really find much, maybe $5.00 worth, and I also did not cash in or sell any scrap silver and gold jewellery that I found. I missed 2 town-wide garage sales this year due to family obligations and weather, but I was able to get to 2 of them, and I decided to have one of my own at home. Those gave me a total of $529.80,  and my online sales totaled up to $3731.00, for a grand total of:

$4260.80

That's $1834.13 more than I did last year, and I'm hoping that I can beat it again this year!

On new years day I had been cooped up in the house for a few days, and I was itching to get out and get some fresh air. As I was lying in bed that morning, I was thinking about how it was New Years Day and that all the stores would be closed. It dawned on me that nobody would be around, so I thought that this would be a great day to try my hand at dumpster diving. 

I've always been curious about it, and I have peeked in some dumpsters in the past, but I'm just a big chicken when it comes down to it. I don't know why, since I have no problem checking out garbage on trash days. I've seen so many amazing dumpster scores online, but I've never really found anything good in dumpsters myself. 

The first 4 dumpsters I peeked into didn't have anything but a bunch of trash bags. Some were clear and I could see mainly papers and stuff like coffee cups in them. Since I just went out on a whim and I was a bit nervous, I also didn't really come prepared. The dumpsters came up to about chest level on me and I couldn't really reach in to move things around for a better look. I should have brought a stool and/or some kid of reaching tool. 

I kept driving around, finding mainly trash, and dumpsters that had snow and ice piled on their doors so that they were either almost impossible to lift to look inside, or they were just frozen shut. One door would always be clear and open, but I just couldn't look around all the bags and boxes blocking the hole. I did manage to find one bag full of brand new personalized Christmas ornaments that I guess didn't sell, so they were just tossed out, but that just didn't seem like the big scores I've seen most people find, so I was a bit discouraged. 

I then stopped at one last dumpster before I was going to call it quits and head home. I kept the car running while I hopped out because I figured I was just going to lift the lid, see nothing, and then just hop back in the car to drive away. Instead I lifted the lid, my eyes popped out of my head, and I exclaimed "Oh. My. God." 

I pulled my van over closer to the dumpster and slid the side door open. My oldest son was with me because he wanted to get out of the house as well, and when he realized what I was doing, he asked me "What? What are you doing?" And I told him "This thing is full of stuff"  This dumpster was a bit lower so I was able to lean in over the edge. There were just boxes and boxes with products spilled out of them. I grabbed one and started filling it with whatever I could reach. When it was full, I dumped it out in my car, and went back to fill it again. My son's eyes popped out of his head each time and he kept saying things like "What?!" and "Seriously!? They threw that out??"  I ended up filling the box and emptying it 4 more times before things were out of my reach. Although I managed to save the majority of it, there were still so many things I had to leave behind. I just hope another diver was able to come along and rescue the rest.

Here is a look at all that I rescued

Some closer looks

Wow. There are tonnes of skin, hair and beauty products, nothing is expired or open, it is all sealed and new. The food all had "best before" dates of, the latest, 2 weeks prior. These dates are just manufacturer suggestions, and this stuff will still be good and fine to eat for at least a few more weeks or even months. Anything else was probably just tossed to make room for new stock. 

I gave a lot of it away, and nobody cared that it came from a dumpster, they were just shocked and amazed that this perfectly good stuff was just thrown away and not even donated or anything. Honestly, the dumpsters were a lot cleaner than I thought they would be, I really didn't see anything gross, just a big rusty boxes filled with bags and boxes. I was pleasantly surprised, but none the less, everything was wiped down with disinfectant wipes just in case.

On the not so great garbage side of things, I did miss out on the first large pick up of the year for a few towns because of the weather. We ended up with an ice storm which knocked power out for a few days to the area. We were lucky however that we have a generator to help us out, and that our neighbourhood was only affected for 24 hours. 

In any case, we're warm and healthy and that's a great treasure in itself :)

Wishing you much happiness for 2017! Keep looking out for treasures, and happy picking!