Dumpster Diving

This is essentially an outline for the book I hope to write.

I guess I figured out this reclamation business on accident, I hadn’t meant to become a dumpster diver but perhaps it was my fate. I don’t actually believe in fate, so instead, let’s say that some people are either cut out for or conditioned for certain things in life. My dad called me Nachita, the feminine version of my grandfather’s nickname. Dad said the man was always finding new ways to make money, one creative, crazy venture after another. He sold galletas and cacahuates, with my dad and his younger brother usually enlisted in the enterprise. Walking up and down narrow cobblestone roads in what Dad always called Old Mexico, the young boys would holler as they went, advertising their wares. Dad always had a funny, kind of obnoxious sneer when he rehearsed his old lines. Galletas! Cacahuates! Dulces! Chicle!

Though he hadn’t appreciated his dad’s schemes as a child, being constantly conscripted into service and not allowed many opportunities for free play time, he told me many times how much he had learned and how he grew to appreciate his dad’s efforts. I took this as reassurance and encouragement. More than once, my son--young, skinny, and wiry like a monkey—was hoisted into bins with small openings, able to get to things that I couldn’t.

Dad laughed so much that his belly shook when I told him about Reagan, my son, handing discarded treasures out to me from inside the dimly lit dumpsters. Laughter was almost always Dad’s reaction to my scavenging stories, but the look in his eye, that sparkle, told me how proud he was of my ingenuity. He often said, “Whatever you’ve got to do.” I hope he really meant that.

So, following in the footsteps of my revered ancestor, I was looking for ways to earn some extra money while still keeping the agreement I had made with my husband. Upon starting a family, I had agreed, under coercion, to be a stay-at-home mom. This was after having consistently earned a paycheck since the age of twelve. It was much harder than I anticipated. I had many things I wanted to do and our single income didn’t allow for all that we wanted for our family. I began clipping coupons, then realized that I was paying a lot of money to get the coupons. It so happened that while dropping off stacks of the resulting newspapers at a local recycling bin, I noticed a brand new, intact coupon insert sitting on top of the piles of paper detritus. It was a revelation.

After searching several recycling bins in the area, I found a coupon-clipper’s Shangri la: bundles of undelivered newspapers, all containing coupon inserts. I grabbed every one and loaded them into my van for later dissection. Soon I was a coupon-queen, bringing home piles of free merchandise from the grocery store every week. Our household budget seemed to stretch and before long we were putting a few dollars into savings each month. I was proud of my accomplishment, but like a true junkie, it just wasn’t enough. I knew I could do better, save more, make a bigger difference. It became something of an obsession, similar to my earlier years of running. I had found a new high and would spend the next few years chasing its memory.

It came naturally, that first glance into a dumpster. It was sitting next to one of my regular recycling bins, where I found coupons, books, maps, vintage greeting cards, paper gift bags, and plenty of shipping material. A small business was beginning to sprout, and this new discovery propelled me quickly to a full-fledged, profitable enterprise. Something was protruding from the neighboring bin and curiosity overcame revulsion. Inside the bin was a bicycle, and a box of yard sale leftovers. That day, my life as a money-making, earth-saving dumpster diver, began in earnest!

Some say dumpster diver or scavenger, but another term I learned as I got deeper into the practice, was picker. I loved the title immediately. It signified for me a position of having choices and options. I have the benefit or privilege of picking and choosing which bins I will hit, which items I will take, and what I will ultimately do with them. Over time, a picker learns what is worth her time. The distinction, in my case, is that I have a dual mission. I don’t just want the things that will sell or be useful in my home. I also want to fight the tide of waste that seems to be increasing daily. I know I can’t make a huge difference on my own, but still I choose to pick not just the good stuff, but also the many things that can still be used by someone, somewhere. 

Like I said, schools and parks were gold mines. Whether from the school decluttering and teachers retiring, or from local residents discarding the unsold remains of a Saturday yard sale, these often-overlooked bins are really massive treasure chests hiding untold wealth and wonder. Like any good treasure hunter, one should don appropriate gear when venturing into their depths. Gloves, long sleeves and pants, sometimes a face mask, and always close-toed, supportive shoes; all of these make for a safer, more productive expedition. I also like to bring a step ladder, though more agile adventurers are wont to simply vault over the side. I also recommend long handled, sturdy tools with hooks or grabbing mechanisms for items that are beyond reach. This is especially useful when your particular bin is filled not only with treasure, but also varieties of spoilage and waste from which even the longest pants and most solid of shoes will not protect you.

I began making scheduled rounds of my favorite bins, including an old, lidless yellow bin in the parking lot of a shady park. Not one to draw attention to myself while picking, I learned which specific weekday or weekend hours should be set aside for which bins and have mostly stayed consistent ever since. In the yellow bin I have mostly found apartment clean-outs; pieces of furniture—a hope chest or desk—hanging over the edge of the bin. The overflow usually signals potential. One of my best finds in that bin, a pair of children’s cowboy boots in nearly perfect condition, sold online for $30.00 plus shipping. It wasn’t always about earning money though, sometimes the goal was to save money by spending less. In the same bin, I found bed sheets for my children, blankets for winter, a My Little Pony puzzle and assorted coloring books that cost me nothing but time. My kids never knew the difference, and our debt balance continued to fall, even as our savings account blossomed.

On occasion, though, these frequent apartment evictions coincide with Luaus, fish fries, and barbecues. The park is popular in the summer, owing to our glaring sun and the protective shade of hundred-year-old trees. All of my planning with days, times, and protective gear, does not immunize me from the effects of an occasional vomit-inducing hoard. A large bag of fish heads, still attached to transparent lengths of bones, sat next to a bag, stuffed--and securely tied—with several brand new, complete outfits from no less than Bloomingdales. Original sales tags were still attached. I kept a pair of light, comfortable, striped pajamas for myself; the rest I sold online for a tidy sum. I have been lucky in that many of the nastiest bins have also turned out to be the most financially rewarding picks.

Just as storied troves are often buried in deep, forgotten, or overlooked places, down perilous paths requiring dangerous journeys, these modern-day hoards also carry an inherent level of risk and danger. But with perseverance, an intrepid diver will be rewarded beyond her wildest imaginings. Had I been turned off by the offending odor of a weekend’s worth of filleted fish bones and spilled beer, my family wouldn’t have been able to afford a trip to the Pacific coast that we enjoyed later that summer. It comes down to deciding what you want and what you are willing to do to get it.

Finding gold—real gold—was one of my most exciting discoveries, but also terribly sad. Thick flakes of real, shiny, timeless gold were taped on the last page of a small red booklet, used as samples for amateurs panning for gold in a touristy area of northern California. This was a memory, perhaps the only evidence left of a mid-century family vacation, and soon I realized that the greatest monetary treasures I would uncover, were often the result of hurried families, following the death of an aged loved one. 

I despaired, realizing that in their drive to clean out Grandma’s little brick house as quickly as possible, preparing it for resale or for grandkids to move in, these descendants would just pile everything into boxes and bags, unceremoniously dumping fine jewelry, hand-embroidered baby clothes, antique family photos and letters, mementos, relics of a lifetime, into the bin around the corner from my house. Up until this moment, even with my environmental concerns floating in the background of my mind and affecting my choices, digging in bins had been most importantly about my family’s bank book. Holding in my hands what amounted to an entire human life, or at least a big part of one, shook me shifted changed my perception. Every carefully crafted piece, every memory, be they photos, diaries, bank documents, ticket stubs, military discharge documents, all of them were in that bin, then my house, then sold to the highest bidder. I had a mission to accomplish, I wanted to be out of debt, but I also felt the undeniability of mortality weighing on me as I sifted through people’s lives, took pictures, and wrote detailed descriptions for each item on my favorite auction website.

************************

I wonder if I am any better than the families who carelessly throw out their relative’s lives in the days after putting their bodies in the ground. I do my best to appreciate what I find and treat the items well. I don’t always succeed; I live a busy, full life, and make mistakes. I still feel like crying, years after realizing that some beautiful needle-point work had ended up ruined with mildew because I hadn’t stored it properly one winter. I comfort myself with the fact that I am making efforts that other people aren’t, and most wouldn’t. This line of thinking serves as small comfort as I hear my phone chiming, Cha-ching! Another online sale!

After several years of mining in the bins, just as with any profession, one becomes desensitized to upsetting finds. Barring my recurring nightmare of finding a dead body, not much bothers me anymore. It’s not that I have lost my compassion or that I no longer realize what the over-flowing boxes I find mean. I guess I am just at a point where I’ve seen enough death and devastation in my own life, have accepted my mortality, and chosen to focus now on living. To live the way that I really want to, I have to earn money, and that requires emotional and sentimental distance. It is just another necessary tool in my dumpster-diving belt.

 I can now spot these lifetime loads on sight. Crocheted afghans, photo albums, tiny patent leather baby shoes, pieced quilts, love notes and anniversary cards; these are the clues, and their prevalence is likely telling of something profound, maybe along the lines of the downfall of society. I’m really not sure. Anymore, I just see in them potential monetary value. I have to make the disconnect; instead of imagining soft hands working long needles, or small babies swaddled in blankets passed down through generations, I see my children hugging Mickey Mouse, or taking piano lessons. 

Some things though, are hard to overlook, despite my cultivated lack of sentiment, and find their way into my contemplations. It seems that the bigger houses get, in the neighborhoods surrounding my humble bins, there must be room for at least one item from Grandma’s hand-stitched trousseau. Can no space be made for a single heirloom in the cavernous rooms, otherwise filled with electronics, over-stuffed furniture, and mountains of unused toys made in China.

To be fair, I’ve realized and accepted in recent months that we can’t keep everything and not everything is worth trying to keep and the stress that results from piles of special things stacked around us can lead to a decrease in our quality of life. But I also know the value of a dollar, an ounce of real gold, and the work that goes into 18-point tatted lace. My mom, in disgust, ranted about the hours that go into such masterpieces as I have found lying next to last week’s pizza boxes.

The children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or estate managers that hurried through decades of artifacts, seemed to have barely looked at what they were discarding. If they had realized that they were throwing out vintage Italian silver jewelry, antique copper, designer clothing—still with tags—souvenirs from places that no longer existed, and a never-ending assortment of other money-making articles, would they have had second thoughts? Maybe. Maybe not. Moving—selling—these goods, it requires times and effort.

For someone like me, a busy mother of three, the discoveries in those steel bins were a life-changing avenue of income to supplement my husband’s salary. With my goals in mind, I have spent countless hours turning refuse into resale and doing my part to make the world a little better, all while my kids have sat buckled in our mini-van, watching movies and playing games for an hour at a time. The extra income and overall savings came to mean more and more in our family’s life. For a couple of difficult years, following the nationwide recession, my husband was regularly laid off from his job, for weeks at a time.

When his work situation became dire, with me still wanting to enroll my children in extracurricular activities, and see the world, I knew that it was time to stretch myself and go to the next level. Yard sales every other week, online classifieds, cleaning out foreclosed homes and apartment evictions, always keeping my eyes open for money-making possibilities, it began to add up.

What began with a quick peek over the edge of that first dumpster, has grown over the years into a source of consistent revenue for our family, resulting in many of the extras that we hoped for and the ability to pay off all of our debts, save our mortgage. Bags of collectible die-cast toy cars, vintage action figures, plush bears, and assorted Disneyana, have translated into an effective action plan for not only making ends meet during rough times, but also for realizing a few dreams.

The years of diving have brought with them plenty of learning opportunities and necessary adaptations. I learned as I went along, how to be safer, more efficient, and how to better keep the kids happy. They loved being rewarded with new books—discards from the school’s library that we regularly found in the recycling bin. We now have an extensive collection of quality, enjoyable reading material on our shelves. McDonald’s Happy Meal toys and unopened bags of water balloons, totes full of crayons and colored pencils, necklaces and trading cards, spools of ribbon and endless basketballs. My children’s toy bins and shelves filled quickly and there was always something to entertain them in the van while Mommy hunted.  I also learned to bring snacks, drinks, and to know where the closest bathroom facilities were at all times. The best part of our adventures has been and always will be, never knowing what we’ll find in our treasure bins.

We don’t keep every toy and some we don’t even play with; there have been some that were incredibly valuable and those we’ve sold or only played with gently, for a day or two, before listing them on online auctions. The kids and I have an understanding: if the toy isn’t worth anything to collectors, it will join our family, at least until we reach our predetermined capacity. Every few months there is a necessary cull, room made for new additions.

When they were old enough, and the bins were safe enough—usually recycling bins full of paper and cardboard—my kids were thrilled to get their first chances to dive in themselves. My boy Reagan was first, then convincing his older sister that it wasn’t bad at all, or scary. Young enough not to realize how strange our behavior was, how contrary to the consumerism that surrounds their daily American lives, they only thought about how cool it was when we found Transformer bed sheets and a Barbie dream house in the bins we searched. They also knew that whatever we earned from our scavenging efforts was going to fund vacations and adventures, complete with seals, dolphins, and a gigantic skeleton of whale bones.

Soon, walking home from school, the kids would make their own discoveries, in gutters or Monday-morning garbage day bins posted outside of neighbors’ homes; proudly bringing them home for me to see and give approval and encouragement. It has become a family business, with necessary changes and accommodations being made along the way, but with all of us invested. Even my husband, who initially adopted the typical response of disgust and embarrassment, began to see the value in our fringe trade. This miraculous change in perspective came to pass when I found a spectacular Makita power drill and charger in the bin behind Maple Hills High School. I meant to sell it, but James, my husband, grabbed it right away and has been using it happily for years. Any time he veers back toward the revulsion camp, I remind him of that drill and he overlooks my exploits for a time, not always fully realizing just how much of an impact this enterprise has had on our finances. I only push the fact when he begins to get in my way or complains about stacks of boxes in our shed every summer.

Together with my family and the occasional guest diver, we have rescued what are probably mountains of reusable goods from landfills. Though lifestyles like ours are becoming more popular and trendy in certain areas, particularly the granola-minded northwest coast and waste-conscious New York City, the majority of people involuntarily grimace or sneer when hearing that my kids’ beds were covered in sheets and blankets found in black garbage bags, next to broken T.V. stands and expired canned goods in a dumpster next to our city building. Bleach is an amazing tool.

I don’t need to dig through other people’s waste anymore. My husband has been promoted and provides well for our family’s needs. It is no longer a situation of almost-desperation, but rather of stewardship, example, and extra. I want to influence as many people as I can, in hopes that many individual small efforts might add up to dramatic results.

I should reiterate that I don’t believe in keeping every single memento or family heirloom. We live in clutter, being suffocated, robbed of freedom and time. Life should ideally be about moments, values, and memories that we pass on to our children. I’m still working out what the right amount of sentimental keepers is for myself and our family. What I am pretty sure of though, is that the items we do keep, will only be the ones we cherish, and the ones we discard, will find another life and not a place in a mountainous landfill. 

Your kids might not want to keep all of your stuff, and they shouldn’t, but they will inherit the world you leave behind.