Your Trash is My Treasure: How to Find Free Stuff on the Side of the Road

So, my boyfriend and I never have any money, right? I mean, every once in a while (like, really, hardly ever) we'll go out to eat, but for the most part, I cook all our food at home. We don't go out to movies more than once every couple of months, we don't blow all our non-existent cash shopping at mega malls, and we definitely don't spend money to stay in a hotel when we have a perfectly good apartment to sleep in. But we have to do -something- right, besides the usual favorite couple activity, so what do we do? We trash pick and scope curb alerts. Our new three-bedroom apartment has been furnished almost entirely through trash picked treasures or second-hand deals from local yard sales. I'll post some pictures as soon as I get my camera hooked up to my computer, but here are a few of our recent scores:

1) Dr. Scholl's Paraffin Wax Bath - picked up at the side of the road two nights ago. Must have had a yard sale and not felt like bringing the leftovers inside. This is the type of thing I'd be curious to try (woohoo! creepy wax hands!) but wouldn't never, ever purchase. It works fine, came with some brand new wax that melted just fine, and within an hour, I had turned my hand into a candle, sorta, creeped out Nick, and then gotten bored with it.

2) Room Divider - this I will take a picture of once I've finished refurbishing it. Basically, this is a tri-fold screen designed to hold 8x10 pictures behind glass. It's wooden, and it's missing the glass and the backing stuff, but I don't care, because I've got enough scrap fabric and stacks of cute print fabric and a staple gun, baby.

3) Solid wood desk - okay, this required some TLC, but it was WORTH it. So, I saw a curb alert the other day that was literally right around the corner. Fuck yeah, I was on it. I get there, and I kid you not, there were 5 cars already there and people picking through all of the shit. I had to park a block away. I walked up, saw the exact thing I was hoping to find, grabbed it and hauled that bitch down the street. Yes, it was heavy, but it was worth it because it was a small wooden desk, about 3 feet wide, which was exactly the size I needed to create a small corner office space in our new living room. It had some mold on it though, which is totally nasty. Luckily (or, unluckily, really), I had dealt with a mold issue on some stuff I had stored in my friend's basement this summer, so I already had a bucket of bleach water ready to go. Before I even brought the desk inside, I wiped down the whole desk with the bleach, making sure not to miss anywhere, then wiped it down again with clean, hot water. I let it dry for a while in the sun and now I have a kickass desk.

4) Okay, this wasn't free, but it's so cool and so worth the $1.50 that I have to tell you about it. I got a Home Pride portable washing machine at a yard sale in Cranston. Basically, it's this big bucket with a motor. You can add some clothes, maybe like a pair of jeans, a tank top, and your undergutchies, add a little bit of soap, and hot water. You plug it in, and 15 minutes later, your laundry is washed. Rinsing the clothes after is kind of a bitch, but I plug the machine and put it in the tub so at least it's not a pain to clean up after. I decided that next time, I'll rinse my hand, then rinse out the bucket and put the clothes back in with clean water to get an extra powerful rinse. The clothes took a long time, like two days, to dry, but I think once we're using the heat, it will go faster. I plan on using it for small stuff to save cash at the laundry mat (since I am so not paying $2 to wash and $2 to dry for the machine in our basement, ever.) I used to do my laundry in the bathtub using my toiliet plunger to agitate, so this is totally a step up.