Scrounging Pieces of Work

One of the most fun things I love to do in my spare time is to go scrounging when it's Council Pick-Up time.  People can have the most fascinating things to throw out.  I once saw a broken up stereo system and grabbed a piece of it, brought into my place all because I saw a $2.00 coin stuck in the back of the mechanics of it!  Yep, I was money poor and needed the cash, but I pulled it apart and got that coin out and put it away the Sunday paper the following week.

Most times, whenever there's scrounging to be had around a unit complex, we have people who do what is commonly called 'a runner'.  It's where they haven't paid their rent and are in trouble with the law and they don't have any money to move their stuff, so they just leave everything - but their clothes - and the rest of us grab what we like from the car port (once it's all out there).

Another time - this year in fact - I was walking down Kingston Road and found a bag full of books sitting outside somebody's house.  I checked the whole bag and found it was just books - and nothing else (as these people have little kids and I didn't wish to have their old toys mixed in) - and so I bundled up the books and took them home with me; leaving them just inside the front door before I went out again to go grocery shopping for the day.

One time, one of my friends (they've moved since), minded some furniture for a flatmate in their car port.  They covered it all over with a tarpaulin and made sure it was secure.  When they hadn't heard from him in a month, and tried to contact him and found that he was nowhere to be found, they let everyone have a go at his stuff.  I scored a little black coffee table and two nests of 3-legged shelves.  The rest of the stuff vanished within the weekend of it being a free-for-all!  A week later, he came back and was shocked they let his stuff go.  They did explain that they couldn't find him... so he had to start over again with furniture; unfortunate but true.

The old black coffee table I've had for about 5 or 6 years.

The new coffee table I found outside a house at Keperra yesterday

Over the last year or so, I've been looking for a coffee table to replace the little black one I've had for around five or six years - since that time of scrounging from that car port of furniture and only needing that one thing - and yesterday, I spotted the new one I needed!  It was sitting on a footpath outside a house at Keperra and Mum and I drove past it!  And being the kind of person I am, I spent about half and hour at my brother's house before I walked back to the house and found it still sitting there waiting for me!  Yay!  I looked it over - and made sure it wasn't damaged or had any broken rungs - before looking around the street.  Once I knew the coast was clear and nobody was coming out of the house to stop me from taking it away (as some people do), I picked it up, balanced the top of it on top of my head (with the legs sticking up skyward) and began walking back the way I had come.  Yeah, I looked peculiar with a coffee table on my head, but it was the best way to travel seeing nobody else came with me.  So, there you have it, my most recent find!  What have you scrounged lately that has made your place look great - and you'd swear it looks a million dollars?  Leave a comment and let us all in on your secrets?  Until my next post, keep creating!