Fall Garbatrage, Weeks 1 & 2

It's that time of year. No, not the time for cooler weather, pumpkin spice lattes, or football. Though it is also those times. It's time for more garbatrage! (For the uninitiated, "garbatrage" is our fancy made-up word for curb shopping.)

This fall we're doing something different. We're working around Lucy's routine, which ends up with everyone being happier, even if we end up with fewer awesome free things. We're waking up at our natural time (7 or 7:30 am) on Saturdays, getting ourselves together as quickly as we can, and going out. The trucks start picking things up at 7:30, so that makes things exciting. But we've come across some pretty great stuff, considering we're going out so late in the game.

The first week, we came across a wad of garden netting (for keeping birds off your berries, say), which, believe it or not, I had been in the market for.

We also found a trash bag full of little girl's clothes. We found the same thing last year -- it might have been the same house. Size 5-6, with some exceptions. Not dirty, not bug-infested. Just... used. I washed them all anyway, and I'm donating most of them. The things I saved out? Pants. Which made me realized I have a problem with pant hoarding. Any time I come across pants that might possibly fit either my very tall husband or my very tall daughter, I buy/keep them. I mean, I kept a pair of girls 6 slim jeans, because it's entirely possible that Lucy will fit into them next year. That's probably crazy. But not outside the realm of extreme possibility, as Fox Mulder would say.

So that was week 1. Oh, plus two commodes!

Week 2? Even better! Actually, going out late seems to have been to my extreme advantage during week 2. I found some books (mostly dime-store crap, but one book that I'd actually been wanting to read), about 500 photo slides (mostly from the 40s! Score!), and a cardboard drawer storage thingy. (I've been on the lookout for more storage for our garage, but very little of what I actually need will fit in our car!)

The slides were particularly awesome, because they had no dew on them, which means they had been put out in the morning, which means it's a good thing we were out late, otherwise I wouldn't have found them. Ha!

But I also happened upon the curb of a young family, the mother and two daughters of which were playing outside when we came upon them. On their curb?

A fancy toddler bed rail

And a Britax Marathon car seat.

Um, excuse me? Britax are kind of the BMWs of carseats. I asked if there was anything wrong with it. She said, "No, she just doesn't need it anymore. And I know I'm not supposed to sell it, so..." I asked if it was expired, if it had been in a crash. "No, we just don't need it." Okay then.

[You can thank me later for leaving out the rant about how carseat companies have the federal government and consumers wrapped around their little finger...]

So now we have two carseats. Which is good, because every now and then a friend will invite me and Lucy to do something with them, and it would be such a hassle to take the other Britax (Craigslist -- some people don't care so much about the No Resale Rule) out of the car and then put it back, especially since we have it in rear-facing, and that's a whole heck of a lot more complicated to put back. Now I can just put the spare in the friend's car front-facing (Norman says I'm doing a cost-benefit analysis there), and off we go! Hooray!

Also, commodes. Three commodes, two of which were somehow hidden. People! Throw off your commode shame and embrace the fact that everyone has to replace their commodes at some point in their career as a homeowner! It's okay! We're not going to judge you!

[Especially you, sir, since it is clearly an excellent idea to replace your avocado/mustard colored commode with a commode of pretty much any other color.]

[Perhaps this homeowner was so attached to the old commode that they wanted to make it a proper shelter for the night to keep the dew off. Perhaps.]

And now, some sad news. I found out this last week that this will be our final month of garbatrage. There are usually two garbatrage months per year -- April and October. But this next April's garbatrage has been canceled by the city. They lost their rate increase vote (why the people of Norman get to vote on rate increases, I'll never know), so they're punishing us by taking away the garbatrage. Boooooo! And we are, in all likelihood, moving away next summer, so this is it! Let's make the most of it!