Willful waste makes woeful want
and I might live to say
I wish I had that crumb of bread
I threw away last day
These are the annoying words that were fired at me growing up if I left so much as a trace of mashed potato on my plate. I wouldn’t be surprised if my mother had picked it up from a Dutch person because boy do they know how to be thrifty here.
I arrived home after work yesterday to see a well dressed man going through the contents of a skip that was parked in front of my neighbour’s house. Without a shame in the world he was boldly sifting through all the rubbish in it looking for anything that was remotely usable. I watched him secretly from behind the pole I was locking my bike up to, dying to know what he could salvage from the building rubble and garden remains. He eventually marched off triumphantly with a cardboard box. He had a proud glow about him as if to justify his rummaging through someone else’s rubbish in broad daylight. It was a fairly decent box though I’ll give him that – not your average banana carrier.
This reminded me of when I did a big clean out a couple of months ago and decided to throw out lots of my old clutter. I put out a broken television, a printer and an old mattress on the street and then went back upstairs to collect some other bits and bobs. By the time I came down again, all of two minutes later, all that was left was the mattress. Apparently household rubbish is a free for all until the bin men come to collect it. Which just goes to show that I had better hang on to that crumb of bread because if I do change my mind it’ll be too late – someone will have gone off with it within minutes of it being thrown out.
You need to eat all the crumbs you can get if you can hide behind a pole.
Look on it as recycling. At least you didn’t put your tat on ebay and try to flog it!
primal – hehe it was a massive pole, honest!
ellie – ebay kind of frightens me a little – maybe I should consider selling 100% genuine Dutch rubbish though
It’s very strange, the differences between countries. There has been a sofa and computer left out for the bin men for about 3 weeks on my street and no one has touched them, not even the dustmen!
‘Tis a stroky chin thought indeed…
Conortje I’m all for scavenging.When we bought our last house we ordered a medium sized skip to dump the furniture left behing by the seller, grotty patio chairs and old beds mainly.We also used it as an opportunity to get rid of some of our own junk..ten minutes into the loading we’d filled the skip and decided to call the skip hire people to (sheepishly) ask for the larger one they’d recommended and headed to bed.Next morning, I saw some movement in the skip and went outside to take a look.It was completely empty.Beds, toys, hats/shoes/handbags all gone!.This continued for three days (we cancelled the bigger skip naturally) and when they eventually came to collect the skip it was empty apart from two bags of builders rubble.
It was a bit mad to see my clothes modelled around East Wall afterward but marvellous all the same.
here people just haul stuff to the curb, stick a “FREE!” sign on it, and forget about it. it eventually disappears. old chairs, old broken toilets, random pieces of board… i have no idea who wants it but i guess one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and some people just can’t pass up a good bargain.
until it’s gone, though, it makes the curbside look pretty junky.
I wonder if I sat outside on the kerb would someone come and adopt me?
Newbie – I bet your neighbourhood is full of people looking for the crumb of bread they threw away last day
Is it just me? – very handy indeed and a great money saver!
laurie – who would want a broken toilet I ask ya. The mind boggles.
Grannymar – If I saw you on the curb I’d invite you straight in for tea and biscuits!
God I’m still almost as thrifty as my post-WW2 parents trained me to be umpteen years ago. Old habits die hard. I still have this compulsion to finish everything on my plate, even if I’m not particularly hungry. Jenny’s just the same. Though perhaps that’s not a bad thing when the UK throws away more food than just about any other nation on earth (about 30% of all food produced). I even keep all my clothes until they’re in tatters rather than replace them when they’ve still got a bit of life in them. Mind you, that’s partly because I absolutely loathe shopping. But that’s another story.
That’s quite normal in Germany too. People from Eastern Europe come here with vans to collect sofas, old bikes, furniture, etc… no joke. Usually there’s hardly anything left for the bin men.
It’s annoy me if I went to the expense of hiring a big yellow bin, and it ended up being emptied before they came to collect it!
Still, if you knew it was going to happen, you could just leave the stuff outside and they could pick it off the ground… although, technically that’s littering. Dammit.
That’s quite interesting! In Sydney council trucks pickup household goods, furniture, electrical appliances, rugs, everything other than the actual garbage material (organic and inorganic waste), twice a year. It is all on the collection calendar they distribute for the year, with magnet behind it so you can stick it on your fridge.
Few days before the collection day people stack everything on the sidewalk, in front of their house. It gets real busy for a couple of days and you see much of the stuff you didn’t want disappear, broken or not.
I think it is brilliant idea, as laurie said, one man’s trash is another one’s treasure.
Students pick up a lot of the furniture, helps them save the limited amount of money they have to start with.
“from behind the pole I was locking my bike up to”
I did that one day, big mistake, the guy moved and I couldn’t find my bike for ages…..
Nick – I also finish everything on my plate these days but I’m afraid that’s more down to greed than anything else
lenfercest – I’ve heard of people driving about in vans here too looking for useful rubbish
alan – will you have to do that with your new house? Is there a lot of work to be done on it?
gaye – only twice a year? That’s a bit strange isn’t it – what if you’re on holiday or whatever and you miss the date?
manuel – that normally happens me when I go looking for my bike after a night out – there are rows of hundreds of bikes here – very confusing
No; it’s a brand new house, so all the cleaning out, and dumping of stuff will already be done.
The stuff I have in the apartment though, could do with a clean out. Anyone want a broken alarm clock?
Conor are you implying that people go on holidays more than once a year??????????????? *confused*