Scavenging

Scavenging has been a way of life for me since I was trapped at home and had nothing but foot travel to get anywhere.  I always longed to get out and away, but I had no way to drive myself before I had my license.  I learned at a really young age that old saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” was very true.  My mother always used to say as well “Find a penny pick it up and, all the day you’ll have good luck” While these things on the scale most people integrate them into their lives will not make them rich, it can certainly help out.  I soon incorporated a similar mindset into so many other facets of life, and I quickly connected that to just being efficient, picking up something someone else did not finish or discarded too soon before they got all the good out of it. 

I was fortunate to grow up in a rural place and had the run of many acres of property both that my parents owned and that my neighbors did not mind me running wild on.  I started young by picking up cans along the road frontage from my parent’s property and branched out to roads that crossed the neighbor’s properties and gathered until I had enough to make a trip to the metal buyer.  It took me a while to talk my folks into taking me there to cash in, but I remember making nearly $50 on my cans and it dawned on me that I could do something on my own.  I soon began roofing and building full time in the summers and realized that was much better money, but I also began wood burning or pyrography and art work and built things that people would notice and want to buy, and I saw so many wood scraps and other things I could use to make this, so I began gathering these from the job sites and making my art work with them.  I was and still am not the greatest salesman, so quite often I would have to sit on these items for long periods of time before I could find the right person who would buy them, but I kept at it.  The wood was going to be thrown away and so it was free so why not?  Most of the roof fixtures be they vents or covers for things are made of aluminum or some other metals, and most of them had to be replaced or just thrown out.  I discovered that these metals could be sold as well just as the cans could be, and thus I began gathering these.  I noticed at the time the electricians were not interested in picking up their tag ends of wire that they clipped, and often they would have huge lengths of wire, and often from wells and other areas that require thicker wire.  The copper brought a good bit more than the aluminum. 

I recently began gathering the wood scraps from everywhere and making wooden crates that I have sold for the past three years.  I’ve picked up everything from an old piano, to bed frames, to old couches and chairs.  I see roadside dump sites as opportunity and I love jumping into the dumpsters on the job sites I work construction on.  I pick up the slats from the lumber stores that they place to separate their boards when they discard them, and I also pick them up from the roofing metal companies when they deliver.  One driver always grins and empties them from his truck.  He actually started bringing me extras.  I enjoy making the crates, something about my brain relaxes when I do menial physical repetitive tasks, although I do not want to do that all the time, it does relax my mind from time to time.  There is actually quite a bit of thinking involved and problem solving so that it’s not as mindless as it seems at face value.

Society tends now to frown on folks who “scrap” because quite a large percentage of those folks are doing so to support a drug habit due to the fact they have a habit and either a criminal record preventing them from working a legitimate job, or their habit itself keeps them from making the hours required to hold down a job.  These folks have really dirtied up the industry with their larcenous ways and thus shaded the name of those who do not do things the wrong way.  Certainly, stealing the copper pipes and the heating and cooling units from homes is not a good way to go about things. 

I remember fondly going to the laundry mat with my mother and even sometimes I could beg to stay the night with my grandparents and go with them as well.  I would stretch my arms as far as I could between the washers and dryers and look under any, and all things that had a gap between the bottom and the floor for quarters the patrons would drop as they washed and dried their clothes and were not able to retrieve or did not even care to try.  I wore out many, many pairs of jeans crawling under the register desks at each store I went to.  I would search into each, and every couch and chair and corner and anywhere I went to find change.  Sidewalks, parking lots, anywhere and everywhere people were, change was dropped, and I had every intention of finding it.  When I was younger of course this mostly went to buying things I wanted to have, but I still do quite a bit of these things… albeit more nonchalantly and more stealthily, and this now I set aside for investing.  The amounts I get from the scavenging are not big, but after years of it, they do add up.  I try to do these things in a more passive way than I used to.  I do them as I live like I normally would, for instance I try to mostly buy my drinks in cans so that I can collect these and get at least a tiny percentage return.  I love how efficient it seems to be to do these things, or at least that’s what it seems in my brain.   I had a co-worker once tell me I was the biggest scavenger in the world, and I hope he’s right. 

Deuteronomy 15:10