O/S WOMBLING, Road Coinage, Skips, Roadside 'finds' etc 1 July 2020 at 2:28PM edited 10 January 2021 at 8:20AM in Old style MoneySaving 328 replies 54.8K views

balabooberlies

Okay
Confess..........

Who has benefited from people having clear outs.  I will begin with my 'finds'..........

A perfect lamp
A wooden stool about a foot high.  Perfect for me as I am challenged height wise.
2 Flower pots
A plastic shopping basket.  Great for carrying multiple items up the stairs.
A metal shoe rack.
All these things in almost perfect condition.  I have also seen computers, fridges, furniture, books, DVD's etc.  All with a 'help yourself' notice.

The first thing I put out was some fruit I knew was not going to get eaten (I can only eat so much) and my elderly neighbour took it.  I now buy her fruit.  (To keep her 'regular' as she says).

I have got rid of about 40 DVD's and today I am putting out a dinner service.  We have 3 and this set hasn't been used for about 10 years.  Would normally take it to charity shop but they are still closed.

I feel chuffed with my finds as I am using all of them.  What have you found ?

Bala

gwynlas

Set of 4 chapel chairs off skip opposite. Skip hirer said that they had woodworm helped me choose best out of 6, dipping cured problem.

balabooberlies

Wonderful !

I love recycling.

3secondmemory

I love scoping out skips and repurposing.

Last week at the bottle bank I went to pick up a carrier bag on the ground and noticed there W was a packet with 2 out of 3 new stubby screwdrivers and a multi key. Then, on the way home, I went to pick up a large pice of white paper or plastic off the road and it was a new fabric veg bag. Freebies everywhere 😃

-taff

two sewing machines, a dyson, rocking chair, spong mincer, various wood bits, a candle holder, recycling flip top bin, slates, a childs wooden stool and that's I can remember offhand...

I love a good womble. I just took the OH up to a friends and noticed three skips on the way back...may investigate further in the week...

balabooberlies

It's so exciting.

I don't skip dive because am always worried of getting told off...........but I saw a lovely wheel barrow the other day.

Too much of a scaredy cat !

thriftwizard

Probably more than half the stuff in our home, ever since I realised that most of what we could afford was stuff built to fall apart or stop working in 5 years so we'd have to buy new! Today I've gone down to my mother's & demolished a small old shed, probably from the early 80s, rotten in places & otherwise destined for the Tip, & happily carted it home, because I want to build a garden arbour from bits of old shed & pallet-wood. Some of the side slats will replace a few rotten ones on our allotment shed, which came to us free courtesy of Gumtree, having been offered for firewood. Most of our tools down there were 50p from the Household Recycling centre; they may be old, dusty & sometimes rusty, but oh boy they work, and work well. My push-mower, from the same source, cost me £2 & half a bottle of light machine oil - also from the Tip. My best sewing machine is a Jones Medium treadle, from 1909, which will stitch through anything - the record so far is 11 layers of furnishing velvet (reclaimed from an old hotel curtain) - which cost me £2.50 on Ebay; it spent most of its life sewing sacks in a barn.

Roadkill? Yes, on occasion, but only if I know it's really fresh & not likely to have anything nasty; it's entirely in character for a male pheasant to challenge a 4x4 to a duel (which they very rarely win) but not for a rabbit, for example, to be on the road during the day - it may well have myxamatosis. But foraging, now - I do that all the time. I have a big jar of dried nettle, which I use as a pot-herb in soups & stews; the deep roots pull up lots of valuable minerals. (Beware! The dried leaves can still sting; only cooking neutralises it.) Autumn is the best time for foraging; I used to go blackberrying along the Metropolitan line, when we lived just outside London, but round here there are blackberries, elderberries (flowers in spring) hazelnuts, walnuts, crab apples, sloes, cherry plums, and even raspberries & currants along the drove roads where there were once cottage gardens. Also Japonica quinces & other worthwhile but unwanted fruits (plums & apples) in the urban gardens; people are usually delighted to give it away in return for a jar of the resulting preserve. I do have friends who forage for fungi, but the only ones I'd be confident of are field mushrooms & puffballs.

My best "find" was probably a black plastic sack full of damp fabric, which I paid £1.50 for at the Tip. I could see it was worthwhile; two huge pairs of made-to-measure Laura Ashley curtains, with pelmets & tie-backs, which would have cost over £1,000 new, which have been cut down into 4 pairs to fit (and suit) our home. A decorator friend has also passed on some huge & beautiful country house curtains, made from Linwood fabrics, which were otherwise destined to be burnt; I'm cutting one pair down for our upstairs landing right now. I think I'm very lucky to be in a position to benefit from the things that other people don't want!

MovingForwards

Haven't done road kill, do forage but most of my possessions are 'finds', I've got lovely vases, candle holders, paintings, piggy banks that were given out by banks, bedside cabinet, chest of drawers, tallboy.

Did scrapping for a few years, but the price in return at the moment makes it unviable to store a mountain of metal, cable etc. 

If it's not 'finds' it's previously loved items from car boots and charity shops.

The only brand new things in my home are two foot stools / steps, bed / mattress, PC desk, printer, fridge, freezer. I tend to buy second hand and even my PC set up was used when I got it.

I'm pleased to find I'm not alone doing it 😁

wondercollie

Our daughter in law is a taxidermist.   She has a bumper sticker "I brake for road kill"  To date, she's dragged home a coyote, barn owl and a hare.  All stuffed and mounted and sold one.

suki1964

Reading this makes me miss living in an urban area, used to love a good old skip dive.

Even better was Mr S was a builder in the Kensington/Chelsea/Putney areas. Quite often he would go in to do a house conversion on a house that was sold with contents still there - rich pickings indeed. Most expensive find was an Omega watch ( was sold and spilt between the gang )

My first flat was entirely fitted out from a flat where an old boy had died and the council were clearing it out. Carpet, curtains, table and chairs, and best of all a cooker, I had that cooker for 20 years and then left it for the next tenant who took the flat I vacated

Our first 3 piece also came from a house being cleared out. Big huge horsehair ugly thing. We had no car so us and a couple of friends carried it 5 miles home. Then when we had the money to buy new, we passed it on to another friend. Many a find was carted home on the tube

My favourite finds were ornate chimney pots. We only had a tiny garden so they were fantastic as planters and looked amazing

Bricks were another thing we used to salvage. Mr S built a beautiful raised pond out of reclaimed bricks. He also managed to get proper York stone slabs to build a patio

And of course living on an estate with lots of passer by's anything we wanted rid off when out the front with a please help yourself. Stuff wasn't out there 5 mins and it was gone

Nowadays such finds are rare, although I have a beautiful victorian chaise longe which was falling apart but a bit of TLC and professional re upholstery is now a thing of beauty. Tv and sofa in the kitchen also came from a house clearance recently. All our outside lights, the strip lights in the garage came from a refurb. Mr S got a lot of the strip lights and sold them on. When the kids were younger he built a slide from a bit of left over stainless steel sheeting from when the pub renovated the kitchen and a pair of bannister hand rails he picked up elsewhere. Chicken coop was also built from salvaged wood as are our raised beds

Best freebie this year has been the trees a neighbour had cut down

balabooberlies

It's wonderful to hear about all your finds.  I am impressed.

Watched a programme with a man that hadn't bought meat for over 30 years surviving/living on roadkill.  Not something I would attempt because I don't know enough.  He had a breadth of knowledge that was stunning to me and was actually a great chef by the looks of things.  Great forager too.  My 'road kill' consists of a really beautiful pen and lots of pennies.  For luck.  OOohhhhh and 2 pencils !

About 10 years ago I was walking past a 1930's house where they were having double glazing installed.  They were throwing away the original stained glass windows.  I couldn't bear to see them slung in the skip so they came home with me.  Because I had no use for them they ended up with someone that was making his own shed.  They were saved !

Most of my treasured items come from antique/junk shops, car boots.  Going forward all furniture will be bought second hand.  Mattresses will be new but anything that can be thoroughly cleaned will be second hand.  In fact most of my stuff is.  I love a 'hand me down'.  My laptop is second hand but I am rethinking this as it only works if plugged in.

Unfortunately our dumps do not allow things to be passed on or sold.  It's really annoying.

I would like a smart T.V. but it's all too confusing.  Our T.V's are at least 15 years old and do a good job.  Bet they don't make them like that anymore.

My plans for the future are to move to a more rural area and to finally learn how to forage and to pass this on to the little ones in the family.  Along with a great dollop of how to recycle and re-use.