I am an unashamed dumpster diver. Or, as Drew prefers: freecycling. I am beginning to feel as is my entire house is going to be furnished in freecycled materials.

I say I’m unashamed, but that’s not entirely true. Although I have no problem with bringing used items into my home, I often feel a bit embarrassed standing out by someone’s curb, peering through their trash pile. It’s like I’m expecting the people to come charging out of their house, demanding we step away from their stuff. But they never do. If it’s sitting by the trash can, it’s up for grabs. They have relinquished control over their stuff by setting it out by the curb.

Drew is completely unashamed. He walks right up and starts excitedly rifling through the pile and inspecting stuff, while I stand behind him, glancing around as if I’m the lookout or something. Perhaps I’m a bit more nervous now since we’ve moved to a more upscale neighborhood. Although not ritzy, it’s a far cry from our ghetto duplex-filled neighborhood. Dumpster diving was expected in that neighborhood. Now, I feel like neighbors are looking out the window, shaking their heads. “Honey, those people are at it again…”

Really, there is no shame in freecycling. As the old saying goes, “One’s person trash is another person’s treasure.” What our neighbor is desperately sick of in their house is pure excitement as we pull it into ours. One less thing in the landfill, which is always a good thing. We’re just doing our part to help the environment.

When we took Dave Ramsey‘s Financial Peace University last year, this was a topic he touched on. Sort of. Basically, he said that it never hurts to ask, “Hey, can I have that?” You can come across all sorts of free stuff this way. It’s a great money saver. Although we’re not exactly asking as we race toward home with our free loot, it’s basically the same concept.

One of our mismatched night-stands was from a neighbor who was moving away and cleaning house. It’s ghetto and not so nice, but it’s functional. It will serve it’s purpose until we can save enough money to buy a nice bedroom set. We also picked up a perfectly good CD player, again from a neighbor that was cleaning house. This time we did actually ask, because the woman was outside when we walked by. Her response was basically, “Please, take it!” We even offered her money and she refused it. This should encourage me in knowing that our neighbors are not judging us for freecycling.

Just this week, I encountered a cute little floor mat in the trash room at work. Someone had laid it across the recycling bin, so it wasn’t in the trash can, covered in nastiness. I picked it up and inspected it. It matched my kitchen and dining room theme perfectly, so I took it home and washed it. Now it’s on the floor of my kitchen, proudly displaying it’s coffee grandeur.

Just this evening, as Drew and I were coming home, we noticed our neighbor had some chairs out by his trash that looked to be in pretty good shape. We casually walked out to inspect them (me still standing guard) and Drew decided he could rearrange legs to make two decent chairs. We dragged all three of them into the living room, and he did his handyman miracle and created two great chairs. Voila. We’ve been looking for a chair to put in our front bedroom. Done!

One of our greatest free-cycling stories is our free keyboard. A music school had problems getting the sound to work, and they were going to junk it. They offered it to Drew, and in about 45 minutes he had it fixed. Woo hoo!

Anyone else have any great dumpster diving stories?