Junk Hunting Day 1

Happy 100th post to me!

I've been trying to think of something really spectacular to blog about on this important landmark. Alas, I came up with this...

Ever heard of the phrase, "one man's junk is another man's treasure"? Not only do Colin and I believe this statement, we LIVE it!

You see, one week per year, the residents of Port Moody are invited to do "Spring Cleaning". They can put any amount of junk (aka: stuff they don't use that could be PERFECTLY good) on their front curb, and the city will remove it all...for NO cost!

This is said week.

"Why do YOU care, YOU live in Poco", you may be thinking.

Well, I'm glad you asked.

Junk week is one of our favourite times in the year! People throw out some perfectly good stuff. And instead of letting the city take it to a landfill to (hopefully) rot away, we root through it and remove things that we can use!

It's NOT dumpster diving, it's junk hunting!

We even talk to the residents of the house if they're outside, and they will put signs on a lot of stuff that says, "THIS WORKS".

In the past few years, we've picked up some pretty cool stuff: a full size trampoline, a working treadmill and a drafting table are my favourites.

So to make you believe that we're not just filling our house with junk, and that we are the cheapest people on the planet, I am going to run a list of everything we pick up and how much money it would have cost or how much it saved us.

First up, the crib. We were going to buy one for $300.00 (before tax) on the weekend, but didn't. It's got all the pieces, follows current Health Canada safety regualtions and looks almost new after I gave it a good cleaning.

We set it up last night and just kept staring into it, as if there was a baby in there!

Next: the 4 brand new Michelin tires! They're already on the car, as our tires were tread-less. This saved about $300-$400.

Last year we got these leather bean bag chairs. They're in need of filling, so we picked up another chair with beans in it, and filled ours up more. Estimated savings $50. They're not cheap.

We saw a big fish tank. Colin wanted the whole thing but I did not. So he took the plastic plants out of it and added them to our tank. Hopefully the fish don't die. Estimated savings: $48 (6 plants @ $8 each).

However, now all you see is plants so we want more fish.

There were other things too, like a GT racer and a snowboard, which Colin is going to combine to make a super crazy GT racer (steerable toboggan). I have told him he's not allowed to mount a baby seat on it.

We also got a neat kerosene lamp (well Colin likes it but I think it's junk), a sword for Colin's pirate costume, and a few other things that I can't mention because they'll probably find their way to our annual "crazy" Christmas gift exchange.

So estimated total savings on Junk Week Day 1: $850.00

I really think PoCo should do this too. Then we could dump all the junk we picked up, that really turned out to be junk, in our own yard.