New #20: Dumpster Diving

More than almost anything else in life, I love a good bargain. Maybe it's the hunt for the lowest price that thrills me, or the joy of bringing home bags of booty for a budget price that gets me high. Whatever it is, a good sale is like a drug to me. So you an imagine how the ultimate bargain (i.e. free) found through dumpster diving would be my shopping smack. That is, just as soon as I could get past the fact I'm sifting through garbage to get it.

It seems nasty, going through trash in search of things others have thrown away. But after my first dive into a dumpster, I've realized there's no shame in scavenging. Only a ton of tossed-out treasures that are mine for the taking.

I've been intrigued by dumpster diving ever since one fateful day I was chatting with an elderly man. I was interviewing this 77-year-old at his home for an article, when a beautiful red sculpture on his mantel caught my eye. After telling him how much I liked it, he proudly explained that he'd found that piece while dumpster diving behind Bed, Bath and Beyond. What? I wondered. You can find amazing things like this ... for free? At that moment, it seemed as though the heavens above opened and shined their glorious light on that sculpture. I had found my calling, and my calling was dumpster diving.

As destine as I am to be a diver, breaking into the hobby was a little intimidating - not to mention gross. So for my virgin run, Ben and I decided to take a seemingly clean route and go through the dumpsters outside Colorado State's dorms. It was the last day of school, and all the freshman were throwing away anything they couldn't fit in their cars.

We were nervous, and slightly embarrassed by what we were about to do, so Ben and I first drove a few laps by the dumpsters. Finally, we got out the car and nonchalantly walked up the big, green bins. After a look to our left and our right to make sure no one was looking (and judging us), we climbed the tiers of the giant trash can to look inside. And what we found was anything but trash.

These kids were throwing away everything! A side table here, a floor length mirror there, even a futon was tossed in the mix. It was a mountain of home goods that apparently weren't good enough for these students. But they were certainly good enough for us.

With so much stuff right at my fingertips, I never literally dove into the dumpster. Yeah, yeah, so maybe I'm not a purist ... yet. But Ben was all about it, scooting his way along the edge toward the center of the dumpster, where he hopped right in to pick things up. I stood by, directing him to everything that caught my eye.

We really wanted this suede futon thrown in there, but soon realized we had no where to put it in our apartment. I wish we had planned ahead and brought a moving van, because I'm sure we could have collected all of this furniture and sold it on Craigslist for a pretty penny. But that's for next year.

This year, we walked away with plenty for ourselves. The Apple iHome was the first of our fantastic finds. Plugging it in at home to find that it actually worked like new just added to our elation. In fact, we found loads of electronics, all of which run just fine. Why these kids throw these perfectly good things away, I'll never understand. But after raiding about seven dumpsters, Ben and I had loaded up the car to capacity with our new cargo.

Our final tally was *drum roll please*: the iHome, bottles of Frebreze air freshner, dish soap (my brand), a coat rack, a metal basket, headphones, and a fancy HP printer. We even found the one item we were most hoping for: a stainless steel, totally clean and operating MINI FRIDGE! For beer enthusiasts such as ourselves, it was like striking gold.

Our dumpster diving bounty. No, the beer was not included. But you can see our finds are being put to good use already.

With all of our goodies rescued from landfills and put to use at home, I know we'll be diving for some more deals soon. One man's trash is Sarah's new high.