Even though it’s snowing like mad, (five inches already) Will and I drove our car to the dump on Saturday, and found that a contractor had dumped a whole truck load of lumber from a remodeling job. There were 2x4s and a whole lot of knotty pine paneling. So this morning, while I worked at home, Will ran in to see if the stuff was still there. It was! He loaded the truck high with the lumber and brought it home.

Right now, he’s building shelves in the basement for more storage (junk and food), and nearly all that lumber has been recycled. What a good feeling that is! Especially when it didn’t cost us a dime. And what nice shelves, too. They are all built with 2×4 legs and 2×6 and 2×4 shelves, so they’ll be plenty serviceable and strong.

The basement’s been a catch-all for several years now and we’re trying to unravel it and sort out boxes and boxes of stuff. Some of it is ours from when we moved from the mobile home. Some of it is Mom and Dad’s. But it’s piled here and there, all over the place. It’s time to organize and reduce clutter! That new truckload of lumber will sure help and the knotty pine paneling will find a good use, here on our homestead.

So now we’re watching the snow pile up and throwing another log on the fire, getting warm before chore time again. — Jackie

6 COMMENTS

  1. When I built my house I insisted that the framers didn’t throw out the scrap lumber. I bought 2 4x4s and some plywood and used the scraps to build 3 rows of shelves covering the entire back of my 2 car garage. I used the rest for small parts and bracing for a 2 level covered porch. The rest will make great firewood. Shame people actually throw wood in the trash.

  2. Same thing with our basement! *lol* It must be in the air!

    I drove by a construction worker removing wonderful sheets of plywood, from a home that had burned, and he was throwing that plywood into a dumpster. Broke my heart I couldn’t bring it home… or at the very least that someone wasn’t using it, even if it wasn’t us.

    We still seem to be a throw-away society… despite this supposed “bad economy”. Makes me wonder how bad things really are, you know? Perhaps folks have thou$and$ in installment debt & don’t realize in how bad of a shape they truly are. I dunno.

    Peace to you Jackie~ An Earth Mama

  3. Funny-we are cleaning out our basement too! Big job and I am trying to organize as I go. Nothing better to do when it is 20 below!

  4. We have the same problem with the dumps around here. They want anything buried as soon as possible.

    We have had some good luck back when they were actually building houses. They have to pay for contractors dumpsters and how much they put in them so you can sometimes find good stuff that the contractor can’t use or trim products etc. We have some nice things around here built with castoffs.

  5. Jackie, I wish that we could recycle from the landfill but it’s not allowed in our landfill. Once it’s there the big machine krunches it up and buries it under dirt. What a waste.

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